A history of the church - tekst po angielsku

Artur Rogóż
Administrator
Posty: 4635
https://www.artistsworkshop.eu/meble-kuchenne-na-wymiar-warszawa-gdzie-zamowic/
Rejestracja: 24 maja 2010, 04:01
Kontakt:

Re: A history of the church - tekst po angielsku

Post autor: Artur Rogóż »

serfs, and slaves. This power was extended, when many,
either through piety, or to avoid the oppression of the
counts, or because they found it more advantageous, be-
came dependents of the bishops, by surrendering their
property to the Church, a practice which the French
kings strongly opposed, more particularly w^hen it was
adopted to escape military conscription.

But the kings of the Saxon dynasty did even more
for the Church in Germany and Italy. Not only did
they enrich bishoprics and abbeys by vast donations,
but that they might possess in spiritual princes, upon
w^hose devotedness they could rely, a defence and count-
erpoise to the power of the temporal nobles, and that
they might depress the latter by exalting the former,
they sought to place the influence of the prelates on an
equality with that of the dukes and counts. They at
first granted them the royal bann, and the rights of
counts in their own cities and possessions, and finally,
entire countships. The possessions of many episcopal
churches were by degrees rendered free of all civil
power, even that of the dukes. These immunity lands
in which the domains were the immediate property of
the Church, were more profitable than the countships
in which the lands of free men paid no tribute. In
France, the bishops never attained to such a height of
authority. During the tenth century, indeed, they
obtained many regal rights : they were presented by
the kings with power over their episcopal sees ; and in
940, the archbishop of Rheims obtained from king
Lewis the countship of the adjacent country, with the
right of coining money. But whilst in Germany the
bishops found zealous protectors in the powerful Othos
and Henries, the French bishops, in the weak reigns of
their kings during the tenth and eleventh centuries
became a prey to the capricious tyranny of the great
vassals, by whom they were deprived of their best pos-
sessions.

By a law of Charlemagne every bishop and abbot
w as obliged to maintain an advocate, whose duty it was
to administer the civil jurisdiction of the Church, to



PERIOD THE THIRD. 163

defend the subjects of the Church in suits with their
nei2:hbours, to watch over the administrators of the par-
ticular parts of the ecclesiastical goods, and who, for
this and for the general protection which they afforded
to the Church, received certain revenues, services, and
fiefs. The founders of churches generally reserved to
themselves and to their successors the office of advo-
cate. The greater bishoprics had in their different
provinces various advocates under one who was their
chief. But the churches and their dependents had to
endure many oppressions from these officers. They
frequently acted as if the goods of the churches were
their own fiefs, or considered the fiefs as their own
birth- rights ; at their tribunals they laid many grievous
impositions on the subjects of the churches. Many
churches, had they been able, would w illingly have dis-
pensed with the services of their advocates, whose
aggressions seem to have reached their height in the
latter part of the eleventh century.

The principal grievance which oppressed the posses-
sions of the Church was the military conscription. To
meet the demands of the kings, and to collect soldiers
for their wars, the bishops were compelled to alienate
many of their lands in fiefs. These soldiers it was their
duty to present to the king in person, and to command
in war. Carlomann, in 742, freed ecclesiastics from
personal service, but this exemption was of short dura-
tion. At the request of the temporal barons, and of
the people, this privilege was renewed by Charlemagne ;
but under Lewis the Pious, and still more under his
sons, the bishops, partly perhaps from inclination, but
more from their relations to the king and nobility, w^re
often to be seen at the head of their vassals and people
in war. During the invasion of the Normans, often
were the bishops, even without a command, compelled
to enter the field for the protection of their dioceses.
Hence Franco, bishop of Liege, about the year 700,
sent two priests to Rome, to be consecrated bishops by
the pope, that they might perform his episcopal func-
tions, as he was almost continually engaged with the

M 2



164 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

Normans, and dared not, as a warrior, again perform
his sacred duties. The bishops and abbots were re-
quired, during the Carlovingian rule, to make yearly-
presents to the king, to receive him and his attendants
on his progresses, to entertain them during their stay,
and to supply many things which were refused by the
counts, the dukes, and officers of the state. Many
churches, however, were freed during the ninth cen-
tury, by the kings, from these burdens, and from other
exactions made by the regal officers when they held
tribunals on the estates of the churches. The kings
removed the ecclesiastical advocates and the tribunals
from the episcopal domains. There sometimes arose
circumstances in which extraordinary taxes were im-
posed on the Church lands. The entire sum with which
Charles the Bald purchased the forbearance of the
Normans was raised in this manner. By a law of
Charlemagne and of his son, every church possessed a
mansus, that is, a portion of land for the maintenance
of the priest and his assistants, free from all burdens
and taxation ; but this was an immunity granted to
parish and country churches.

Under the Merovingians, the bishops acquired, with-
out any labour of their own, merely by their ecclesi-
astical station and by the influence consequent to their
great possessions, a civil rank in the state ; that is, they
obtained a voice in the assemblies in which the affairs
of the kingdom were discussed. In the reign of Charle-
magne, the abbots also were called into these counsels,
and sat on the ecclesiastical bench, near the bishops.
As spiritual subjects were debated only by the bishops
and abbots, it often happened that two distinct courts
were held, the one for ecclesiastical, the other for civil
affairs. Thus the parliaments, by the discussion of
spiritual subjects, were like to synods, and synods at
which the king and nobility attended assumed the cha-
racter of parliaments. So far were the Carlovingians,
and above all, their great founder Charles, from any
intrusive, capricious attacks upon the power of the
Church,— so great was the harmony between the spiritual



PERIOD THE THIRD. 165

and civil powers, — tli.it the Church was benefitted rather
than injured by the union. In all their transactions in
spiritual affairs, the kings acted with the advice of the
most learned and virtuous of the bishops, " as the
guardians and humble coadjutors of the Church," as
Charlemagne named himself. They received synodal
laws of ecclesiastical discipline into their capitularies,
or gave the force of capitularies to these decrees, and
promulgated them in their own name. They sometimes
occupied the first seats in synods ; they called the
bishops together, and confirmed their decisions, which
thus, when they were connected with civil life, acquired
the force of civil laws. But Charlemagne guarded him-
self carefully from all interference with the existing
form of Church government. Thus, at the diet of
Aix-la-Chapelle, in 802, he framed a decree respect-
ing the punishment of accused clerics ; but when he
was told that the pontiff Gregory II had spoken on this
subject, he declared, at the following assembly at
Worms, " that the affair was placed beyond the bounda-
ries of his power, and that he now left it to the bishops."

But under the latter Carlovingians, the bishops were
necessitated to define the line which divided the two
powers. This was done by the prelates at the synod of
Fimes, in 881, in the reign of Lewis the Stutterer.
They declared, the sacerdotal and the regal powers are
from each other entirely distinct : neither should assume
the rights of the other ; the episcopal dignity is above
the regal, for bishops anoint kings, and are responsible
for their conduct immediately to God. These bishops,
however, did not imagine a total separation of the
priestly and regal powers, which would then have been
impossible ; and at that time the influence and voice of
the bishops was great and decisive on the most impor-
tant subjects of state. After the great battle of Fon-
tenay, there was an assembly of bishops and abbots,
who refused the kingdom to Lothaire on account of
his crimes, and enjoined his brothers, the kings Charles
and Lewis, to take possession of it. Charles the Bald,
iu his accusations against Wenilo archbishop of Sens,



166 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

in the synod of Savonnieres, in 859, declared that he
would acknowledge as his judges the bishops, by whose
hands he had been anointed king. The election or
elevation of a new king was generally performed by the
prelates. Thus, at a synod of Manteille, near Vienne,
in 8/9, the archbishops of Lyons, Vienne, Tarantaise,
Aix, Aries, and Besancon, with eleven bishops and a
few temporal nobles, elected duke Baso king of Pro-
vence or Burgundy, at which time he promised, in
return, to restore or to confirm the rights of the Church,
to administer impartial justice to all, to protect eccle-
siastics and laics, and to abolish, according to the
advice of the bishops, some existing abuses. At a
synod of Pavia, in 890, the Italian bishops elected
Guido, duke of Spoleto, king of Italy, under like con-
ditions, that he would defend the Church, Avould suffer
all his subjects to live according to their laws, and
would abstain from arbitrary taxations.

The duties of kings to the Church were enumerated
to them at the time of their solemn anointing and co-
ronation. This religious consecration of the new
sovereign was introduced first into the eastern Roman
empire. The first known example is that of Theodosius
the Younger, who was crowned by the patriarch Pro-
clus : in the following year, the emperor Justinus
caused himself to be crowned by the pope John I,
although he had before received the crown from the
hands of the patriarch John. Of the new German
Christian kingdoms, the Spanish was the first that
adopted this ceremony. In the first canon of the twelfth
synod of Toledo, it is said of king Erwig, that he re-
ceived his regal power by the sacred unction. By the
Merovingian kings of the Franks this rite was not
practised. Pepin was the first. He was crowned at
Soissons by St. Boniface, and afterwards by the pope
Stephen at St. Denis. After his time, all the kings
were crowned, and the rite was introduced from France
into Germany, where Conrad I was the first who was
consecrated in this manner. The sovereign to be
crowned read a profession of Catholic faith : he then



PERIOD THE THIRD. 16/

swore, at the desire of the bishops, to maintain to all
prelates, and to the churches entrusted to them, their
canonical privileges ; to protect and to defend, accord-
ing to his power, every and each bishop and his church,
and to preserve inviolate the rights and laws of the
people. The protestation to maintain the rights and
freedom of the Church was sometimes laid by the king
on the altar. The bishops then asked the consent of
the people, or presented to them the sovereign who
was about to receive the crown : the people expressed
their approbation by exclamations or by raising their
hands. The anointing was then performed, with an
invocation of the Holy Ghost : the symbols of his regal
power, the ring, the sword, the crown, the sceptre, and
the wand, were then delivered to the king, with appro-
priate exhortations to execute the duties typified by
each. In France the archbishop of Rheims, in Ger-
many one of the Rhenish archbishops, enjoyed the
right of crowning their respective kings.

