History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume II (of 2)

Reaction in the papacy against these pressures. The middle of the eleventh century ushers in an epoch for the papacy and for Europe. It is marked by an attempt at a moral reformation in the Church – by a struggle for securing for the papacy independence both of the Emperors of Germany and of the neighbouring Italian nobles – thus far the pope being the mere officer of the emperor, and often the creature of the surrounding nobility – by the conversion of the temporalities of the Church, heretofore indirect, into absolute possessions, by securing territories given "to the Church, the blessed Peter, and the Roman republic" to the first of these beneficiaries, excluding the last. Preparation for a concentration of the papal power. As events proceeded, these minor affairs converged, and out of their union arose the great conflict of the imperial and papal powers for supremacy. The same policy which had succeeded in depriving the Roman people of any voice in appointments of popes – which had secularized the Church in Italy, for a while seized all the material resources of Europe through the device of the Crusades, and nearly established a papal autocracy in all Europe. These political events demand from us notice, since from them arose intellectual consequences of the utmost importance.

The second Lateran Council, under Nicolas II., accomplished the result of vesting the elective power for the papacy in the cardinals. That was a great revolution. It was this council which gave to Berengar his choice between death and recantation. Three parties in Italy. There were at this period three powers engaged in Italy – the Imperial, the Church party, and the Italian nobles. For the sake of holding the last in check – since it was the nearest, it required the most unremitting attention – Hildebrand had advised the popes who were his immediate predecessors to use the Normans, who were settled in the south of the peninsula, by whom the lands of the nobles were devastated. Thus the difficulties of their position led the popes to a repetition of their ancient policy; and as they had, in old times, sought the protection of the Frankish kings, so now they sought that of the Normans. Hildebrand becomes pope. But in the midst of the dissensions and tumults of the times, a great man was emerging – Hildebrand, who, with almost superhuman self-denial, again and again abstained from making himself pope. On the death of Alexander II. his opportunity came, and, with acceptable force, he was raised to that dignity, A.D. 1073.

Hildebrand resolves on a reform. Scarcely was Hildebrand Pope Gregory VII. when he vigorously proceeded to carry into effect the policy he had been preparing during the pontificates of his predecessors. In many respects the times were propitious. The blameless lives of the German popes had cast a veil of oblivion over the abominations of their Italian predecessors. Hildebrand addressed himself to tear out every vestige of simony and concubinage with a remorseless hand. That task must be finished before he could hope to accomplish his grand project of an ecclesiastical autocracy in Europe, with the pope at its head, and the clergy, both in their persons and property, independent of the civil power. Necessity of celibacy of the clergy. It was plain that, apart from all moral considerations, the supremacy of Rome in such a system altogether turned on the celibacy of the clergy. If marriage was permitted to the ecclesiastic, what was to prevent him from handing down, as an hereditary possession, the wealth and dignities he had obtained. In such a state of things, the central government at Rome necessarily stood at every disadvantage against the local interests of an individual, and still more so if many individuals should combine together to promote, in common, similar interests. But very different would it be if promotion must be looked for from Rome – very different as regards the hold upon public sentiment, if such a descent from father to son was absolutely prevented, and a career fairly opened to all, irrespective of their station in life. To the Church it was to the last degree important that a man should derive his advancement from her, not from his ancestor. In the trials to which she was perpetually exposed, there could be no doubt that by such persons her interests would be best served.

It is enforced. In these circumstances Gregory VII. took his course. The synod held at Rome in the first year of his pontificate denounced the marriage of the clergy, enforcing its decree by the doctrine that the efficacy of the sacraments altogether depended on their being administered by hands sinless in that respect, and made all communicants partners in the pastoral crime. The pope seeks the friendship of the Normans. With a provident foresight of the coming opposition, he carried out the policy he had taught his predecessors of conciliating the Normans in the south of Italy, though he did not hesitate to resist them, by the aid of the Countess Matilda, when they dared to touch the possessions of the Church. It was for the sake of this that the Norman invasion of England under William the Conqueror had already been approved of, a consecrated standard and a ring containing a hair from the head of St. Peter sent him, and permission given for the replacement of Saxon bishops and other dignitaries by Normans. It was not forgotten how great had been the gains to the papacy, three centuries before, by changing the dynasty of the Franks; and thus the policy of an Italian town gave a permanent impress to the history of England. Hildebrand foresaw that the sword of the Italian-Norman would be wanted to carry out his projected ends. He did not hesitate to authorize the overthrow of a Saxon dynasty by the French-Norman, that he might be more sure of the fidelity of that sword. Without the countenance of the pope, the Norman could never have consolidated his power, nor even held his ground in England.

