XXVII.

THE EMPEROR MASTER OF ITALY-DEATH OF HENRY VI AND CELESTINE III

 

THE death of Tancred caused Henry to set out again for Italy in the summer of 1194, in order to secure possession of the kingdom of Sicily, for which he greatly desired the Pope's confirmation. His visit to Sicily was signalized by atrocious cruelties. Having caused himself and his wife to be crowned at Palermo, he put out the eyes of Tancred's son, mutilated and tortured many of his partisans, had the corpse of Tancred disinterred and rifled of the royal insignia, and imprisoned his widow. The Emperor was thus master of Italy. Even the papal territory was in his hands, and the Lombards saw themselves in danger of losing their hardly won freedom. He committed the administration of Italy to Germans, created his brother Philip Duke of Tuscany, and enfeoffed him with the Mathilde property, Conrad of Ürslingen with Spoleto, and the general Markwald with Romagna and the Marches. He took possession of the church's patrimony almost to the gates of Rome, professed to be master even in the Trastevere, and styled himself Duke of the Campagna. He appeared to have revived his father's ideal of universal empire, of the enslavement of Italy, and of the overthrow of the Gregorian Papacy. The city prefect in Rome habitually opposed the Pope, and the Frangipani allied themselves with the Emperor. The feeble Celestine was forced not only to abandon to the senate the government of Rome, but also to surrender to the Emperor the Sabina and the Maritima. The secular power of St. Peter seemed to be passing away. The papal finances were in a desperate condition, and simony prevailed in the Curia as never before.

New complications now appeared in France. Philip Augustus since 1193 had been married to Ingeborg, the sister of the King of Denmark, but had separated from her on the pretended ground of blood-relationship with his first wife. On the appeal of Ingeborg and her brother to Rome, the Pope sent two legates to France, who, however, were able to accomplish nothing. He then wrote to the Archbishop of Sens, expressing his regret for the King's conduct, enlarging upon the sacredness of the marriage relation and the care which the church should observe respecting it, declaring the separation invalid, and commanding the archbishop to thwart any possible attempt of the King to contract a new marriage. The same order was given to the Archbishop of Rheims, and Philip was commanded to resume his relation with Ingeborg. But within four weeks Philip married Agnes, the daughter of the Duke of Tyrol.

Henry VI, in the meantime, endeavored to make peace with the Pope, regardless of consequences. Having become master of Italy, he was infatuated with the idea of seizing the Byzantine throne, and thus uniting East and West under his sceptre. The shortest road to this was a new crusade. Accordingly he wrote to the Pope that the best means of delivering the Holy Land and extirpating prevalent heresies was the reconciliation of the church and the state. He desired Celestine to send legates to treat with him concerning peace. At Bari, on Good Friday, 1195, the Emperor privately took the cross, and had the crusade preached at Easter by way of thanksgiving for the divine mercy which had enabled him to overcome Sicily. The Pope returned a conciliatory answer, sent two cardinals to discuss matters with the Emperor, and appointed two others to go to Germany during the summer and preach the crusade, according to Henry's desire. About the same time he charged his legate in England, Archbishop Hubert of Canterbury, with the English bishops, to take part in the enterprise and to induce King Richard to do so. He issued a new bull of privilege to the Latin clergy at the Holy Sepulchre, and took ecclesiastical possession of the island of Cyprus, which had been conquered by Richard of England in 1191, sending two legates to superintend the collection of tithes. He also addressed himself to the suppression of the infidels in the West, enjoining the kings of Spain to take up arms against the Saracens.

King Alfonso of Leon proved refractory. Because of his marriage with the daughter of King Sancho I of Portugal, who was related to him by blood, he, with his wife and father-in-law, had been laid under ban. Through the submission of his wife, the Princess Therese, who took the veil and was afterwards honored as a saint, the marriage was dissolved and the ban removed. But the King was in league with the Saracens against Castile, and refused to abandon his alliance; and Celestine accordingly renewed the ban, summoned his subjects to fight the Saracens, and commanded the Archbishop of Toledo, in case the King should continue his league with the infidels, to release them from their allegiance in the name of the apostolic see.

The attempt of the Emperor to unite the kingdom of Sicily with the empire had been vigorously opposed in Germany, especially by the bishops. The project of the crusade met with a better reception, and was indorsed by the Diet of Würzburg in March, 1196. At this diet the Emperor also gained the consent of the princes to make the German crown and the imperial dignity hereditary, and therefore independent of the Pope. Even the opposing princes were persuaded to acknowledge, at Frankfort, the three-year-old son of the Emperor, Frederick, as heir to the crown. While Henry was arming for a new expedition to Italy, he continued his negotiations with the Pope. There was an abundance of matter. Letters of Celestine to the Byzantine Emperor Alexius had been intercepted by Henry's servants; the Emperor's brother Philip had committed many acts of violence in Italy; and Henry's own outrages in Sicily were regarded by the Curia as crimes.