The Carlovingian monarchs had always in their court
a number of ecclesiastics, whom they maintained for
the celebration of the divine worship in their chapel,
and as counsellors in civil affairs. The chief of these
ecclesiastics was named archchaplain, and Fulrad abbot
of St. Denis, under Pepin, is the first whom we meet
with this designation. Charlemagne had received a
papal dispensation to retain bishops in his palace in this
capacity : he had, first, Angilran bishop of Metz, and
afterwards, Hildebold of Cologne. These bishops were
styled archbishops of the palace, and they attended
particularly to ecclesiastical subjects that were brought
before the king. From the clergy of their chapel the
kings generally selected the new bishops and abbots.
This, in spite of the occasional opposition of some me-
tropolitans and provinces, was so customary, that
Charles the Bald, when he appointed Wenilo, an eccle-
siastic of his court, archbishop of Sens, in 859, appealed
to the practice of his predecessors. We are not, there-
fore, to wonder, if a place in the royal chapel were an
object of ambition to the avaricious and ambitious



168 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

priest. Under the kings of the Saxon house, also, the
chapel of the sovereign was the chief seminary of
bishops.



SECTION III.

AMELIORATION OF THE STATE OF SLAVERY. — THE

god's peace. ORDEALS. — CIVIL JURISDICTION

AND IMMUNITIES OF THE CLERGY.

How extensively and how variously the influence of the
Church was exercised on the civil relations of society
was conspicuously shown in the class of slaves. To
them, when fleeing from the cruelty of their masters,
did the Church first open her sacred temples, as asy-
lums ; and she surrendered them again only when their
masters promised on their oath that they would pardon
them. The cloisters in particular were places of refuge
for slaves, and from slaves belonging to monasteries
was the number of monks frequently supplied. If a
slave remained in a monastery three years without
being claimed by his master, he was declared free.
The laws of the land prohibited bishops from ordaining
stranger slaves without the permission of their masters;
but the Church possessed its slaves, from amongst
whom the bishops sometimes selected for ordination
those that appeared most fitting, and they constantly
chose the sons of slaves, whom they placed in their
seminaries in preparation for the ecclesiastical state.
In either case, the person to be ordained was emanci-
pated. This disposition of the Church to dedicate even
slaves to the service of her altars, did much to remove
the degradation which was attached to their caste in
the eyes of the people ; and in an age when the distinc-
tion between the states of freedom and servitude were
so marked, and when the wall which separated them
appeared impenetrable, it was given to the Church
alone, which reconciles all, ennobles all, to unite the
sons and brotliers of kings with the sons of slaves in
one state, in one ministry. The emancipation of slaves



PERIOD THE THIRD. 169

was numbered amongst those works pleasing to God,
the practice of which was so often inculcated l)y the
Church. Slaves who were freed, were generally placed
under the protection of some particular Church, to
which they paid an annual tax.

The Church exerted itself also to remedy the'dread-
ful consequences of the almost universal law of wager
of battle, which sprung from a spirit of sanguinary
revenge. In France, the bishops endeavoured, in the
year 1031, to proclaim a general peace amongst indi-
viduals, to observe which, all were to swear, and to
renew their vow every five years. But as the impos-
sibility of the attempt became manifest, they were
content with the introduction of the truce of God
(freuga Dei) or the God's peace, which was to be
observed from the Wednesday evening to the Monday
morning of every week, and was afterwards extended
to the Avhole of Advent and of Lent, and to every fast-
ing day in the year. All who refused to accept this
peace, and to suffer all feuds to repose during these
periods, fell under the ban of the Church. This peace
was received into France and England : it was intro-
duced into Germany by Henry IV in 1043. The per-
petual peace, which had been before projected, was in
the meantime established by the French bishops, as far
as it regarded Churches, ecclesiastics, ecclesiastical
property, and peasants. It was severely prohibited to
slay, maim, or plunder a peasant, or to seize any other
person, except for the purpose of placing him before a
tribunal.

The God's judgments, which had descended from
pagan times, and to which accused persons who could
not prove their innocence, either by witnesses or by
oath, subjected themselves in person or by a represent-
ative, were at first not approved by the Church. Ago-
bard archbishop of Lyons wrote a work in their con-
demnation, and the pontiff Stephen V reprobated in a
particular manner the ordeals of hot iron and of boiling
water. But as they were supported by universal
opinion, and could not be abolished or replaced by



1/0 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

Other modes of trial, the Church by degrees adopted
them. They were placed under the direction of eccle-
siastics, they were accompanied by religious dedications
and ceremonies, and were performed in the church.
The clergy w^ere thus constituted judges of the issue,
and were enabled to save many innocent persons.

The influence of the Church on the civil administra-
tion of justice extended itself still further. Charlemagne
confirmed to the bishops, and not only to them but to
all ecclesiastics generally, the right that had before
been awarded to them by the Roman emperors, of
deciding in civil suits, in which laics had recourse to
them as arbitrators. He also conferred upon bishops a
supervising and corrective power over temporal judges :
those who opposed them were to be punished by ex-
communication. The counts were commanded to appear
when called by the bishops, and if necessary to give
them the assistance of the civil power: they were
instructed in particular to obhge public sinners, upon
whom the popes desired to impose a public penance, to
appear before the episcopal tribunal. In disputes of
ecclesiastics with each other, and even in their offences
against the state, only the bishop could judge. No
one could accuse an ecclesiastic before a civil court ;
no lay judge could apprehend or punish an ecclesiastic
without the permission of his bishop. In a civil pro-
cess, a cleric was obliged to follow a laic into the civil
court, if the latter preferred this to an ecclesiastical
tribunal, in the same manner as a laic was obliged to
accuse a cleric before a spiritual tribunal. A clergy-
man could not accuse a laic before a civil judge without
the consent of his bishop. Hincmar of Rheims wrote
in defence of the immunities of the clergy from all civil
courts, when the king Charles deprived the bishop of
Laon of the temporalties of his bishopric, because, in a
dispute with laymen, he had refused to appear before
the royal judges. He showed that, according to exist-
ing laws, ecclesiastics could not be cited before a lay
judge, either in criminal or civil causes : he maintained
that in suits between the clergy and laics there should



PERIOD THE THIRD. 171

be a mixed tribunal, composed of the bishop and of
judges named by the king. He induced the king, in a
synod at Pistes, in 868, to restore the temporalties to
the bishop and to leave the cause to arbitration. But
Hincmar himself acknowledged that in suits with laics
on disputed possessions, ecclesiastics were bound to
appear at the civil tribunal in person, or through their
advocates.

If the accuser or the accused were a bishop, the cause,
according to a capitidary of Charlemagne, could be
tried only by a court of bishops. In cases of political
offences, and even of high treason, the kings guaranteed
this immunity to bishops, as we see in the case when a
number of bishops had engaged in the insurrection
against Lewis the Pious. When Charles the Bald
accused Wenilo archbishop of Sens of treason, at the
synod of Savonnieres, he selected three other bishops
to act as his judges. When we see that Hincmar re-
prehended his nephew the bishop of Laon for having
carried his complaints against the king before a civil
tribunal, and not before a synod of bishops, it appears
that the kings recognized the competency of the latter
tribunal in causes in which bishops had to accuse them :
and Charles the Bald repeatedly boasts, in his epistle to
pope Adrian II, and in his letter of complaint against
the archbishop of Sens, that he had not been accused
or convicted, in a legal manner, of any crime before a
tribunal of bishops.



SECTION IV.

THE PRIMACY. PAPAL LEGATES AND VICARS.

1. The power of the supreme pontiff to promulgate
universal laws on subjects of ecclesiastical constitution
and discipline was acknowledged in the present, as it
had been in former ages. Nicholas I asserted this
power, when in the case of the controversy respecting
the bishop Rothad, he declared that the authority of a



172 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

papal decree did not depend upon its insertion in the
codex of canons, but that it possessed in itself the force
of law. At the synod of Pontion, in 8/6, the bishops
who were there assembled from all the provinces of
France, declared, that whatever the pope decreed, in
virtue of his high station, should be received with the
greatest veneration by all, and that in all things obe-
dience was to be shown to him.

2. Their judicial power over bishops was exercised
ordinarily in cases of appeal. It was exerted generally
with the most beneficial results, in the defence of per-
secuted prelates. Thus Gregory IV, in the case of
Alderich bishop of Mans, who had been driven from
his see, by the party of Lothaire, about the year 842,
forbade the French bishops to judge this cause, which
he had reserved to himself. Gregory IV and Leo IV,
both maintained that the appeal of a bishop to the
pope, from the judgment of a provincial synod, even
before the synod had given judgment, had a suspensive
effect. With particular energy did Nicholas I enforce
his supreme judicial powers. Hincmar of Rheims had,
as metropolitan, restored a priest whom Rothad bishop
of Soissons had in a synod degraded. Rothad opposed
this unjust judgment, and was excommunicated by
Hincmar, in a synod at Soissons, in 851. Rothad ap-
pealed to the pope, but under the groundless pretext,
that he had himself renounced his appeal, he was pre-
vented from travelling to Rome : in a second synod at
Soissons, he was condemned to deprivation and impri-
sonment. Hincmar was supported by the king, and
another bishop was ordained in the place of Rothad.
But the pope cancelled the proceedings of the last
synod, and insisted that Rothad should be permitted to
journey to Rome. No accuser there appeared against
him. Nicholas, therefore, absolved him from censure,
and caused him to be restored, by his legate Arsenius,
bishop of Horta, again to his see. Down to the present
time, the popes had, in virtue of their judicial power
over bishops, judged only those greater causes {causas
majores) of appeals which had been submitted to their



PERIOD THE THIRD. 173

decision. But Nicholas declared that their power ex-
tended to all the " great affairs of churches," so that
no bishop could be judged or deposed without the
knowledge and consent of the apostolic see.