The conflict concerning investitures. From these movements of the papacy sprang the conflict with the Emperors of Germany respecting investitures. The Bishop of Milan – who, it appears, had perjured himself in the quarrel respecting concubinage – had been excommunicated by Alexander II. The imperial council appointed as his successor one Godfrey; the pope had nominated Atto. Hereupon Alexander had summoned the emperor to appear before him on a charge of simony, and granting investitures without his approbation. While the matter was yet in abeyance, Alexander died; but Gregory took up the contest. A synod he had assembled ordered that, if any one should accept investiture from a layman, both the giver and receiver should be excommunicated. The pretence against lay-investiture was that it was a usurpation of a papal right, and that it led to the appointment of evil and ignorant men; the reality was a determination to extend papal power, by making Rome the fountain of emolument. Gregory, by his movements, had thus brought upon himself three antagonists – the imperial power, the Italian nobles, and the married clergy. The latter, unscrupulous and exasperated, met him with his own weapons, not hesitating to calumniate his friendship with the Countess Matilda. It was also suspected that they were connected with the outrage perpetrated by the nobles that took place in Rome. Outrage on Hildebrand. On Christmas night, A.D. 1075, in the midst of a violent rain, while the pope was administering the communion, a band of soldiers burst into the church, seized Gregory at the altar, stripped and wounded him, and, haling him on horseback behind one of the soldiers, carried him off to a stronghold, from which he was rescued by the populace. But, without wavering for a moment, the undaunted pontiff pressed on his conflict with the imperial power, summoning Henry to Rome to account for his delinquencies, and threatening his excommunication if he should not appear before an appointed day. In haste, under the auspices of the king, a synod was assembled at Worms; charges against the pope of licentious life, bribery, necromancy, simony, murder, atheism, were introduced and sentence of deposition pronounced against him. On his side, Gregory assembled the third Lateran Council, A.D. 1076, placed King Henry under interdict, absolved his subjects from allegiance, and deposed him. He defines the position of the Church, A series of constitutions, clearly defining the new bases of the papal system, was published. They were to the following effect: "That the Roman pontiff can alone be called universal; that he alone has a right to depose bishops; that his legates have a right to preside over all bishops in a general council; that he can depose absent prelates; that he alone has a right to use imperial ornaments; that princes are bound to kiss his feet, and his only; that he has a right to depose emperors; that no synod or council summoned without his commission can be called general; that no book can be called canonical without his authority; that his sentence can be annulled by none, but that he may annul the decrees of all; that the Roman Church has been, is, and will continue to be infallible; that whoever dissents from it ceases to be a catholic Christian, and that subjects may be absolved from their allegiance to wicked princes." The power that could assert such resolutions was near its culmination.

And now was manifest the superiority of the spiritual over the temporal power. The quarrel with Henry went on, and, after a hard struggle and many intrigues to draw the Normans over to him, that monarch was compelled to submit, and in the depth of winter to cross the snowy Alps, under circumstances of unparalleled hardship, to seek absolution from his adversary. and overcomes the King of Germany. Then ensued the scene at Canosa – a penitent in white raiment standing in the dreary snow of three winter days, January 1077, cold and fasting at the gate, seeking pardon and reconciliation of the inexorable pontiff; that penitent was the King of Germany. Then ensued the dramatic scene at the sacrament, in which the gray-haired pontiff called upon Heaven to strike him dead on the spot if he were not innocent of the crimes of which he had been accused, and dared the guilty monarch to do the same.

Conclusions from these events. Whoever will reflect on these interesting events cannot fail to discern two important conclusions. The tone of thought throughout Europe had changed within the last three ages; ideas were entertained, doctrines originated or controverted, a policy conceived and attempted altogether in advance of the old times. Intellect, both among the clergy and the laity, had undergone a great development. But the peculiar character of the papal power is also ascertained – that it is worldly, and the result of the policy of man. The outrage on Hildebrand shows how that power had diminished at its centre, but the victory over Henry that it maintained its strength at a distance. Natural forces diminish as the distance increases; this unnatural force displayed an opposite property.

