I

 

THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE.

 

ON the bleak height of Canosa, on the 25th of January, 1077, Henry IV, the Emperor of Germany, stood between the two outer walls of the Countess Mathilde's castle, barefoot and in the garb of a penitent. Within the castle was Hildebrand, Gregory VII, the Pope of Rome. Nearly a year before, the Pope had publicly cursed the Emperor, and had released his subjects from their allegiance. After standing for three days in the snow, Henry was at last admitted to the Pope's presence, and on humiliating terms, which placed him absolutely under the control of Gregory, received forgiveness and absolution.

It is not to the tragical pathos of this incident that its prominence in history is due. It is rather that the incident is the climax of a movement covering nearly seven centuries; the full flower of an idea which owed its first realization to Hildebrand—the idea of universal papal absolutism. The idea meant the freedom of the church in all things, and the elevation of its power above every other power. It meant that the head of the Roman Church should be the real Emperor of the world, and every king the creature and puppet of the Pope. These meanings are expressed in the "Dictates" drawn up by Hildebrand himself or under his direction, which contain the following propositions: The Roman Church was founded by the Lord alone. Only the Pope may wear the imperial insignia. All princes are to kiss the Pope's feet only. His name stands alone in the world. He can be judged by no one. No one can pass sentence on one who appeals to the apostolic throne. The Roman Church has never erred, and, according to the testimony of Scripture, never will err. The Pope can depose the Emperor. Only the Roman bishop is rightly styled universal.

These are claims to make a modern head reel. The attempt to realize such a scheme might have appalled Charlemagne or Napoleon. It is the object of this volume to exhibit the mature embodiment of this startling conception during a century and a half, from the election of Leo IX, in 1049, to the close of the pontificate of Innocent III, in 1216, which marks the culmination of the papal power. This period rightly bears the name of Hildebrand, since his idea and his policy are its controlling factors. The story is a painful one, but its lessons are none the less salutary.

The idea of Hildebrand was no sudden birth. It was the resultant of forces some of which had been at work since the apostolic age. It was the crystallization of ideas and principles which had been held in solution in the minds of successive generations, tacitly, accepted, but never carried out to their consequences. As a preliminary to the special history will therefore be necessary to sketch hastily its rise and growth.

Hildebrand's ideal was the imperial ideal. It would have been strange if it had been anything else. The papal economy in its full flower was an evolution of Roman imperialism. The Christian religion and the empire of the Caesars arose simultaneously. The society in which the Christian church developed had no other idea of organized power than the Roman empire and the Roman civil administration, and therefore no other idea of government than that of a centralized despotism. The church of the apostolic age concerned itself very little with secular affairs. Under the current belief that the world was soon to come to an end, it had no motive for attempting to build up a great organization. But as this belief weakened and persecution and heresy threw it upon its defence, as its borders extended and it became an administrator of property and a custodian of the poor and sick, a more elaborate and thorough organization became necessary, and the forms of this organization were naturally determined by those of the civil government. Accordingly the chief cities of the several Roman provinces came to represent the chief ecclesiastical centres. The eparchates, states, and dioceses of Constantine soon found their counterparts in the metropolitan bishoprics and patriarchates of the church, and the bishops of the great centres thus acquired a special prominence. From the time of Constantine onwards the imperial church was divided into the three great apostolic patriarchates of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, and by the side of these were formed the later non-apostolic patriarchates of Jerusalem and Constantinople. Rome was the world's metropolis, and as such naturally became the centre of the church, and the Roman bishop took rank as the bishop of bishops.

This tendency was seconded by the persistence with which the mind of Europe clung to the idea of the Holy Roman Empire long after the empire itself had ceased to exist—the idea that it was still a fact and a necessity in the world's order, though, as Voltaire observed, it was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. It survived the division of the empire between Arcadius and Honorius in the fourth century, the reign of Charlemagne, and the downfall of the Hohenstaufen. It is Dante's political ideal, pervading the "Commedia" and elaborated in the "De Monarchia." The vision of the eagle in the eighteenth canto of the "Paradiso" is Heaven's indorsement of Roman imperialism. Through all those later years the fond fancy prevailed that the Roman empire was "suspended, not extinct"; that the Roman empire of Charlemagne and Otto was still the Roman empire of the Flavians and Antonines. The place of each sovereign was numbered from Augustus, and the title of the Emperor under the Germans was "semper Augustus." Cherishing this fiction in common with society at large, the Roman Church gradually turned it to her own account by adroitly shifting its focus from the throne to the altar, from the Cesar to the Pope, from the universal Roman empire to the universal Roman Church.

 

The Church Subordinate to the Empire.

 

But it was long before the Roman Church assumed the character of a rival of the civil power. Her earlier efforts contemplated nothing more than recognition as the legitimate head of Christendom. She began as early as the second century to assert a certain precedence, a precedence not of the bishop, but of the church; and this tendency was stimulated by the removal of the imperial seat to Constantinople in 330; only the ground of the claim was shifted, since the prospect of a rival city made it expedient to base it on the descent of the church from St. Peter rather than on the superior importance of the city.