The same pope exercised his right of revision in an-
other case with Hincmar. Ebbo, the predecessor of
Hincmar, had after his deposition exercised his metro-
politan rights, and had ordained several clerics. These
Hincmar suspended, and a synod at Soissons, in 853,
confirmed his act, and added to it excommunication.
These ecclesiastics, one of whom, named Wulfad, the
king wished to raise to the archbishopric of Bourges,
appealed in 866 to the pope, w^ho thereupon commis-
sioned the archbishop of Tours to hold another synod
at Soissons to judge their cause. This assembly fol-
lowed the path which Hincmar himself had before
opened. Without annulling the decree of the former
synod, it restored the ecclesiastics by an indulgence,
and in virtue of the papal authority. A few years an-
terior to this occurrence, Hincmar and the French
bishops had expressed the opinion, that the pope pos-
sessed judicial authority only over metropolitans and
over bishops in case of appeal, according to the decree
of the council of Sardica ; but in the epistle of the
synod of Troyes, in 867, the bishops themselves re-
quested the pope to insist that no bishop should be
deposed w'ithout the consent of the Roman see. When,
soon after, Hincmar bishop of Laon, and nephew^ of the
archbishop, w as deposed in a synod at Douay, in 87 1 ,
the synod gave information of its judgment to pope
Adrian K, and besought him to confirm it, or, if he
considered another examination necessary, to command
it, at a time and in a place to be named by his commis-
saries or legates. But Adrian, to whom the turbulent
Hincmar, who was casting confusion into both Church
and state, had appealed, replied that he and one of his
accusers should proceed to Rome. By this command,
Adrian drew upon himself a severe answer from the
king, Charles, who was personally interested in this
affair, and to whom the elder Hincmar gave the assist-



1/4 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.
Artur Rogóż
Administrator
Posty: 4635
Rejestracja: 24 maja 2010, 04:01
Kontakt:

Re: A history of the church - tekst po angielsku

Post autor: Artur Rogóż »

ance of his pen. Through respect to the will of the
pontiff, the see was kept vacant, until John VIII, in S7G,
at the wish of the king, confirmed the deposition of
Hincmar. Arnulf archbishop of Rheims, a natural son
of king Lothaire, had, in 989, opened to the duke
Charles, a rival of the king Hugh Capet, the gates of
the city of Rheims ; an act of treason of which the
monarch complained to the pope, John XV. The pon-
tiff returned no reply ; and a synod, held at Rheims, in
99 1 , induced Arnulf to anticipate his deposition by a
voluntary act of abdication. The learned monk Ger-
bert was chosen as his successor. But Seguin, arch-
bishop of Sens, with many other prelates, represented
to the pope that the removal of Arnulf, without his
consent, was invalid. John, therefore, suspended the
bishops who had formed the synod of Rheims from the
exercise of their faculties, and insisted on the restora-
tion of Arnulf. It was in vain that Gerbert endea-
voured, on the one side, to gain the pope, and, on the
other, to excite the French bishops to opposition. The
pontifical legate Leo, in 995, held a synod of German
bishops at Mouson, in w^hich Gerbert submitted to the
papal suspension ; and a short time after another synod
was convened by the same legate at Rheims, where
the bishops, who had decreed the deposition of Arnulf
and the elevation of Gerbert, gave their consent to the
restoration of the injured prelate. But the king Hugo
would not liberate Arnulf from confinement. His son
Robert, in 997, yielded to the threat of the pontiff;
and Gerbert himself, when he had afterwards ascended
the throne of St. Peter, with the name of Silvester II,
declared, that he reinstated Arnulf in all the rights and
prerogatives of the church of Rheims. In the follow-
ing century, Leo IX departed from the then prevailing
opinion, that the cognition in the case of an accused
bishop was reserved, as a greater cause, to the see of
Rome, and that a provincial synod could institute a
process against a bishop, or examine the accusations,
but could not determine until the see of Rome had been
consulted.



PERIOD THE THIRD. 17^

3. In virtue of the ancient patriarchal jurisdiction,
it occurs in this period also, that the popes summoned
bishops, particularly from France, to assist at their
synods in Rome. Thus, in 769, seven French metro-
politans and five bishops were present at the synod
against the Iconoclasts, having been called to Rome by
Stephen III. Nicholas I, hi S67, required the presence
of the German and French bishops at a synod which
was to decide on the divorce of Lothaire, but the kings
of the two countries excused the attendance of their
bishops, who, moreover, could hardly absent themselves
from their dioceses on account of the dangers which
threatened them from the Normans. The same reason
prevented Nicholas, as he declared in 867, from con-
vening the bishops of the west in a great synod, when
Photius published his calumnies against the western
Church. Hincmar also declared that every bishop
whose presence the pontiff might require at Rome w^as
bound to obey his call.

4. New episcopal sees were erected generally by the
authority of the Roman pontiff. The popes were accus-
tomed to grant to those, whom they sent to preach the
faith (as we have seen in the case of St. Boniface), powers
to found bishoprics in the newly-converted countries.
But the founding of an episcopal Church was not con-
sidered, in the ninth century, a right reserved to the
bishop of Rome. Nicholas I offered no opposition when
Nomenoe duke of Bretagne divided the four dioceses
of his kingdom into seven bishoprics ; he exhorted him
to comply with the ancient constitution of the province
by subjecting the new sees to the metropolitan of Tours.
But where, not the division of existing bishoprics, but
the erection of new ones in countries which had recently
received the faith, and which had not yet been incorpo-
rated in the body of the Church, was to take place, the
authority of the supreme pontiff was always necessary.
This was shown in the formation of the bishoprics in
Poland and in Hungary. When the holy king St. Ste-
phen had founded these Churches, he obtained the appro-
bation of the pope, by an embassy sent expressly for



176 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

that purpose to Rome. But from the end of the ninth
century, no important alteration was effected in the
government of Churches without the consent of the
supreme head of all. The Spanish bishops in the moun-
tains of Asturias, together with their king Alphonsus
III, besought the pope, in 873, to send a legate from
Rome, to define the limits of their respeetive sees ; and
about the year 905, Plegmund archbishop of Canter-
bury went to Rome, to obtain from the pope his con-
sent to the erection of five bishoprics in Wessex. The
emperor Henry II founded the bishopric of Bamberg,
after he had obtained the papal approbation.

5. As the grant of metropoVitan jurisdiction had
always been, in the west, a special right of the see of
Rome, so in this period the erection of new metropoli-
tan Churches, or a change in those which previously
existed, was reserved to the authority of the same see.
Thus pope Zachary raised the Church of Mentz to the
dignity of metropolitan, under St. Boniface ; and Leo
III imparted the same distinction to the Church of
Salzburg, under Arno, at the request of the bishops of
Freysing, Ratisbon, Passau, Seben, and Neuburg. The
synod of Frankfort, in 794, abstained from a decision
on the metropolitan Churches of Tarantaise, Ebrodu-
num, and Aix, because the pope had reserved this
judgment to himself. If, as it sometimes happened, a
Church lost its metropolitical rights, in the confusion of
the times, it afterwards recovered possession of it by
the authority of the pope. Thus Tilpin archbishop of
Rheims recovered his jurisdiction by a grant of Adrian
I, after it had been lost, at least as to the exercise,
during the long widowhood of his Church under the
usurper Milo. The same pope restored, in 788, the
metropolitan dignity of the Church of Vienne.

6. The fallium had formerly been given by the popes
to their vicars as an emblem of the power committed to
them ; it was afterwards granted to other bishops as a
mark of personal distinction. But in the second Ger-
manic synod, which was holdenin 746, by St. Boniface,
the bishops present, in unison with the French princes



PERIOD THE THIRD. 177

Carlomann and Pepin, decreed that forthc future all arch-
bishops should pray the pope to bestow u])on them this
robe ; they immediately requested it for the bishops of the
three restored metropolitan Churches of Rouen, Sens,
and Rheims. From this time, the pallium was considered
the symbol of archiepiscopal jurisdiction, and the pos-
session of it as necessary for the exercise of that pow er.
The popes granted it when requested by the newly-
elected archbishop, which request was generally ac-
companied by a recommendation of the king or of a
synod. When Charlemagne wished to see the Church
of Bourges restored to its primitive archiepiscopal rank,
he recommended its bisliop Ermenbert to pope Adrian,
supplicating for him the grant of the pallium. In the
capitularies a distinctive honour is commanded to be
paid to a metropolitan by w^hom the pallium has been
received. The bishop, therefore, who had been elected
or nominated to fill a metropolitan see, obtained with
the pallium the papal approbation, and his archiepisco-
pal jurisdiction, which he received, according to the
remark of Rabanus, in part at least as representative of
the pope (propter apostolicas vices), for after the resto-
ration of the fallen ecclesiastical constitution of France,
the duties which had been performed by the bishop of
Aries as papal vicar, devolved upon each metropolitan.
Other bishops also occasionally received the pallium.
But with them it was a personal favour, w ith the arch-
bishops it was an emblem of rank. As early as the end
of the ninth century, the metropolitan performed no
duty of his office before he had received the pallium.
John YIII, in his letter to Rostaing of Aries, in 878,
complained that some metropolitans of the French pro-
vinces consecrated their suffragan bishops before they
had obtained their palliums from Rome. According to
Luitprand, even the patriarchs of Constantinople were
not empowered to wear the pallium without the sanc-
tion of the pope, until the year 935, when the emperor
Romanus, who had raised his son Theophylactus to the
patriarchate, obtained from the pope John XI by means
of the Roman tyrant Alberich, a grant, that for the

VOL. Til. N



178 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

future, the patriarchs might use the palUum, without an
express permission of the l)ishop of Rome.

7. Provincial synods could receive Xh.^ resignation of
hisIio])s ; but many prelates before they resigned had
recourse to the apostolic see. We find examples under
Gregory the Great, and more frequently in the tenth
and eleventh centuries. Edenulf bishop of Laon sought
repeatedly from John VIII, without obtaining, a release
from the burden of his bishopric. Lanfranc archbishop
of Canterbury requested in the same manner, and equally
in vain, to be freed by Alexander II. Benedict VII, on
the contrary, permitted the resignation of St. Adalbert,
bishop of Prague. Translations from one diocese to
another, when they did happen, as exceptions to the
ancient canon law, required the sanction of the pope.
Thus Ebbo archbishop of Rheims was translated by
Gregory IV from that church to Hildesheim, and Actard
from Nantes to Tours by Adrian II.

In the preceding periods, the Roman pontiffs were
accustomed to arrange many ecclesiastical matters by
means of their vicars, whom they selected from amongst
the metropolitans of a country ; in the present, on the
contrary, they discontinued the office of vicars, and sent
legates on extraordinary occasions to determine on the
affairs of distant churches. The first papal legate w ith
unlimited pow^ers was St. Boniface, who with this title
preached in Germany and Gaul, for thirty-six years,
founded or restored churches, held synods, reformed
abuses, and prescribed laws, under the protection of the
French dukes. To convene national synods and to pre-
side therein, were powers with which Nicholas I in
particular invested his legates. The decision on diffi-
cult or important cases was referred by the legates to
Rome. The legations were of more frequent occurrence
after the year 1050, a period when the popes laboured
with all their zeal and all their powers to eradicate
abuses, to destroy simony and the incontinency of the
clergy. When Alexander II sent St. Peter Damian, in
J 063, as his legate into France, he wrote to the bishops,
declaring that he had conferred upon this holy man.



PERIOD THE THIRD. 179

who was " as liis own eye, and an immoveable pillar of
the apostolic sec," the fulness of his own power, so that
all that should be decreed by him, should be considered
as the decree of the head of the Church. Peter and
another legate, who was also sent into France, could
not exercise so great a power without encountering
opposition. Before this time, Leo IX, in a great synod
at llheims, in 1049, compelled by the necessities of the
Church, to omit the ordinary process, had obliged even
bishops and abbots, who were not accused, to free
themselves from all suspicion of simony by their oaths.
Those w ho acknowledged themselves guilty, he deposed ;
those who absented themselves from the synod, or re-
fused the oath, he excommunicated.