Culmination of the ecclesiastical power. Gregory had carried his point. He had not only beaten back the Northern attack, but had established the supremacy of the ecclesiastical over the temporal power, and that point, with inflexible resolution, he maintained, though in its consequences it cost Germany a civil war. But, while he was thus unyielding in his temporal policy, there is reason to suppose that he was not without misgivings in his theological belief. In the war between Henry and his rival Rodolph, Gregory was compelled by policy to be at first neutral. He occupied himself with the Eucharistic controversy. Friendship of Hildebrand and Berengar. This was at the time that he was associated with Berengar, who lived with him for a year. Nor did the pope think it unworthy of himself to put forth, in excuse of the heretic, a vision, in which the Virgin Mary had asserted the orthodoxy of Berengar; but, as his quarrel with King Henry went on to new excommunications and depositions, a synod of bishops presumed to condemn him as a partisan of Berengar and a necromancer. On the election of Gilbert of Ravenna as antipope, Gregory, without hesitation, pushed his principles to their consequences, denouncing kingship as a wicked and diabolical usurpation, an infraction of the equal rights of man. The German contest resumed. Hereupon Henry determined to destroy him or to be destroyed; and descending again into Italy, A.D. 1081, for three successive years laid siege to Rome. In vain the amorous Matilda, with more than the devotion of an ally, endeavoured to succour her beleaguered friend. The city surrendered to Henry at Christmas, A.D. 1084. With his antipope he entered it, receiving from his hands the imperial crown. The Norman allies of Hildebrand at last approached in strength. The emperor was compelled to retreat. A feeble attempt to hold the city was made. The Normans took it by surprise, and released Gregory from his imprisonment in the Castle of St. Angelo. An awful scene ensued. Some conflicts between the citizens and the Normans occurred; a battle in the streets was the consequence, and Rome was pillaged, sacked, and fired. Streets, churches, palaces, were left a heap of smoking ashes. The people by thousands were massacred. The Mohammedans support Hildebrand. The Saracens, of whom there were multitudes in the Norman army, were in the Eternal City at last, and, horrible to be said, were there as the hired supporters of the Vicar of Christ. Matrons, nuns, young women, were defiled. Crowds of men, women, and children were carried off and sold as slaves. Sack of Rome, and death of the pope. It was the treatment of a city taken by storm. In consternation, the pontiff with his infidel deliverers retired from the ruined capital to Salerno, and there he died, A.D. 1085.

The Crusades. He had been dead ten years, when a policy was entered upon by the papacy which imparted to it more power than all the exertions of Gregory. The Crusades were instituted by a French pope, Urban II. Unpopular in Italy, perhaps by reason of his foreign birth, he aroused his native country for the recovery of the Holy Land. He began his career in a manner not now unusual, interfering in a quarrel between Philip of France and his wife, taking the part of the latter, as experience had shown it was always advisable for a pope to do. Soon, however, he devoted his attention to something more important than these matrimonial broils. It seems that a European crusade was first distinctly conceived of and its value most completely comprehended by Gerbert, to whom, doubtless, his Mohammedan experiences had suggested it. In the first year of his pontificate, he wrote an epistle, in the name of the Church of Jerusalem, to the Church throughout the world, exhorting Christian soldiers to come to her relief either with arms or money. It had been subsequently contemplated by Gregory VII. For many years, pilgrimages to Palestine had been on the increase; a very lucrative export trade in relics from that country had arisen; crowds from all parts of Europe had of late made their way to Jerusalem, for the singular purpose of being present at the great assize which the Scriptures were supposed to prophesy would soon take place in the Valley of Jehoshaphat. The Mohammedans had inflicted on these pious persons much maltreatment, being unable to comprehend the purport of their extraordinary journey, and probably perceiving a necessity of putting some restriction upon the influx of such countless multitudes. The Council of Clermont authorizes a crusade. Peter the Hermit, who had witnessed the barbarities to which his Christian brethren were exposed, and the abominations of the holy places now in the hands of the infidel, roused Europe, by his preaching, to a frantic state; and Urban, at the Council of Clermont, A.D. 1095, gave authority to the Holy War. "It is the will of God," was the unanimous shout of the council and the populace. The periodical shower of shooting stars was seen with remarkable brilliancy on April 25th, and mistaken by the council for a celestial monition that the Christians must precipitate themselves in like manner on the East. From this incident we may perceive how little there was of inspiration in these blundering and violent ecclesiastical assemblages; the moment that they can be brought to a scientific test their true nature is detected. As a preliminary exercise, a ferocious persecution of the Jews of France had burst forth, and the blood and tortures of multitudes offered a tardy expiation for the crimes that their ancestors had committed at the Crucifixion in Jerusalem, more than a thousand years previously.