The imperial edict of Valentinian III in 445, issued at the instigation of Pope Leo the Great, declared the establishment of the Roman primacy on the three­fold ground of the merits of St. Peter, the majesty of the Roman city, and the decree of a holy council. Reluctant as was the Patriarch of Constantinople to admit the supremacy of the Roman see, Boniface III, in 607, succeeded in procuring from the Emperor Phocas a decree declaring the Roman Church to be the head of all churches, and assumed the title of "Universal Bishop." Towards the close of the eighth century the germs of the principal papal claims were already in existence, and the Roman pontiff claimed the right of a universal metropolitan.

Yet the church, meanwhile, was subordinate to the empire, accepting its control and relying upon its protection, and seeking, not to supersede, but to imitate it. The powers of church and state were not two, but one, represented by a single head, the Emperor. The antagonism which appears later was unknown to Constantine and his immediate successors. Charlemagne and Constantine were alike heads of the church. The Emperors summoned church councils, the clergy conferred under the superintendence of imperial commissioners, and their decrees were ratified or disapproved by the Emperor. The Emperor filled and vacated the most important episcopal sees. Between Gregory I (590-604) and Gregory II (715-731) were twenty-four popes, and during this period the Pope was a subject of the Eastern Empire, consecrated only with the Emperor's permission. The code of Justinian (527-565) assumes control of the religious no less than of the civil interests of his subjects Under Charlemagne the authority of ecclesiastical officers emanates from the Emperor, and the clergy enjoy no exemption from civil laws. During the subjection of Italy to the eastern emperors the Pope was appointed by the imperial mandate, dared not assume his seat without the imperial sanction, and was summoned to Constantinople at the Emperor's pleasure.

The secular character of the Papacy may be said to have been partly forced upon it at first by the barbarian invasions. While the feeble Emperor Honorius was feeding chickens at Ravenna, and Alaric and Rhadagaisus were threatening Rome, Innocent I (402-417) was supreme in the city. The capture of Rome by Alaric (410) was one of the great steps in the advance of the Papacy to secular power. It placed Innocent in the position of a Cesar. After the departure of the Vandals under Genseric (455) the church under Leo the Great furnished the only social organization of the city. By the Lombard invasion (568) Gregory the Great became the recognized head of Rome. In his person the Bishop of Rome first became a temporal sovereign, not in designed antagonism to the civil power, but as compelled to assume its functions in order to save the city from anarchy.

 

The Benedictines.

 

A powerful force in the establishment of papal supremacy was the monastic organization of Benedict of Nursia, begun by the foundation of the monastery of Monte Cassino in 529, from which the order spread rapidly throughout Italy, and into France, Spain, and England. The establishment of this order, with its severe rules of discipline which became the rules of all the monasteries of the Western Church, fell in at a time when the political order of the empire was dissolved, and gave to the church the organization which was lacking in the state. A second force lay in the wealth which flowed into the church from numerous sources, especially in the form of landed property. Even as early as the time of Constantine the clergy were exempt from taxation and had the right of acquiring real estate by bequest. The Roman see had thus become enriched, and some of its possessions lay outside of Italy. Donations of land were continually being made to bishops and to monasteries, and the industry of the monks converted many uncultivated tracts into fertile farms and sources of large revenue. Gifts came, also, from dying penitents and as commutations of penance, and an immense revenue was derived from the system of tithes adopted from the ancient Jewish economy. Gregory the Great was the richest landholder in Italy, possessing estates in Dalmatia, Illyria, Gaul, Sardinia, and Corsica.

The schism between the East and the West, growing out of the attempt of the eastern Emperor, Leo the Isaurian (726), to abolish in the churches the use of statues and pictures of the Saviour, the Virgin, and the saints, greatly increased the temporal power of the Papacy. In the disorders which ensued upon the attempt to enforce this edict, Gregory II (715-731) appeared as a political negotiator and an independent power. In his correspondence with the Emperor Leo he asserted that the successor of Peter might lawfully chastise the kings of the earth. Here, for the first time, the church and the state appear as opposing powers.

 

Donation of Pepin.

 

In the release of the Franks from their allegiance to Childeric III by Pope Zacharias (751), and the anointing and coronation of Pepin by the papal legate (752), the Pope arrogated to himself the office of supreme arbiter between kings and their people, and proclaimed the principle that he possessed the power to bestow and to take away crowns.From this point the steps were rapid. Stephen II, the successor of Zacharias, reanointed Pepin and his two sons, forbade the Franks, under penalty of excommunication, to elect any king but one of the Caloringian family, and assumed the privilege, hitherto residing only in the Emperor, of conferring the title of "Patrician", a title introduced by Constantine, and denoting the highest rank next to the Emperor and the consul. With the defeat of the Lombards in 756 went the celebrated "Donation of Pepin"—the district which included the territories of Ravenna, Bologna, Ferrara, and the Pentapolis, which was the country along the Adriatic from Rimini to Ancona and inland to the Apennines. This "Donation" conferred supreme and absolute dominion. A Christian bishop was now for the first time invested with the prerogatives of a temporal prince. Thus the foundation was laid of the "States of the Church," by which the unity of Italy was rendered impossible for centuries. The era is important. The church and the hierarchy have become penetrated with the canons and the policy of imperialism. The church has assumed a political existence and the form of a permanent ecclesiastical state. With the establishment of such a state the purely episcopal and priestly period, the greatest and most honorable in the history of the Roman Church, has come to an end.