After the extinction of the vicariate of Aries, the
popes continued to confer sometimes the dignity of
vicar on different French prelates ; but this was per-
sonal, not hereditary, in their sees. Sergius II, in 844,
appointed Drogo bishop of Metz, the uncle of the em-
peror Lothaire, and of his brothers, the kings, as his
vicar or primate, with authority to convoke national
synods, and to preside over them, to examine the decrees
of such synods, and to receive appeals in the name of
the pope ; but as the metropolitans resented this exten-
sive grant of power to an ordinary bishop, Drogo
abstained from all exercise of it. Some years after, in
8/6, John VIII, at the instance of Charles the Bald,
conferred a similar jurisdiction upon Ansegis archbishop
of Sens, over the German and French Churches, but at
the synod of Pontion, the other archbishops, amongst
whom, Hincmar, in particular, w as dissatisfied with this
exaltation of Ansegis, w^ould acknowledge his power
only with the preservation of their metropolitan rights.
The popes gave this title of primate of Gaul to other
bishops also, but only as marks of personal distinction.
In this manner it was given to Aurelian, archbishop of
Lyons, in 894, and to Seguin and Theudric archbishops
of Sens, in the years 986 and 1000 : Gervasius arch-
bishop of Rheims assumed this primacy in virtue of a
papal grant. In Germany, John XIII granted, in 96/,

N 2



180 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

to the archbishop of Treves, the rank of vicar of the
apostolic see, but only as a precedence of honour ; Leo
IX, in 1049, renewed this grant, but-with this condition,
that the bishops of Treves should annually send ambas-
sadors to Rome, and should themselves visit that city
every three years. Bardo and Lupoid archbishops of
Mentz received from the popes John XIX and Leo IX,
in 1032 and 1052, the rank of papal vicars, with the
power of deciding on causes, which otherwise would
have required a judgment of the pope, or the presence
of a legate. A similar power was conferred, in 1 026,,
upon the archbishop of Salzburg, Adalbert archbishop
of Bremen and Hamburg was named by the pope, in
1050, papal legate and vicar for the entire north, with
power to found new bishoprics and to consecrate
bishops in the kingdoms of Scandinavia.



SECTION V.

METROPOLITANS. — BISHOPS. ARCHDEACONS. ORI-
GIN OF CATHEDRAL CHAPTERS. — PARISHES AND
TITHES.

The metropolitan government, which under the last of
the Merovingians had for the greater part fallen in
France, and had been again restored under Pepin, by
the exertions of St. Boniface, developed itself from that
time until the middle of the ninth century, in a severe
exercise of powers, which Hincmar has enumerated in
a letter to his nephew, the bishop of Laon. The metro-
politan examined, confirmed, and consecrated the bish-
ops of his province, he summoned them to synods, at
which each one was bound to appear : to him were to
be referred all complaints against a bishop and all dis-
putes of the bishops amongst themselves ; he appointed
administrators of Churches that had lost their bishops ;
no bishop could appeal to Rome against the will of the
metropolitan, nor without his permission travel beyond
the province, send messengers, or alienate the goods of



PERIOD THE THIRD. 181

his Church. Upon the archbishops devolved the care
of the entire province ; in all ecclesiastical affan's he
could be consulted ; to him appeals might be made from
the judgment of a bishop, and he was empowered, even
without convening a synod, of his own authority to
correct the errors or the crimes of a bishop.

As a countei-poise to this great power, and to a
gradual diminution of it, the frequent changes of terri-
tory under the later Carlovingians chiefly assisted. By
this means many suffragan bishops were politically
separated from their archbishops, and other circum-
stances soon enabled them without labour to withdraw
themselves from their spiritual jurisdiction. The judi-
cial authority of the archbishops over their suffragans
was confined and weakened by the greater facility with
which bishops could carry their appeals to Rome. The
popes had hitherto sent judges to decide on causes at a
distance : they now required that messengers with full
powers to lay the accusation before their tribunal should
be sent to them. The consequence was, that these
delegates, not to involve themselves in a labyrinth of
controversy, exposed the faults and guilt of the accused
bishops with leniency. But the attempt of many metro-
politans in the ninth century, arbitrarily to rule the
provinces without the aid of provincial synods, and to
exercise an immediate jurisdiction in the dioceses of
their suffragans, led to the united opposition of their
popes and of the bishops. With the fall of the provin-
cial synods the power also of the metropoUtans declined.
In Germany, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the
great civil and political power of the archbishops of
Mentz, Treves, Cologne, and Salzburg, threw into the
shade their ecclesiastical connexion with their bishops.
Still there are not wanting examples of an excessive
exercise of power. Thus Berthold of Treves prohibited
Wala bishop of Metz from wearing the pallium which
had been sent to him by the pope. Poppo also, of
Treves, required from Bruno, the new bishop of Toul,
at the time of his consecration, that he should under-
take nothing in the government of his diocese, without



182 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

the consent of his metropolitan. Bruno, after some
opposition, and with the condition that it should not
extend to extraordinary cases, took the oath.

The power of bishops over their clergy, underwent,
during this period, no essential change. Arbitrary de-
privations were now, as they had been before, forbidden
by the canons. A priest could be deposed only by a
canonical judgment, and could even then appeal to the
metropolitan or to a provincial synod. During the
ninth century, examples may be found in which bishops
transferred judgments on particular offences of priests
to the pope. A bishop might remove a priest from one
parish to another ; and for every removal or change of
this kind, when not originating with himself, his con-
sent was necessary. The principle that the bishop was
master of all the ecclesiastical property of his diocese
was acknowledged in theory, but in practice it was
almost destroyed by the institution of the right of pa-
tronage. The right of presenting priests to churches
in the country, was granted or confirmed in France by
the synod of Orleans, in 541, and in Spain by the synod
of Toledo, in 655, to the founders of those churches : a
capitulary of the year 816, prohibited bishops from re-
jecting clerics, who had been presented by lay patrons,
if they were not found unworthy. The nobles acquired
in particular the right of presenting to their private
chapels and oratories. But this contraction of the epis-
copal authority was of no importance when compared
with the following, which brought with it the great
alienation of Church property from the eighth to the
eleventh century. Many temporal barons, who either
by force or by royal grants, had obtained possession of
churches, contented not themselves with the use of
their possessions ; but, in their ideas of feudal law, con-
sidered the churches as their properties ; they therefore
named and granted investiture to the priests, deprived
them at pleasure, allowed them for their maintenance
as much as they thought fit, and treated them as vassals
engaged in their service. These feudal lords of the
churches appropriated to themselves the tithes and ob-



PERIOD THE THIRD. 183

lations ; they took even the fees, or imposed a tax upon
them. These churches would naturally become an
article of commerce ; they were bought and sold, let out
and exchanged, and were even given by their lords as
dowers to (laughters. The Church, in its persevering
opposition to this abuse and to its unhappy conse-
quences, was often compelled to confine itself in its
demands, to the condition, that for the future, no free
church should be subjected to this state of servitude,
and that a third part, at least, of the tithes should be
allowed to the officiating priest. At the close of the
period, this abuse had arrived at such a height, that the
new bishop of Chalons on the Saone, in 10/0, could
find through the whole of his diocese scarcely one free
church ; all had fallen into the hands of laics.

Not less prejudicial to episcopal authority and to
ecclesiastical discipline was the multiplication of private
chapels and oratories in the castles and other dwellings
of the nobles, erected by them for their own use, and
the use of their dependants. By this means there was
formed a class of domestic clergy, who were attached
to the service of their lords, and who were employed by
them, as the archbishop Agobard complains, often in
the most degrading of offices, — to wait at table, to
attend to their horses and hounds, — and who were,
therefore, generally ignorant, rude, and immoral. Sel-
dom could the bishops exercise authority over these
ecclesiastics, protected by their patrons : these priests
endeavoured rather, as w^e learn from a canon of a
synod of Pavia, in 850, to exempt themselves entirely
from the jurisdiction of their bishops. As the nobles,
according to their notions of property, would not ac-
knowledge that episcopal jurisdiction extended to the
churches and chapels which belonged, as they imagined,
exclusively to themselves, they remained with their
castle-clergy and their followers at a distance from the
public worship, the synod of Meaux, in 845, requested
the nobles that they would allow their chaplains to
labour in the extirpation of the abuses and vices which
found a place in their castles, whilst the parish priests



184 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

and the clergy of the bishops would attend to the other
people. Prejudicial also to Church discipline was the
rise of absolute ordinations. According to the ancient
discipline, every priest at his ordination was destined
for the service of some particular church : exceptions
to this rule were first made in favour of those who
consecrated their labours to the conversion of infidels ;
but by degrees the practice began to prevail of ordain-
ing priests who had no particular destination. The
consequence was, that not a few ecclesiastics led an
irregular, wandering life, disgraced their sacerdotal
rank by their excesses, slighted the jurisdiction of their
bishops, and bartered the most holy of religious rites
for money. The revival of the ancient capitulary of
Charlemagne against absolute ordinations did little to
remove the evil.

According to the prescriptions of the capitularies and
of the provincial councils every bishop was bound to
hold annually a diocesan synod : according to another
ordinance, the priests of every diocese were commanded
to assemble in different divisions, and to receive during
several days from the bishop or his assistants instruc-
tions on the duties of their ministry. With the visit-
ations of the dioceses was connected from the eighth
century, the institution of conferences, which the
bishop or his archdeacon held yearly in every com-
munity. In these, seven sworn men, named synodal
witnesses, were interrogated on the state of the com-
munity, on the vices that might prevail and abuses that
might have been admitted into it. The prelate then
imposed ecclesiastical censures on the guilty, and if any
should resist his authority, the aid of the civil power
was called in, according to a capitulary of 853, to
reduce them to obedience.

Chorepiscopi, contrary however to the canons, still
continued to exercise some episcopal functions. They
ordained deacons and priests, administered the sacra-
ment of confirmation, consecrated the chrism, and
maintained themselves against the decrees of popes and
councils, partly because other bishops, consulting their



TERIOD THE THIRD. 185

own ease and indolence, employed them as their assist-
ants, and partly because kings often placed them in the
administration of vacant sees, that they might the
longer keep to themselves the revenues. Rabanus
archbishop of Mentz undertook their defence ; but
towards the middle of the tenth century, they ceased
to exist. Hence Poppo archbishop of Treves, in 1 036,
obtained from the pope Benedict IX the first titular or
suffragan bishop, who was to assist him in the exercise
of his episcopal duties.

