THE
AGE OF HILDEBRAND
BY
MARVIN
R. VINCENT
INTRODUCTION
By HERBERT B. WORKMAN
" Thus God might
touch a Pope
At unawares, ask what his baubles mean,
And whose part he presumed to play just now?"
—R. BROWNING.
PREFACE.
THE period of mediaeval
history treated in this volume begins with the appearance of Hildebrand in the
arena of papal politics under Leo IX in 1049, and ends with the death of
Boniface VIII in 1303.
It is properly styled
"the age of Hildebrand" because the theory of papal absolutism,
which is its controlling factor, received its definite and practical embodiment
from that Pontiff.
Strictly speaking, however, the historical development of
this theory reaches its climax in Innocent III. The
succeeding pontificates down to Boniface VIII add to it no new elements, and
are merely attempts to maintain the Papacy at the level attained by Innocent.
This age, in which the Papacy reaches the height of its
power over the nations of Europe, is marked by the efforts of the Roman
hierarchy to control the German empire and the kingdoms of France, Spain, and
England. It is the age of the monastic orders in close alliance
with the Papacy; the age of the crusades, of the scholastic philosophy and
theology, of the great universities, and of the rise of the Inquisition.
The period is so significant
historically, so crowded with incident, and illustrated by a modern literature
so rich and copious, that I have been constantly under a temptation to
enlargement, which my prescribed limits have compelled me as constantly to
resist.
The successive pontificates furnish the natural and
convenient outline for the history. For obvious reasons the life of Hildebrand
has been treated with greater fulness of detail than the others, but I have
endeavored throughout to make all personalities and all historical details
tributary to the main theme—the evolution of the Hildebrandian theocracy.
December 26, 1895.