In the summer of 1196 Henry made his last disastrous expedition to Italy. Some weeks were spent near Tivoli in negotiations with the Pope about anointing young Frederick as King; but nothing was accomplished, and the Emperor moved on to Sicily. His final experience there might easily have been construed as a retribution for his horrible cruelties. A conspiracy was formed against him, in which his own wife, and according to some accounts the Pope, participated, and from which he barely escaped. He sent young Frederick to Germany in charge of his brother Philip to have him crowned there; but before their arrival he died on the 28th of September, 1197. As he was still under excommunication, the Archbishop of Messana went to Rome to obtain permission for his interment, which the Pope granted on condition that Richard of England should receive back the price of his ransom. Frederick's reception of the Sicilian crown he made dependent on the agreement of the cardinals. The Empress must swear that Frederick was the lawful son of the Emperor and herself; and for their consent the Pope and the college of cardinals were to receive a thousand marks of silver.

After the Emperor's death a great part of Tuscany and the kingdom of Sicily returned to the sovereignty of the Pope. Other territories, on the contrary, such as imperial Tuscany, armed themselves against the attempts which were now being begun by the Roman Curia to extend its secular sovereignty beyond any previous limits.

Celestine did not long survive the Emperor. His last sickness attacked him just before Christmas. He assembled the cardinals for consultation about his successor, but they refused to accept his candidate, John of St. Paul, of the house of Colonna, and he died on the 8th of January, 1198. Forsaken by the princes, almost wholly bereft of his secular power, with an empty treasury, he little dreamed that his immediate successor would most fully carry out the Gregorian conception of the church's secular dominion. Eighty-five years old when he assumed the papal chair, Celestine could not, especially with such an Emperor as Henry VI, realize this ideal. Mild and yielding by nature, the sharp antagonisms in his administration were owing to his dependence upon their representatives in the college of cardinals—his two immediate successors, Innocent III and Honorius III. Following the leader of the zealots, Cardinal Lothair, he seemed to desire to be another Alexander III; but under the counsel of his personal friend Cencius his strenuousness relaxed. Hence he was continually experiencing defeats, was powerless in Rome, and left to his successor numerous unsettled complications in different parts of Europe.

Before going further, our attention must be directed to the principal forms of heresy with which several succeeding pontificates came into conflict.

THE GREAT HERESIES.

The heresies of this period may be roughly divided into two classes—the one including those who held all the great essential truths of Christianity, but were opposed to the whole sacerdotal system, and the other those who were tainted with serious doctrir al errors. It should be said in advance that almost on only sources of information are the representations of the persecutors. The literature of the persecuted has well-nigh vanished.

The conditions of society in southern France were favorable to the propagation of heresy. The whole population and civilization were in marked contrast with those of the north. The various elements which, from remote antiquity, had successively occupied the soil—Phoenician, Greek, Gothic, Saracenic—had set a cosmopolitan stamp upon the population. The citizens of Narbonne and Marseilles were of a different type from the citizens of Paris. Culture and luxury had made greater progress than in the north. Chivalry and poetry were assiduously cultivated by the nobles. The people of the commercial cities were enlightened and educated. The clergy were negligent, luxurious, and despised by the people, and the patent derelictions of the church were freely criticised by those who possessed any religious earnestness or positive conviction. Bernard of Clairvaux pathetically described the state of religion in the territories of the Count of Toulouse: "Churches without people, people without priests, priests without the reverence due to them, Christians without Christ, sacraments no longer sacred, the apostolic and prophetic voices silenced by the voice of a single heretic."

The Poor of Lyons

It was amid such a population that the first anti-sacerdotal heresy was preached, in Val Louise, about 1106, by Pierre de Bruys, of Embrun, and forty years later by a monk, Henry of Lausanne. They taught that infant baptism was useless, rejected the Eucharist, declared that churches were unnecessary and should be destroyed, that alms, masses, and prayers for the dead were unavailing, and that the cross, as the instrument on which Christ was tortured, should not be invoked but destroyed.