In the execution of the judicial powers of the bishop,
of the care of the churches and of the ecclesiastics in
the country, and of the visitation of the diocese, the
archdeacons were the representatives of the bishops.
In the eighth century, the more extensive dioceses were
divided into several archdeaconries. One of the first
bishops who thus divided his diocese was Heddo, arch-
bishop of Strasburg : he formed seven archdeaconries,
the confirmation of which he obtained from pope Adrian
in 7/4. For a long time, the archdeacons, although
they possessed jurisdiction over parish priests, and even
over archpriests, had received only the order of dea-
con. Hincmar of Rheims, however, designates the two
archdeacons of his diocese as priests. The power of
the archdeacon was originally only delegated by the
bishop, but as Heddo of Strasburg declares that his
archdeacons could be deprived only by a canonical
sentence, it appears that they by degrees acquired an
ordinary jurisdiction, which they exercised with a cer-
tain independence, and during the vacancy of the see.
In smaller dioceses, rural chapters were formed, over
which the archpriests or deans presided. The synod of
Pavia, in 850, prescribed to bishops to form them in all
parts of their dioceses.

Many bishops, following the example of St. Augustin,
of St. Eusebius of Vercelli, and others, lived in com-
munity with the ecclesiastics of their cathedrals. The
synod of Vernon, in 7/5, said that this was " to live
under the hands of the bishop, according to canonical
order." The institution of cathedral canons was known



186 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

therefore before the time of Chrodegang bishop of Metz,
and hence his rule, which was only a severe reforma-
tion of this already existing but degenerated form of
life, found so easy and such general acceptance. About
the year 765, Chrodegang collected together in one
residence all the higher and inferior ecclesiastics of his
church, and gave to them a rule of life, drawn princi-
pally from the decrees of councils, from the customs of
the canons of St. John Lateran, and from the rule of
St. Benedict. By this means, the cathedral was made
a species of cloister, in which the clerics lived, like
monks, in a state of obedience to their bishop. They
all slept and took their meals in the same apartments :
they prayed together by day and by night : they con-
fessed twice in each year to the bishop : they employed
certain hours of the day in manual labour, and at other
stated times attended in chapter to a lecture or exhort-
ation of the bishop : they surrendered at their entrance
into the community all their property to the cathedral,
but they partook of its revenues and of all presents and
fees that it received. This union of a mode of life dif-
ficult and severe, founded on great self-denial and mor-
tification, with the possession of private property, could
not be of long duration ; for either the spirit of the
rule would destroy this practice, which was opposed
to it, and would substitute in its place the true evange-
lical poverty, or the possession of private property would
end in a relaxation and destruction of the rule. Both
these consequences occurred, but at difi'erent times.

The rule of Chrodegang was in a short time intro-
duced into many dioceses, and the almost general use,
after the year 789, of the name of canons, to designate
the clerics of the cathedral, proves to us that this
cloister-like life, although it may not always have been
in exact conformity to the new rule, was extensively
spread through France. Royal ordinances and decrees
of synods imposed upon every bishop who possessed
the means the duty of introducing the canonical insti-
tute into his diocese. Many other clerics who w^ere
attached to particular churches lived in community



PERIOD THE THIRD. 187

under abbots, without being monks. In these commu-
nities, the rule, founded on tliat of Chrodegang, and
framed by the synod of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 816, was the
most generally observed. The synod of Pontion, in
S76, commanded that every bishop should erect near
his cathedral a cloister, in which he and his clergy
should together serve God. But the bishop was not
the only superior of the chapter : the provost, who at
first was generally the archdeacon of the see, and the
dean, possessed authority and power in the internal
regulations of the community. In the government of
the diocese, the chapter succeeded to the elder priests,
who before assisted the bishop : the canons formed the
council of the bishop, and gave their advice in his more
weighty affairs. They obtained from civil and ecclesi-
astical superiors many of the privileges of independent
corporations.

But in the tenth century the canonical mode of life
became extinct in many chapters, particularly in Ger-
many. This extinction is to be attributed to the in-
creasing riches of the foundations, to the usurpations
of laics, and to the generally-prevailing inclination to
liberty and dissipation. The wealth that was before
possessed in common w^as now divided into particular
prebends, and the canons went to reside in distinct
habitations. Many bishops and temporal princes, there-
fore, placed monks in the houses which had been
abandoned by the canons ; as, on the other hand, and
perhaps more frequently, regular canons were made to
occupy the cloisters of degenerate monks. In the
eleventh century a reformation was introduced into
cathedral and collegiate chapters. In many, the ancient
canonical rule of life was restored, and in some the
duty of entire poverty was introduced. New chapters
were founded after the year 1040, and the two synods
of Rome, in 1059 and 1063, laboured earnestly to restore
generally the canonical institute and a community of
goods.

Before the eleventh century there were no distinct
parishes in episcopal cities : the cathedral was ordina-



188 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

rily the only chiirch in which the faithful assembled on
Sundays and festivals, to assist at the holy sacrifice and
to receive the sacraments. In the year 995, Obert
bishop of Verona, in a synod held in that city, com-
plained that the monks of a certain cloister, on the
principal festivals of the year, celebrated mass in their
church. The synod decreed that they, as well as the
clergy of other churches, should abstain from offering
the holy sacrifice on those days. The first traces of a
variation in this discipline are found in the synod of
Limoges, in 1032. This synod decided against the
representations of the cathedral canons, that in other
churches baptism might be administered and sermons
preached to the people. Besides the great increase in
the number of the inhabitants, the great contest of re-
formation which arose towards the close of this century,
contributed much to the formation of city parishes.
Many separated themselves from their bishops and from
tlie canons of the cathedrals, whom they viewed as
schismatics, or as guilty of simony or immorality, and
visited other churches to receive the sacraments.

Tithes, the payment of which had been enforced by
earlier synods, w^ere universally introduced, even by
the law'S of the state. But all ecclesiastical tithes were
not alike. In the Roman empire many churches had
received tithes from the emperors as patrimonial rights.
In later times, the bishops and cloisters obtained from
the French kings grants of the customs, to which the
right of tithes w^as annexed ; or they received tracts of
uncultivated land, which, if the clergy did not cultivate
them, they let out to husbandmen, with the reservation
of the tithes of the produce. Other tithes were derived
from a land-tax, which free possessors of the soil paid
to the clergy, according to contract, for grants received
from them. It was customary also to pay, with the
tithes, a ninth part also {no7icB et decimcu) for these
grants made to free men, in the same manner as half-
possessors paid the half of the produce. Different from
this land-tax, to which churches and cloisters, like all
other proprietors of land, w ere entitled, were the tithes



PERIOD THE THIRD. 189
Artur Rogóż
Administrator
Posty: 4635
Rejestracja: 24 maja 2010, 04:01
Kontakt:

Re: A history of the church - tekst po angielsku

Post autor: Artur Rogóż »

which, according to the analog:y of the precept of the
ancient law, all w^re bound to pay, for the worship of
God, for the maintenance of those who laboured for the
salvation of their souls, and for the relief of the poor.
The obligation of these tithes, the payment of which
was first made general by a capitulary of Charlemagne
in 7/9, was founded on the divine commandment, so
far at least as it was always a duty of man to dedicate
a portion of his wealth to the necessities of the Church
and of the poor. The Church, in imitation of the
Mosaic ordinance, named the tenth as the minimum of
this contribution. Pepin, by a decree of 764, imposed
the payment of tithes upon all the royal possessions :
Charlemagne extended it to all lands, not excepting
those of the king. It appears, however, that the crown
lands were in a short time freed from payment.
The tithes were generally paid to the bishop, as the
administrator of all the ecclesiastical goods of his
diocese. In Saxony, bishoprics were, for the most part,
founded on the tithes. Lewis the Pious, in 814, gave
to the cathedral of Halberstadt all the tithes of the
bishopric. It was the duty of the bishop to distribute
to the churches and clergy of his see relief according
to their wants. We find, however, in the capitularies,
provisions by which the tithes of particular districts are
reserved to the resident clergy, who, by episcopal con-
stitutions and by the laws of the Church, were bound
to divide the same into three parts — for the fabric of
their church, for the poor, and for their own support.
Later decrees instituted a division into four parts : the
fourth part was allotted to the bishop. There w^as also
the real or prsedial tithe, which was generally imposed.
We find, likewise, the blood-wit or blood-tithe, and the
personal tithe, which was paid on personal inheritances.



190 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.



SECTION VI.

THE MONASTIC STATE.*

From the beginning of this period to the close of the
eighth century, we find the monasteries, particularly
those of France, in a state of degeneracy and decay.
In the south, they had become the prey of the Saracens ;
in the other parts of Gaul, Charles Martel had lavished
them upon warriors and women. The advocates of the
abbeys had exercised their power to oppress and to
plunder their clients, and the falling monasteries brought
with them in their ruin the public schools that had been
established in them. In the year 755 the province of
Maine alone possessed six-and-thirty cloisters, the
greater part of which Gauzelin, who had invaded the
see of Mans, destroyed.

Whilst the kings Carlomann and Pepin laboured with
the bishops to arrest the progress of this evil, Germany
saw arising within itself, chiefly by the exertions of St.
Boniface and his disciples, the new monasteries of
Fritzlar, Fulda, Hirschfield, and Heidenheim. Some
years earlier, the zealous Pirman had founded the clois-
ters of Reichenau, Monsee, Oberaltaich, and Nieder-
altaich : these were soon succeeded by Ettenheim,
Preum, and Lauresheim. Thus was Germany provided
with a resource of which it stood in the greatest need —
seminaries for the education of its clergy. Many dis-
tricts of the country were raised to a state of fertility
by the monks ; in others, agriculture, that had been
neglected, was restored.

In the synod of 742, the introduction of the rule of



* Bibliotlieca Cluniacensis, cura M. Marrier et Andr. Quercetani,
Paris, 1614, fol.; — Antiqiiiores Consuetudines Cluniacensis Mo-
nasterii, Collectoi'e S. Udalrico, in D'Achcry Spicilog. i. 641-703 ;
The Lives of SS. Berno, Odo, Odilo, in Mabillon Acta SS. Ordi-
nis S. B. sa^c. V et sa^c. VI, torn. i. — Vita S. Roniualdi, by 8t. Peter
Damian, il)id. — Vita S. Job. Gualberti, ibid. saic. VI, torn. ii.