Charlemagne ratified the "Donation" and Hadrian I openly claimed from the inhabitants the same allegiance which Charlemagne's subjects owed to him. In his letter to Charlemagne (777) he alludes to Constantine as "he through whom God had deigned to bestow everything on the holy church of the apostolic prince." This is the first allusion to that monstrous forgery known as the "Donation of Constantine", which served later popes as a pretence for wholesale appropriations of territory. By this, it was said, Constantine not only endowed the Pope with imperial powers and the Roman clergy with the prerogatives of the senate, but surrendered Rome and Italy into the hands of the Pope as his property. Dante pathetically alludes to this:

 

"Ah, Constantine, of how much ill was mother,

Not thy conversion, but that marriage dower

Which the first wealthy father took from thee!"

 

Charlemagne was crowned by Leo III at Rome in November, 80o. The discussion of the bearing of this act on the papal claims to secular supremacy belongs to the fourth volume of this series. On the side of the church it is claimed that the Emperor received the crown solely by the favor of the Pope; on the side of the Emperor, that he received it from God, as the inalienable inheritance of the Csars. It requires notice, however, since this dispute as to the source of the imperial power continued throughout the middle ages.

 

The Clergy Refuse Vassalage.

 

Charlemagne was by no means disposed to recognize the Pope as a temporal sovereign, and kept a strong hand on the church, assuming his own right to legislate in ecclesiastical as in civil affairs, and not admitting that the sovereignty of Rome or of Ravenna had been transferred to the Pope in any sense which should make him the rival of the Emperor. At the Council of Frankfort, which was both a parliament and an ecclesiastical council, Charlemagne presided, and the canons were issued in his name. Still the Pope and the hierarchy were aggrandized by Charlemagne's policy, and under his son and successor the scale turned in favor of the hierarchy. The feudal system had already struck its roots into the soil of Europe—that social organization based on ownership of land and personal relations created thereby; in which political rights were dependent on landed rights and the land was concentrated in the hands of a few. This system naturally extended to the hierarchy as the holders of vast landed estates. For the time being, Charlemagne, as Emperor, exercised over the clergy the same feudal authority as over the nobles. Their estates were held by the same tenure, and the leading ecclesiastics took the oath of vassalage on a change of sovereign. They were even bound to obey the summons to military service. But in the reign of Louis the revolt against the obligations of vassalage broke out among the clergy. It was boldly asserted that all property given to the church, the poor, and the servants of God was given absolutely and without reservation; that the King had no power over the church's fees; that the clergy and their estates belonged to another commonwealth, and held directly from God. The vast scheme of the reorganization of the clergy under the Benedictine rule was a step to the severance of the hierarchy from the control of the state, and to putting the whole property of the church absolutely under the control of the clergy.

It is unnecessary to prolong this sketch. Enough has been said to show the gradual change in the aim and policy of the Roman Church. From the assertion of a primacy in the church universal she has advanced to the assertion of a supremacy over all other churches, and finally to the claim to be supreme over the kings of the earth. From sheltering herself under the shadow of the empire she now aspires to overshadow the empire.

With the pontificate of Benedict IV (901) begins the iron age. The most of the tenth century is marked by the degradation of the Papacy. Between the death of Charles the Bald (877) and the coronation of Otto the Great (962) the Carolingian empire broke up, with disastrous results both to the Papacy and to the kingdom. The invasions of the Saracens, Northmen, and Magyars spread disorder and consternation. The feudal lords denied the authority of the King, and the bishops forsook their allegiance to the Pope. The popes became partisans of secular factions and were imprisoned and insulted. The disposal of the papal chair fell into the hands of courtesans; the bastard son, grandson, and great-grandson of a prostitute occupied the chair of St. Peter. The papal jurisdiction was limited almost wholly to Rome, and it is difficult to trace the succession of the popes.

Under Otto the Great (936-973) some signs of returning order appeared. Otto asserted himself as the Pope's master. He deposed John XII, established Leo VIII in the papal chair, and compelled the Romans to swear never to ordain a Pope without the imperial sanction. Otto III (983-1002), under the guidance of Pope Gerbert, aimed at making Rome again the seat of imperial power, but in vain. The young Emperor could not make head against the feudal nobles and the episcopal order which was their tool. The Papacy again lapsed into a degradation which continued until the period where this history properly begins.