HENRY V died childless, in May, 1125, and with him closed the Franconian line of German emperors. His natural heirs were his two nephews, the brothers Conrad and Frederick of Hohenstaufen.

The Hohenstaufen, by their fidelity to Henry IV, had first established his power. Their family name was derived from the hill Staufen, in Suabia, which overlooked the valley of the Rems. Frederick was Duke of Suabia, and Conrad Duke of the Franks. The nobles, however, desired an Emperor who would not prove too powerful, and who would not be disposed to attack the Pope or the independence of the feudal lords. They turned, therefore, to the Saxons, and selected Lothair, the champion for a long time of the nobles and of the church against the Emperor. He was elected as Lothair III in August, 1125, at the old election field of Kamba, by an assembly of nearly sixty thousand, representing the whole German people.

The Gregorian Papacy could never long remain reconciled to any measure which tended to thwart its greed for secular power or to allow it less than absolute control in temporalities whence it may be supposed that it would not frown upon any plausible pretext for evading certain provisions of the Treaty of Worms. Most welcome to the Pope, therefore, was the concession volunteered by Lothair in his gratitude for his election, by which he renounced the right to the homage of the clergy for their imperial fiefs, along with the right to have the bishops elected in his presence, thus forfeiting the control over the elections secured to him by the Treaty of Worms. He consented that the ecclesiastical consecration should precede the investiture by sceptre, and that the invested party should give only an oath of allegiance to the sovereign, without detriment to the spiritual obligations of his office, and not a "hominium" or fief-oath.

But the papal sky was by no means unclouded in other quarters. Trouble had arisen between the Pope and Monte Cassino. One of Honorius's first acts after his consecration was to administer a severe rebuke to the Abbot Oderisius for certain errors of administration, and to remove the imprisoned antipope Burdinus out of his jurisdiction. Honorius now charged that Oderisius was plotting to unseat him and to secure the papal office for himself, and summoned him to answer at Rome. On his refusal the Pope deposed him, and, on his persisting in officiating, excommunicated him. The brethren of the abbey chose one Nicholas as his successor, but the Pope was determined to force another candidate upon them. When, however, he demanded of this candidate the oath of fealty to himself, it was refused on the ground that Monte Cassino had never been heretical or schismatic.

 

Roger Masters the Pope. 

 

Roger of Sicily, too, brought down the ban upon himself by claiming the succession of William, Duke of Apulia, who had died without children. He affirmed that William had acknowledged him as his heir, and seized the opportunity to unite all southern Italy; for of all the states only Capua and Naples remained independent. He made himself master of Salerno and Amalfi, and received the homage of many cities. Honorius was resolved to prevent the establishment of a south-Italian monarchy, and treated Roger's act as sacrilegious. He declared that William's lands reverted to the papal see, and hastened to Benevento, where Roger, enraged at his refusal to invest him with Apulia as a feudary of the church, laid waste the Beneventine territory. The Pope retired to Capua and summoned it to aid in the war against the Sicilian. Robert of Capua mobilized his troops, but Roger quietly waited until the summer heat dissolved them, and the experience of Leo IX was then repeated. Honorius found himself obliged to come to terms. When Roger followed him to Benevento, the forsaken Pope asked for peace, and the Sicilian compelled the Holy Father to come out of the city, and on the bridge of the river Calore, under the broiling August sun, to give him the investiture of the dukedom of Apulia and Calabria. The church could not prevent the founding of the Neapolitan monarchy. This important event changed the politics of Italy and of the popes. Honorius's temporary advantage consisted in his obtaining the feudal sovereignty of southern Italy.

These matters kept the Pope in continual movement between Rome and Apulia. The Frangipani protected Rome in his interest, and furnished him with the means of carrying on his petty wars with the captains of the Campagna. In his last sickness he was carried to the fortified monastery of St. Gregory, where he looked from a window upon the furious crowd, which believed him already dead, fighting for the papal crown. He died on the 14th of February, 1130.

The new election could not legally take place until after his burial; but the papal party could not wait for this. They hurried his body into an open pit in the monastery in order that their faction might proceed at once to an election. The letter of the requirement having thus been observed, the corpse was taken back to the Lateran, and the dead Pope and his newly chosen successor entered it together.

It was at first agreed to leave the choice to eight cardinals, among whom was Peter Leonis; but Honorius was hardly dead when five of the electors, in the monastery where he had expired, and where the proximity of the Frangipani's castles afforded security, proclaimed the cardinal Gregory of St. Angelo as Innocent II. The other party, much the more numerous, and supported by the Roman nobility and people, hastened to the church of San Marco, near the fortified quarter of the Pierleoni, and elected Peter, the son of Peter Leonis, as Anacletus II.

Both elections took place on the same day, the 14th of February. Anacletus at once proceeded to storm and despoil St. Peter's and other churches of the city, and two days after his election took possession of the Lateran. He then attempted to seize Innocent, but he had escaped to the protection of the Frangipani. Lothair promptly received from him an invitation to come to Rome the next winter for his imperial coronation, and to bring with him such a force as would enable him to overthrow the enemies of the church and of the empire.