PERIOD THE THIRD. 1^1

St. Benedict into all the monasteries of the Franks was
first decreed. Down to that time, the rule of St. Co-
lumban had been observed by many. Although the
great majority of the monks were laymen, they con-
tinued to be numbered amongst the clergy ; and the
synod of Rome, in 827, ordained that henceforth no
other than a priest should be elected abbot : but this
canon did not obtain general observance. With the
permission of the bishops, parishes were entrusted to
monks after the commencement of the ninth cen-
tury ; and the council of Paris, in 829, remarked that
many gave the preference to monks, as confessors,
although the greater part of the priests who were
amongst the monks received jurisdiction from the
bishops only in favour of those resident in the cloisters.
But the authority of bishops over the cloisters and over
the monks of their diocese remained undiminished.
According to a canon of the council of Frankfort, in
794, no abbot, although he had received the approba-
tion of the khig, could be installed without the consent
of the bishop. At Mentz, in 813, it was decreed that
the bishops should accompany the commissioners (wissi)
of the king in the visitation of cloisters, and that abbots
should not engage in law-suits until they had obtained
permission from the bishop.

Lewis the Pious called together, in 817, a numerous
body of abbots and monks at Aix-la-Chapelle, to deli-
berate with them on the amelioration of their institute.
Under the direction of Benedict, the holy and zealous
abbot of Aniane, an explication of their rule, in eighty
articles, was presented to the assembly. The rule in
this form in a short time obtained an authority equal to
that of St. Benedict, and was received not many years
later even in Italy. Lewis commissioned Benedict and
Arnulf the abbot of Nermoutier to visit all the monas-
teries of his kingdom, and to introduce into them the
discipline of the new statutes. In many monasteries
the attempt produced strife and confusion ; and many
monks, rather than subject themselves to the newly-
formed rule, embraced the institute of canons. Bene-



192 ■ HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

diet, who possessed the entire confidence of the king,
obtained from him an order, that only those abbots
who lived according to the rule, and not secular com-
mendatory abbots, should be placed over the monaste-
ries. This decree also was not fully observed. The
abbeys which received the reform of Benedict continued
to acknowledge him as their superior, so that in the
latter years of his life he found himself at the head of
twelve religious houses. He died in 821, with the fame
of having been the restorer of monastic discipline in
France.

The Carlovingian kings granted to the monasteries
an immunity which exempted them from the jurisdiction
of public judges ; to many they granted even the blood-
wit. They ceded to them also many royal privileges.
But the chief source from which the monasteries de-
rived their wealth was from the precarlcs — grants of
goods, the use of which the recipient reserved to him-
self or to his next heir, or received them from the
monasteries as prestaries, for the payment of an annual
tax. It happened also not unfrequently that other pro-
prietors gave as precaries portions of their own lands
to monasteries, to obtain from them others which they
desired, both to become the property of the monastery
at the death of the contractors. Many persons sur-
rendered themselves up to the service of abbeys, from
which they obtained protection without forfeiting
their civil freedom. A statistic record of the age of
Lewis the Pious shows that the number of large mo-
nasteries then contained in the French dominions, Italy
not reckoned, amounted to eighty-three. Of these,
twenty-three were in Germany, twenty-four in French
Gaul, and thirty-six in Aquitaine. They were divided
into three classes. Those of the first class paid tribute
to the king, and furnished him with supplies in war ;
those of the second class paid only tribute ; the third
class were free from both duties, and were bound only
to pray for the welfare of the emperor and his people.

Soon after the middle of the ninth century many
flourishing monasteries fell under the devastating incur-



PERIOD THE THIRD. 193

sions of the Normans, in the west, and of the Hunga-
rians in the east. The state in which the monastic
institute existed at the commencement of the tenth
century we may learn from the narration given by the
synod of Trosly, in 901), — that of the many abbeys
which France once possessed, some had been destroyed
by flames, others had been plundered of their goods by
the infidel invaders. If, indeed, a few ruins remained to
tell where monasteries once had stood, monastic disci-
pline had disappeared : for the corporations of canons,
of monks, and of nuns, lived without rule : the poverty
of the houses, the irregularities of those who dwelt in
them, and, more than all, the institution of lay abbots,
who lived in the abbeys with their wives and children,
their armed retainers and their hounds, were the
sources of this melancholy relaxation. Forced by ne-
cessity, the monks often left their cells, and engaged,
contrary to their own wills, in secular pursuits.

Against such a state of things a council could have
devised but weak remedies. But in the following year
there w^ere laid the foundations of a monastery, from
which there went forth a reanimation of the monastic
spirit, that spread itself over the entire Church. The
monk Berno undertook the direction of a monastery
which had been founded by William duke of Aquitaine,
at Cluny, ni the diocese of Macon. This house was
placed under the protection of the pope, and so soon
was it distinguished by the regularity of its discipline,
that seven other cloisters were confided to the govern-
ment of its abbot. Berno was succeeded, in 927, by his
still more celebrated disciple St. Odo, under whom the
house rose rapidly in fame. Canons and even bishops
embraced the monastic life at Cluny, and laymen of
the highest rank went there to do penance for their
sins; dukes and counts subjected to the abbot the
monasteries on their domains, that he might introduce
into them the reform of his own house. This reform
extended into Italy ; and thus was formed the celebra-
brated congregation of Cluny. The fame of the exem-
plary discipline of this house awakened within men the

VOL.111. o



194 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

desire of conferring rich donations, to such a degree,
that St. Odo, in the year of his death, 94 1 , could leave
to his successor two hundred and seventy-eight deeds
of gift, which during the last thirty-two years had been
laid upon the altar of the cloister church. About the
same time, St. Gerhard of Brogue reformed a great
number of monasteries in Flanders and Lorraine. St.
Majolus the fourth abbot of Cluny accompanied Otho I
into Italy, and was intended by him to reform the
Italian monasteries. He had before refused the arch-
diocese of Besan9on, and Otho II now wished to raise
him to the popedom.* On account of the great extent
to which the reform of Cluny now reached, St. Majolus
saw that the most effectual method that he could adopt
for the reformation of the monasteries which were sur-
rendered to him, was to send to them colonies of his
own monks, who replaced those who would not submit
to the new discipline. A famed scholar of St. Majolus
was the monk William, who reformed the monasteries
in Normandy and in the north of France, who estab-
lished schools in the reformed cloisters, and in 995 saw^
himself at the head of twelve hundred monks, in forty
different monasteries. With the same happy results,
Richard, abbot of St.Vannes in Verdun, laboured in the
reformation of the cloisters in Belgium. The strict
regularity, the zeal, and the piety of so many monaste-
ries, which had embraced the reform, again raised the
monastic profession in the public estimation, so that
towards the end of the tenth century many of the ruined
abbeys rose again in splendour, new ones were erected,
nor did princes easily presume to give a reformed clois-
ter in prey to a lay abbot.

During the administration of St. Odilo, from 995 to
1048, the abbey of Cluny arose to still higher authority.
Filiations from it extended as far as Spain and Poland.
Many great abbeys received the reform of Cluny, with-
out, however, becoming subject to its abbots : others
entered into a state of dependence, and were governed

* See page 140.



PERIOD THE THIRD. 195

by vice-abbots, representatives of the abbot of Cluny.
Many smaller cloisters, then called cells, and later, pri-
ories, were also subject to this abbey, as to their parent
house. Pope Gregory V confirmed to this chief cloister
all its possessions, together with all its daughter-mo-
nasteries : they were all exempted from episcopal juris-
diction ; they were free in the election of their abbots,
who might receive the abbatial institution from any
bishop. The rule of St. Benedict w'as observed in this
congregation with the greatest exactness ; but particu-
lar customs were introduced in addition to it. We may
mention of these, the almost ynbroken silence which was
so rigidly observed, as to give occasion to the introduc-
tion of a language of signs, the public confession of sins,
and the conjunction of manual labour with the office of
the choir.

From the end of the tenth to the middle of the
eleventh century, many holy men in Italy, driven by
the view of the almost universal corruption of manners
which then prevailed, retired to distant lands, to renew
and to emulate the austerities of the ancient anchorets
of the East. Amongst these, the most conspicuous w as
perhaps the blessed Romuald, who was descended from
the ducal house of Ravenna, — a man who passed the
greater part of a long life in the solitary recesses of
mountains and of forests, and who, wherever he placed
his abode, drew around him crow^ds of holy disciples.
He was an almost irresistible herald of penance : he
possessed the power of converting the most obdurate
sinners, and of causing the great ones of the earth to
tremble at his word or at his look. When he had filled
a monastery with monks, he placed over them a superior,
and left them to form other communities. Towards the
end of his life, about the year 1023, he founded the
congregation of Camaldoli, in the valley of the Appen-
nines, not far distant from Arezzo in Tuscany. Here
several hermits, living in separate cells, dedicated them-
selves to exercises of piety, in silence, which was seldom
interrupted, and in perpetual abstinence from flesh and
wine. This small union of holy men gradually increased

o 2



19G HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

and grew into an extensive congregation, consisting
partly of hermits, and partly of cenobites. Some years
later, in 1036, St. John Gualbert, conducted by a desire
of deeper solitude, left the monastery of St. Miniatis in
Tuscany, and founded in the Florentine territory the
congregation of Vallombrosa, giving to it the strictest
observance of the rule of St. Benedict. His disciples
lived at first, like the Camaldolesi, as hermits ; but they
were afterwards collected by him into a monastery.