The first crusade. It does not fall within my plan to give a detailed description of the Crusades. It is enough to say that, though the clergy had promised the protection of God to every one who would thus come to his assistance – an ample reward for their pious work in this life, and the happiness of heaven in the next – Urban's crusade failed not only disastrously, but hideously, so far as the ignorant rabbles, under Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless, were concerned. Nevertheless, under the better-organized expeditions that soon followed, Jerusalem was captured, July 15th, A.D. 1099. The long and ghastly line of bones whitening the road through Hungary to the East showed how different a thing it was for a peaceable and solitary pilgrim, with his staff, and wallet, and scallop-shell, to beg his way, and a disorderly rabble of thousands upon thousands to rush forward without any subordination, any organization, trusting only to the providence of God. The van of the Crusades consisted of two hundred and seventy-five thousand men, accompanied by eight horses, and preceded by a goat and a goose, into which some one had told them that the Holy Ghost had entered. Driven to madness by disappointment and famine – expecting, in their ignorance, that every town they came to must be Jerusalem – in their extremity they laid hands on whatever they could. Their track was marked by robbery, bloodshed, and fire. In the first crusade more than half a million of men died. It was far more disastrous than the Moscow retreat.

Storming of Jerusalem. But still, in a military sense, the first crusade accomplished its object. The capture of Jerusalem, as might be expected under such circumstances, was attended by the perpetration of atrocities almost beyond belief. What a contrast to the conduct of the Arabs! When the Khalif Omar took Jerusalem, A.D. 637, he rode into the city by the side of the Patriarch Sophronius, conversing with him on its antiquities. At the hour of prayer, he declined to perform his devotions in the Church of the Resurrection, in which he chanced to be, but prayed on the steps of the Church of Constantine; "for," said he to the patriarch, "had I done so, the Musselmen in a future age would have infringed the treaty, under colour of imitating my example." But, in the capture by the Crusaders, the brains of young children were dashed out against the walls; infants were thrown over the battlements; every woman that could be seized was violated; men were roasted at fires; some were ripped open, to see if they had swallowed gold; the Jews were driven into their synagogue, and there burnt; a massacre of nearly 70,000 persons took place; and the pope's legate was seen "partaking in the triumph."

Political results of the Crusades. It had been expected by the politicians who first projected these wars that they would heal the divisions of the Latin and Greek churches, and give birth to a European republic, under the spiritual presidency of the pope. In these respects they proved a failure. It does not appear that the popes themselves personally had ever any living faith in the result. Not one of them ever joined a crusade; and the Church, as a corporation, took care to embark very little money in these undertakings. But, though they did not answer to the original intention, they gave, in an indirect way, a wonderful stimulus to the papal power. Give to Rome the control of men and money in Europe. Under the plausible pretences offered by them, the pope obtained control over the person of every Christian man from the highest to the lowest. The cross once taken, all civil control over the Crusader ceased – he became the man of the Church. Under those pretences, also, a right was imperceptibly acquired of raising revenue in all parts of Europe; even the clergy might be assessed. A drain was thus established on the resources of distant nations for an object which no man dared to gainsay; if he adventured on any such thing, he must encounter the odium of an infidel – an atheist. A steady stream of money flowed into Italy. Nor was it alone by this taxation of every Christian nation without permission of its government – this empire within every empire – immense wealth accrued to the projectors, while the infatuation could be kept up, by the diminished rate at which land could be obtained. Domains were thrown into the market; there were few purchasers except the Church. Immense domains were also given away by weak-minded sinners, and those on the point of death, for the salvation of their souls. Thus, all things considered, the effect of the Crusades, though not precisely that which was expected, was of singular advantage to the Church, giving it a commanding strength it had never before possessed.