But a fortnight had not passed before Innocent was reminded of the saying: "Put not your trust in princes." The Frangipani, probably on account of bribes, deserted him, and he sought refuge in the Trastevere, and then secretly made his escape to France. Anacletus made use even of the ceremonies of Passion Week to win Lothair. He proclaimed on the 27th of March the ban against Conrad of Hohenstaufen, who had assumed the royal title in opposition to Lothair a little more than a year before; and on Good Friday made a public intercession for Lothair. Many of Innocent's partisans were gained by threats or bribes, and Anacletus conferred privileges and issued canonical decisions as if he were in undisputed possession.

But declarations in favor of Innocent began to make themselves heard. The Archbishop of Ravenna affirmed that Innocent was legally elected; that Pierleone, who had long desired the office, had obtained it by bloodshed and simony; and that all Italy acknowledged Innocent, and condemned Pierleone as not an apostle, but an apostate; not Catholic, but heretic; not consecrated, but execrated. The Bishop of Lucca expressed himself to the same effect. Louis of France, through the influence of Bernard of Clairvaux, acknowledged him. Then the voices of the great synods began to be heard. The Synod of Clermont uttered its recognition in October. Here appeared commissioners from Lothair to announce that the assembly at Würzburg, in that same month, had acknowledged Innocent as lawful Pope and had pronounced the ban upon Anacletus. Henry of England, also through Bernard's influence, gave his adherence to Innocent, and had a personal interview with him at Chartres. Innocent and Lothair met at Liege in March, and the synod held at that time, at which ninety bishops and abbots and thirteen cardinals were present, pronounced Innocent Pope and banned Anacletus, Conrad, and Frederick. The Synod of Rheims followed in October, and commissioners to that body from England and from Castile and Aragon presented the homage of those kingdoms to Innocent. Thus, soon after his expulsion from Rome, he was acknowledged by Germany, England, France, a great part of Italy, and all the monastic orders.

The name of Bernard of Clairvaux now claims special attention.

Though the reform-movement of the eleventh century had not accomplished all that its promoters had hoped for, though much violence, luxury, and immorality still characterized the clergy and monks, the movement had nevertheless created a strong party against such abuses. This party was not, as in Leo IX's time, allied with the Papacy. It assumed, rather, a critical attitude towards the Papacy; but it developed men of great personal force, who, more than institutions, contributed to the work of reform; men who exercised for the time an almost unlimited control over the people and the churches, and who compelled even the Papacy to follow them. Such was Bernard of Clairvaux, the central figure of the period with which we now have to deal; its most powerful and impressive personality. During half of the twelfth century he is the head of Christendom, and his life, as Dean Milman remarks, is the history of the Western Church. More than any other he represents the new piety of the time, and is the decisive factor in all the great transactions of the age.

 

Bernard's Early Life

 

He was born in Burgundy near Dijon, in 1091. His father, Tescelin, was a distinguished knight, and his mother a noble lady of the ducal house of Burgundy, deeply pious, and devoted to charitable works and to the education of her children. Bernard was elegant in person, graceful in manners, and early distinguished for his literary proficiency. At the age of twenty-two he embraced the monastic life, entering the abbey of Citeaux, which at that time was undistinguished, poor, and unpopular, by reason of the severity of its discipline. For Citeaux, as has already been said, was a protest against Clugny. Clugny, though it had once stood at the head of the reform-movement, had been corrupted by its great wealth, and had not contributed to the removal of the current monastic abuses. Bernard's presence at Citeaux attracted such numbers that it became necessary to colonize, and in 1115, a year after his profession, he was sent out to found a new monastery. He selected the site at Clairvaux, in a valley covered with forest, known as "the Valley of Wormwood," and a notorious haunt of robbers. The Cistercian order was severely ascetic. The Benedictine rule was its foundation, but without the modifications with respect to food and clothing which had been introduced at Clugny. The sites selected for its houses were usually in wild regions, far from human intercourse. The Cistercians gave themselves to prayer, ascetic practice, and agricultural labor, in the prosecution of which last they developed the order of lay brothers. Their severity of discipline brought to them large gifts, and numerous members of all conditions, so that they were abundantly supplied with the best workmen; and the surplus of such ability compelled them to enter more and more into business intercourse. As the Cistercians chose unopened territory for cultivation, their real estate rapidly increased in value. Intelligence, experience, and the interchange of all fresh knowledge at the annual meetings of the general chapter raised their institutions to the character of model farms. With the magnificence of Clugny they renounced most of the literary work.

While Clugny had completed itself by the annexation of older monasteries, or by instituting dependent priories, Citeaux developed by sending out independent colonies. The Abbot of Citeaux was general abbot, but his power was limited, not only by the general chapter of all the abbots and a standing committee, but also by the inner independence of each monastery. The individual monk was not bound to the Abbot of Citeaux, but to the abbot of his own monastery, until the orders of his abbot should send him elsewhere. The extension under this system was remarkable. Clugny never really extended beyond France; but Citeaux spread over all the lands of the Western Church. By its general chapter it maintained a living interchange between its individual parts, created a uniform policy, and thus, within a short time, became an ecclesiastical power of the first rank.