The privileges which were granted by kings and
bishops to monasteries so generally during the eighth
and ninth centuries, regarded chiefly two points, — the
free election of abbots, their preservation against the
intrusion of commendatory abbots, and the administra-
tion of the temporalties. Many privileges that were
conceded by popes, at the request even of bishops, only
confirmed them in these rights, without exempting
them from the ordinary jurisdiction of the bishops. But
there was, in fact, contained in the grant of the above-
named rights a diminution of the episcopal power, for
it was the bishop who had hitherto given superiors to
ecclesiastical communities, and who had directed the
disposal of all Church property within his diocese. But
the power to elect their abbots, after it had been re-
cognised in the monks by civil and ecclesiastical law,
and by the rule of St. Benedict, could no longer be
considered as a privilege, but as a natural and ordinary
right. Some abbeys were placed by their first founders
under the immediate protection of the Roman see ; but
this did not at all suppose an exemption from the juris-
diction of the respective bishops ; and these papal
privileges were generally letters of protection against
arbitrary oppressions, of which the bishops themselves
were sometimes the authors. The direct authority
over some monasteries was given to the Roman see, in
acknowledgment of which a yearly tribute was paid to
the pope. Some privileges of exemption took from the
bishops the right of visiting the monasteries, and of
deposhig the abbots; but the ordinary jurisdiction of
the bishops suffered no diminution. Only they could



PERIOD THE THIRD. 197

ordain the clergy of the monasteries ; the consecration
of churches and of altars could be performed only l)y
them, and from them only could the chrism be obtained.
Entire exemjitions from episcopal jiu'isdiction were
rarely known before the eleventh century. The abbey
of Fulda indeed enjoyed, from the time of its first foun-
dation, by a pnpal grant, confirmed by king Pepin, an
exemption of this kind : but this exception arose from
the peculiar circumstance, that the country in which
the abbey was erected formed at tliat time part of no
episcopal see. At the synod of Anse, in 1025, the
French bishops rejected a papal grant of privilege, in
virtue of which the priests of Cluny were empowered to
receive ordination from any bishop. But in 10G3 the
privileges of Cluny, which had been extended by grants
of Alexander II, were solemnly recognised by the coun-
cil of Chalons ; and Drago, bishop of Macon, who
wished, notwithstanding this recognition, to exercise
his jurisdiction over the abbey, was subjected to public
penance. Many bishops to whom these privileges were
offensive, hesitated not to act w itli severity towards the
cloisters. Thus we know that the bishop of Amiens
oppressed the abbey of Corbey, and the bishop of Paris
that of St. Denis ; but the pope interfered in favour of
the monasteries ; and this circumstance was probably
the cause why the pope exempted from all episcopal
jurisdiction, at the request of the bishop of Chartres
himself, the abbey of the Holy Trinity at Vendome.



SECTION VII.

COLLECTIONS AND WORKS OF CANON LAW.*

The Spanish collection of canons, which circulated
during the seventh century, under the name of St. Isi-
dore bishop of Seville, received from time to time many



* The Isidorian Decretals, in Merlini Concilior. torn, i., Paris, 1522^
fol. ; Dav. Blondelli Pseudo-Isodorus et Turrianus Vapulantes, Genev.



198 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

additions from different bands. Towards the middle of
the ninth century, many spurious fragments were intro-
duced into it : fifty-nine epistles of the first thirty popes,
from Clement to Melchiades ; forged fragments also
amongst the genuine (but by many additions altered)
decrees of the popes, from Silvester to Gregory II ; and
lastly, some false councils were added to this collection.
In this extensive falsification we are not to suppose that
there was a successive progression : all was the work
of one man, or, if he were assisted by others, his coad-
jutors must have laboured according to his plans. Tliese
forged records are in part dogmatical, directed against
the errors of the Arians, Nestorians, and Monophysites,
and in part, and this is the greater portion, they con-
tain exhortations and precepts of morality ; many of
them refer to the administration of the sacraments and
to the accompanying ceremonies, to the liturgy, and to
the penitential discipline ; others regard the protection
of the clergy against arbitrary oppression, accusations,
and deprivation, the security of ecclesiastical property,
and the constitution and good order of the Church.
The materials from which these records were formed
were ancient documents, to which the author had ac-
cess : — the Roman Pontifical book, the historical works
of Rufinus and Cassiodorus, the acts of true but more
modern synods, the writings of the Latin fathers of the
Church, and the collections of Roman law.

The falsification and fabrication of ecclesiastical
documents were, in this age, not unfrequent, and in the
Isidorian collection, of which we are now speaking,
there are, besides the new, many more ancient apocry-
phal writings. Thus a capitulary of Aix-la-Chapelle, of
the year 803, gives a passage of the decretal of pope
Innocent to Victricius, according to which, the greater
causes were to be submitted to the pope in the second

162s, 4to. ; The Dissertations of Bjilleriiii and of C. Blasco, in Gallan-
dii Sylloge Dissertatiouum d(; vet. Canonuni Collectionibus, Mogunt.
1790, 2 vols. 4to. ; Kunst, De Fontibus et Consilio Pseudo-Isidor. Col-
lectionis, Goetting. 1832 ; Regino, Dc Eccles. Disciplina, cd. Baluze,
Paris, 1671 ; Buchardi, Decretorum libri xx, Colon. 1548, fol.



PERIOD THE THIRD. 199

instance, after the decision of the bishop, with this
great change, which corresponds with the discipline
which was then forming, that they might be laid before
the Roman see even in the first instance. But some-
thing greater than tliis was undertaken by the author
of the Isidorian decretals. He wished to place in the
hands of the clergy of his age a book of instruction and
of law, such as was required by the necessities of the
times. He doubtlessly imagined that the ecclesiastical
legislation, as far as he was acquainted with it, did not
meet these necessities. Many things that had been
ordained by provincial councils were little observed, on
account of the confined authority of the source from
which they emanated : the memory of many other de-
crees had been lost, and here is shown the use which
the author has made of the Roman Pontifical Book.
He has taken answers and provisions of the popes, con-
tained in it, and has extended them into entire decre-
tals, his object being to fill up an extensive chasm in
ecclesiastical legislation and to supply for a great loss.
For this end, he drew from more recent sources what-
ever corresponded to the contents of the Pontifical
Book, so that the deception, which he allowed himself
to practise, may be confined to a change of more
modern for more ancient names and dates.

Difi^erent objects have been assigned for this falsifica-
tion. Some have supposed that the author had in view
the exaltation of the papal power ; others, that he la-
boured for the discontinuance of provincial and national
synods, and for the liberation of the Church from its
connexion with the state. The first of these suppositions
is evidently incorrect. Had the papal power stood in
need of the extension which it might acquire by these
decretals, the author would rather have selected the
form of council canons, to have gained by these for the
popes that authority which he desired ; he would not
have confined himself within the narrow span of his own
decretals, whereon to build the power of the popes, and
then confirm his decretals by their authority. But more
decidedly it could not have been his design to introduce



200 HISTORY OF THE CHUUCH.
Artur Rogóż
Administrator
Posty: 4635
Rejestracja: 24 maja 2010, 04:01
Kontakt:

Re: A history of the church - tekst po angielsku

Post autor: Artur Rogóż »

a new discipline into the Church. Had his book been
in open variance with the chief points of the prevaiUng
discipHne, it would at once have awakened suspicion ;
examinations would have been instituted, and in an age
which possessed critical acumen, sufficient to detect the
falsity of the title of a book (the H//pognosticon), which
was circulated under the name of St. Augustine, the
imposition would have been detected — an imposition,
which, such as it really was, lay concealed, because the
principles and laws of ecclesiastical discipline of the age
corresponding with the contents of the work, excited no
surprise. One of the chief modern rights of the popes, the
confirmation of the election of bishops is not once men-
tioned ; the translation of the bishops, is not given as a
right reserved to the pontiff, although before this time
scarcely a bishop had been removed in France from one
see to another without the consent of the pope. With re-
gard to the pallium, which has been considered by some
as an artful invention to diminish the authority of the me-
tropolitans, the Isidorian decretals are silent. In trials of
bishops they do not assert that every accusation against
a bishop might be referred, as a causa major, immedi-
ately to the pope, but that the accused might appeal
from the sentence of a provincial council, or before it,
if he apprehended partiality in the court. In some
passages, indeed, the entirely new principle was ad-
vanced, that provincial synods, generally, could not
judge a bishop without the permission of the pontiff.
On the other hand, the decretals recognize, in simple
priests, the right to appeal to the see of Rome ; although,
about the time of their appearance, such appeals were
not of rare occurrence. The authority of metropolitans
is acknowledged in express terms ; provincial synods,
one of the principal supports of this authority, are re-
peatedly recommended, and bishops are exhorted to
hold the same according to the laws of the Church.
To the assertion of the general proposition, that synods
could not be convened without the approbation of the
bishop of Rome, the author was led by the almost simi-
lar words, which the Historia Tripartita ascribes to



PERIOD THE THIRD. 201

pope Julius, to whom the author also refers thern. This
principle was not practically followed in the Church.
The ordinances which relate to judicial proceedings
against ecclesiastics, are taken chiefly from the Roman
law. That the collector has brought together on this
subject, all that weighed most heavily on ecclesiastics,
and that he has represented the clergy as almost invio-
lable, cannot be denied. The strongest assertion that
he has advanced is the ordinance taken from the an-
cient, but not genuine, biography of pope Silvester, that
laics can never appear as accusers of ecclesiastics. This
also was never observed in practice. The design of this
part of the work was directed against the unbridled ca-
price and tyranny to which the clergy were subjected,
under the form of law, in the kingdom of the west
French.

This new collection of decretals w^as formed in the
west of Europe, either in the kingdom of Charles the
Bald, or in Lorraine, and was first circulated about the
middle of the ninth century. It contains fragments of
the synods of Paris and of Aix-la-Chapelle, which were
held in the years 829 and 836 ; and, as it speaks with
great exactness and at great length of the rights of
primates or apostolical vicars, who were restored in west
France, after a long interruption, in the year 844, it is
probable that the date of its compilation falls between
the years 845 and 848. A public use of it w^as first
made, in the year 857, when Charles the Bald addressed
to the bishops and nobles of France, in the name of the
synod of Gluiercy, a letter, in which are contained pas-
sages from these fabricated decretals. Most striking is
the connexion and similarity between these decretals
and the collections made by Benedict, a deacon of
Mentz, in 840 and 847- This circumstance led D.
Blondel to the conjecture that both collections were
the work of one author. This, however, is certain, that
this pseudo-Isidorian collection was not compiled at
Rome, where it was not known until some years after
its publication, but in the kingdom of the west Franks,
whence it found its way to other parts. Pope Nicholas I



202 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

appears not to have known of the collection in 863,
for, in a letter to Hincmar, in which he names the
sources from which the Roman Church drew its rules
of ecclesiastical discipline, he makes mention only of the
decretals of Siricius, contained in the Codex of Diony-
sius. Two years later the pope undertook the defence
of the Isidorian decretals against Hincmar, who had
objected to their legal authority, because they were not
contained in the Codex, which w^as the only book of
ecclesiastical law that w^as received in Gaul ; or rather,
the pope combated the principle which formed the
foundation of this rejection, that a papal decree obtains
canonical authority only when it has been received into
a collection of canons. He makes no use of the Isido-
rian collection, he adduces none of its decretals, and it
may even be doubted whether he had seen the work.

Two collections, which both contain extracts from
the Isidorian decretals, namely, the Capitula of Angil-
ramn, bishop of Metz, w^iich he received at Rome, in
785, from pope Adrian I ; or, which, according to
another reading, he presented to the pope, and the col-
lection supposed to have been formed by Remigius
bishop of Chur (800-820), would, if these dates were
correct, oblige us to place the compilation of the Isido-
rian decretals at a much earlier period. But, in all
probability, the titles of these collections are as fictitious
as their contents. In the collections of later times,
the new decretals are used sometimes more, sometimes
less. This we may see in the work of Regino abbot of
Priim, who died in 915, an instruction for bishops in
the visitation of their dioceses ; and in the great collec-
tion of Burchard bishop of Worms, who died in 1025.