In the second half of the twelfth century appeared Peter Waldo, a rich merchant of Lyons, who, desiring to know the Scriptures, caused a translation of the New Testament to be made into the Romance language, and a collection of extracts from the fathers, known as "the Sentences." He became filled with zeal to imitate the apostolic life as commanded by Christ, and accordingly sold his property and devoted himself to preaching in the streets and fields. Others associated themselves with him, who were sent to preach in neighboring towns. They assumed a peculiar dress, and a sandal with a plate affixed to it, from which they were called insabbatati or zaptati ("shoed"). They called themselves Li Poure de Lyod ("The Poor of Lyons").Being forbidden to preach by the Archbishop of Lyons, they disobeyed and were excommunicated. Peter appealed to the Pope, who approved his vow of poverty and authorized him to preach when permitted by the priests.

In 1179 they appeared before the Lateran council, submitted their version of the Scriptures, and asked for permission to preach. Lucius III anathematized them at the Council of Verona in 1184. At Narbonne, in 1190, they publicly discussed in the cathedral with one Raymond of Daventry six propositions: that they refused obedience to Pope and prelates; that all, even laymen, may preach; that God is to be obeyed rather than man; that women may preach; that masses, prayers, and alms for the dead are useless; that prayer in bed or in a stable is as efficacious as in a church. They held that the ministrations of sinful priests were invalid, and that confession to a layman was as good as that to a priest. Their three distinctive rules of morality were: every lie is a mortal sin; every oath, even in court, is unlawful; homicide is never admissible, even in judicial executions or in war. Their persecutors universally testified to their chastity, temperance, truthfulness, and modesty. They revered the Scriptures, and had translations of the whole Bible in the vulgar tongue.

The Albigenses

More dangerous to the church was a sect in which, for a time, the Waldenses, by force of circumstances, were partially merged—the Cathari, or "pure." Their doctrine grew out of the dualistic teaching of Manes, who appeared in Persia about the middle of the third century. He taught that the world was the product of two eternal and antagonistic principles, good and evil. Spirit is identified with the good, matter with the evil principle. Every individual man is at once a child of light and darkness—has a good soul and a body substantially evil. The redemption of light from darkness is effected by Christ and by the Holy Ghost; but as matter is essentially evil, the human Christ was only a phantom. The morality of this system was severely ascetic, the great aim being to destroy corporeity and to set the soul free from the fetters of matter.

Manichism appeared in Europe before the close of the third century, and was everywhere persecuted in the Roman empire. It was especially loathsome to the church, and the object of the active hostility of popes, bishops, and emperors from the time of Leo the Great.

The Cathari, who sprang from the same Manichean source, originated in eastern Europe, probably in Bulgaria, and their first traces in the West are found in France and Flanders. Their principal seat was in southern France, where they were known as Albigenses. The basis of their doctrinal system was Manichean. They rejected all church machinery. The Roman Church was the synagogue of Satan," in which salvation was impossible. The Catharan church inherited the power to bind and loose. They translated the Scriptures, but retained the Latin prayers. The Eucharist was replaced by the "Benediction of bread," which was performed daily at table. Every act of eating or drinking was preceded by prayer. Confession was general, and was performed monthly by the assembly of the faithful. The principal ceremony was the "Consolamentum," or baptism of the Holy Spirit, which reunited the soul to the Holy Spirit and wrought absolution from sin. It consisted in the imposition of hands, required two ministrants, and could be performed by a woman. Torture at the end of life relieved them of torment in the next world, and suicide was not uncommon.

They were strictly ascetic. Matter was the work of Satan, and the Catharan must be continually warring with the flesh. Hence whatever tended to the reproduction of animal life was avoided. Marriage was prohibited except among a few. Meat, milk, and eggs were forbidden. They fasted three days in the week, and had three annual fasts of forty days each. They were mostly peasants and mechanics; their habits were moral, and their proselytizing zeal extreme. They appeared in France as early as 1017, and in Lombardy a little later. By 1052 their teaching had extended to Germany, and became more widely spread as the twelfth century advanced.

Italy was deeply infected, Milan being the centre. About the middle of the eleventh century, and during the papal attempts to enforce celibacy on the Milanese clergy, there arose there the term "Patarins." This word was derived from pates, which in the old Romance dialects meant "old linen." Rag-pickers in Lombardy were known as "Patari," and the quarter in Milan inhabited by them was named "Pataria." From their Bulgarian origin the Patari were also known as "Bulgari," "Bugari," or "Bugres"; and from the number of weavers among them they received in France the name of "Texerant" or "Textores." The name "Albigenses" arose from the district of Albi, where they were numerous, and came into general use during the crusades against Raymond of Toulouse. In Italy the heresy offered the most stubborn resistance to all attempts to extirpate it. The numerous subdivisions of the country and the constant strife between the civic communities rendered any general means of repression impossible. It pervaded all the northern half of the peninsula, and was found as far south as Calabria.