In their resistance to the German attack the popes never hesitated at any means. They prompted Prince Henry to revolt against their great antagonist, his father; they intervened, not to rebuke, but to abet him, when he threw his father into prison and deprived him of the necessaries of life. They carried their vengeance beyond the grave. When the aged emperor, broken in heart, escaped from their torment, and was honourably buried by the Bishop of Liège, that prelate was forthwith excommunicated and compelled to disinter the corpse. But crimes like these, against which human nature revolts, meet with retribution. Resistance of Henry V. This same Prince Henry, becoming Henry V., was forced by circumstances to resume his father's quarrel, and to refuse to yield his right of granting investitures. He marched upon Rome, and at the point of the sword compelled his adversary, Pope Paschal II., to surrender all the possessions and royalties of the Church – compelled him to crown him emperor – not, however, until the pontiff had been subjected to the ignominy of imprisonment, and brought into condemnation among his own party.

Bernard of Clairvaux stimulates the second crusade. Things seemed to be going to ruin in Rome, and such must inevitably have been the issue, had not an extraneous influence arisen in Bernard of Clairvaux, to whom Europe learned to look up as the beater down of heresies, theological and political. He had been a pupil of William of Champeaux, the vanquished rival of Abelard, and Abelard he hated with a religious and personal hate. He was a wonder-worker. He excommunicated the flies which infested a church – they all fell down dead and were swept out by the basketful. He has been described as "the mellifluous doctor, whose works are not scientific, but full of unction." He could not tolerate the principle at the basis of Abelard's philosophy – the assertion of the supremacy of reason. Of Arnold of Brescia – who carried that principle to its political consequences, and declared that the riches and power of the clergy were inconsistent with their profession – he was the accuser and punisher. Its failure. Bernard preached a new crusade, authenticating his power by miracles, affirmed to be not inferior to those of our Saviour; promising to him who should slay an unbeliever happiness in this life and Paradise in the life to come. This second crusade was conducted by kings, and included fanatic ladies, dressed in the armour of men; but it ended in ruin.

It was reserved for the only Englishman who ever attained to the papacy to visit Rome with the punishment she had so often inflicted upon others. Nicolas Breakspear – Adrian IV. – put the Eternal City under interdict, thereby ending the republic which the partisans of Arnold of Brescia had set up. But in this he was greatly aided by a change of sentiment in many of the inhabitants of Rome, who had found to their cost that it was more profitable for their city to be the centre of Christianity than the seat of a phantom republic. Murder of Arnold of Brescia. As an equivalent for his coronation by Adrian, Frederick Barbarossa agreed to surrender to the Church Arnold of Brescia. With indecent haste, the moment she had obtained possession of her arch-enemy she put him to death – not delivering him over to the secular arm, as the custom had been, but murdering him with her own hand. Seven centuries have elapsed, and the blood of Arnold is still crying from the ground for retribution. Notwithstanding a new – the third – crusade, things went from bad to worse in the Holy Land. Saladin had retaken Jerusalem, A.D. 1187. Barbarossa was drowned in a river in Pisidia. Richard of England was treacherously imprisoned; nor did the pope interfere for this brave soldier of the Cross. Birth of Frederick II. In the meantime, the Emperors of Germany had acquired Sicily by marriage – an incident destined to be of no little importance in the history of Europe; for, on the death of the Emperor Henry VI. at Messina, his son Frederick, an infant not two years old, was left to be brought up in that island. What the consequences were we shall soon see.

Review of the preceding events. If we review the events related in this chapter, we find that the idolatry and immorality into which Rome had fallen had become connected with material interests sufficiently powerful to ensure their perpetuation; that converted Germany insisted on a reform, and therefore made a moral attack on the Italian system, attempting to carry it into effect by civil force. This attack was, properly speaking, purely moral, the intellectual element accompanying it being derived from Western or Arabian influences, as will be shown in the next chapter; and, in its resistance to this, the papacy was not only successful, but actually was able to retaliate, overthrowing the Emperors of Germany, and being even on the point of establishing a European autocracy, with the pope at its head. It was in these events that the Reformation began, though circumstances intervened to postpone its completion to the era of Luther. Henceforth we see more and more plainly the attitude in which the papacy, through its material interests, was compelled to stand, as resisting all intellectual advancement. Our subject has therefore here to be left unfinished until we shall have described the Mohammedan influences making pressures on the West and the East.