PERIOD THE THIRD. 203



CHAPTER THE FIFTH



STATE OF THE CHURCH IN PARTICULAR COUNTRIES.



Section I. — the church in french gaul.*

The commencement of this period beheld, in French
Gaul, the sceptre of dominion pass from the weak hands
of the Merovingians into the firmer grasp of the Carlo-
vingians. It was a time in which the Church of Gaul
was in a condition which, had it Ijeen of longer con-
tinuance, would have hurried it to decay and ruin.
In earlier ages, after the conquests of the Franks, the
clergy had separated themselves almost entirely from
the mass of the Gallo-Roman population; but by degrees
they were compelled to admit into their body men from
amongst their conquerors ; and the richer was their
church, the more eagerly did the Franks aspire to its
possessions. If at the synod of Macon, in 585, we find
only six German names amongst the sixty-three bishops
and priests who were present, we find, on the contrary,
in a record of the younger Clovis, in (553, only five
Roman names amongst the five-and-forty subscriptions
attached to it ; all the others are German. This fact
proves to us the great change that had been effected
within eighty years in the personal condition of the
clergy ; it proves to us, that towards the close of the
seventh century the majority of the higher clergy were
men of German origin. But only a few of these had
acquired their ecclesiastical dignities by their merits ;



* Flodoardi, Historia Ecclesiae Rhemensis (to 948) ed. Colvemerius,
Duaci, 1617 ; Glabri Radulphi Historia Francorum, in Bouquet,
Rerum Gall. Scriptores, torn. x.

Lc Cointe, Annalcs Ecclesiastici Francomun, Paris, 1668, fol. torn,
iv.-viii ; Longueval, Histoire de I'Eglise Gallicanc, Pai'is, 1732, torn,
iv.-vii.



204 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

tliey had either purchased them from the kings, or they
had obtained them through the powerful influence of
their relatives, or, what was more common, they had
seized them by violence. Nor was their conduct in
them unworthy of the manner in which they had pro-
cured them. Their rudeness, their ignorance, their
moral depravity, the confusion introduced by them into
all that was ecclesiastical, descended from them to the
inferior clergy. There were bishops, such as Savaric of
Auxerre, who, during the confusion after the death of
Pepin of Heristal, carried on war through ambition and
through the mere love of fight ; who conquered pro-
vinces, and ruled them as sovereigns. Already had
begun the prejudicial union of many ecclesiastical bene-
fices in one person. Hugo bishop of Rouen, about the
year 718, was at the same time bishop of Paris and
Bayeux, and abbot of Fontenelle and Jumiege. On the
other side, the Church was, in consequence of the uni-
versal dissolution of all social relations, so defenceless,
that many bishops, such as Tetric of Auxerre, Gaudin
of Soissons, Lambert of Maestricht, were murdered,
about the year 707- Under Charles Martel, the mea-
sure of iniquity was filled. This chieftain, to attach to
himself his followers, those Frank warriors, with whom,
like another Clovis, he had a second time conquered
Gaul, knew no better means to obtain his end, than to
bestow upon them with a prodigal hand bishoprics and
rich abbeys. Less evil would have been the conse-
quence of this spoliation, had it been confined to the
temporal possessions of the Church ; but he not unfre-
quently placed these men of the sword amongst the
clergy, and to give them an appearance of legal claims
he appointed them bishops and abbots. There were
now to be seen abbots who expended the revenues of
their abbeys in worldly pomp, whilst their monks were
abandoned to poverty and to vice. Bishoprics fell into
the hands of men, such as was Milo, one of the follow-
ers of Charles, who for forty years desolated the church
of Rheims, and for a part of that period the church
also of Treves. Thus were ecclesiastical foundations



PERIOD THE THIRD. 205

in these dioceses dissipated, and the clergy, instead of
representing an united, organic body, were the model
only of an unconnected crowd of depraved individuals.

Pepin and Carlomann, the sons of Charles, exerted
their serious endeavours, the former in Neustria, the
latter in Austrasia, to raise the Church of Gaul from
this state of degradation. Carlomann, in the beginning
of his reign, called from Germany into Gaul, St. Boni-
face, the vicar of the Roman see, and besought him to
hold a synod for the restoration of ecclesiastical order,
which had been destroyed by the grievous corruptions
of seventy years. This synod was convened in the year
742 : it was composed of Austrasian bishops, and was
attended by the temporal barons. Many unworthy
ecclesiastics were deposed and subjected to penance :
the bearing of arms, military service, hunting, a worldly
mode of dress, and residence in the same dwelling with
females, w^ere prohibited to the clergy ; priests were
severely commanded to obey their bishops, and annual
synods were decreed. In another assembly, which met
soon after at Lestines, in the diocese of Cambray, it
was ordained that the king should for a time employ a
portion of ecclesiastical property for the maintenance of
his army ; but that a tax upon this portion should be
paid to the churches and monasteries which had been
recently plundered. By this means the bishops obtained
an acknowledgment of the right of the Church to its
alienated property. Similar ordinances were passed
by a synod which was called by Pepin in 744 at Sois-
sons. At another synod, over which St. Boniface
presided, in 746, many French bishops, who had been
in hostility with the pope, probably because they refused
to acknowledge the legatine powers of St. Boniface
over the churches of Gaul, solemnly promised canonical
obedience to the see of Rome. The metropolitan au-
thority, which had disappeared in the confusion of
these latter times, was now restored and confirmed.

Charlemagne prosecuted the work of restoration
which his father and uncle had begun. The reign of
Charlemagne forms the erolden aare of the Church of



206 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

French Gaul. The exaltation of the Church, the
strengthening of its internal order, the extension of its
influence upon social life, formed the chief occupation
of his life. His capitularies refer principally to eccle-
siastical affairs : as guardian of the Church, he exercised
an extensive vigilance over all its interests ; ecclesias-
tics, as possessors of ecclesiastical property, were sub-
jected to him, no less than were his temporal vassals.
But never did he attempt to meet with jealousy or
suspicion the authority of the head of the Church ; never
did he seek to oppose or to limit its power ; he, on
the contrary, published all his decrees on ecclesiastical
affairs under the authority of the pope, or with the ap-
probation of the Roman see ; he exhorted all to obey
the commands of this see, even then when it imposed
upon them an almost intolerable yoke. Not less near
to his heart was the desire to bring all into subjection
to the episcopal hierarchy ; for in a capitulary of the
year 804, he declared that he should learn the fidelity
of his subjects from their obedience in ecclesiastical
matters to their bishops. Those who refused this obe-
dience were to be punished with exile, confiscation, and
infamy. Charles frequently selected the chief officers
of his state from amongst the clergy : his messengers
{missi dotninici) who were sent to examine into the
state of the country, to watch the administration of
justice, to receive and to examine complaints, to call
the counts, the bishops, abbots, and the royal vassals to
meet in council, were, at least the half of them, eccle-
siastics. In the year 813, he caused, for the promotion
of a general amelioration of morals, five synods to be
convoked, almost at the same time, at Aries, Rheims,
Mentz, Tours, and Chalons-on-the-Soane. He after-
wards, at the diet of Aix-la-Chapelle, published a capi-
tulary, which contained the canons of these synods,
that required his royal approbation.

In the iron age, which extended from the end of the
seventh to the middle of the eighth century, literary and
theological education had been almost destroyed ; but the
reign of Charlemagne effected here also a most happy



PERIOD THE THIRD. 207

change. He drevvaround himself the mostlearned men of
the age from the different countries of Europe: from Italy,
Peter of Pisa and Paul Warnefried ; from England, the
most profound theologian of the time, the monk Alcuin,
who had been educated in the flourishing cloister school
of York; men such as Theodolph andLeidrad, the former
bishop of Orleans, the latter archbishop of Lyons, were
constantly in his company. In the year T^"] ^ he, by a
circular letter, exhorted all bishops and abbots to erect
in their cathedrals and monasteries schools for the in-
struction of the clergy, in which the liberal arts might
be taught and the Scriptures explained. To incite the
clergy to a more profound study of theology, he himself
sent to them questions on the doctrine and discipline of
the Church. Schools were therefore now erected after
the model of those in the court of Lyons, and at Orleans
in almost every cathedral and cloister ; the most cele-
brated of these schools was that which was under the
guidance of Alcuin in the monastery of St. Martin of
Tours. From it there went forth Amalarius of Treves,
Rabanus of Mentz, Heto abbot of Fulda, Haimo of
Halberstadt, and Samuel of Worms. Under the direc-
tion of Rabanus the school of Fulda arose to great
celebrity, and at the same time flourished the schools of
Corbey, Aniane, St. Germanus of Auxerre, Reihonau,
and Hirsan.

Charles's weaker, but more pious and more learned,
son and successor, Lewis, applied himself to the aff'airs
of the Church with the most serious attention. He
himself declared that he accounted the protection and
exaltation of the Church and of its ministers, together
with the preservation of peace and justice, amongst the
most sacred of his duties. At the diet of Aix-la-Cha-
pelle, in 816, he formed a series of laws referring solely
to the affairs of the Church ; but a succession of trou-
bles, the rebellion of his nephew and of his sons, inter-
rupted the peace of the Church, and of the kingdom.
During the civil war many bishops were driven from
their sees : others, on account of their participation in
the rebellion were deprived ; and cloisters and eccle-



208 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

siastical property fell again into the plundering hands
of the nobles. But Lewis ordained, in 829, that four
synods should be held at the same time, at Mentz,
Paris, Lyons, and Toulouse, for the improvement of the
court, of the clergy, and of the people. He made
known the chief means proposed for this purpose, in a
capitulary at an assembly at Worms ; but he possessed
not the power or the authority to enforce obedience to
his decree. Already had the bishops complained that
the freedom of election was invaded, that the religious
instruction of the people and of children was neglected,
that the public schools were again abandoned, that
temporal power encroached too far upon ecclesiastical
authority, and that many bishops were too deeply
engaged in worldly affairs.

During the reign of Charles the Bald, a series of
synods were held after the year 840, at Coulaines, Thi-
onville, Loire, Beauvais, and Meaux. Numerous canons
were formed for the improvement of the state of the
Church, but their frequent repetition proves to us that
they were not observed. At an assembly at Epernay, in
816, the tem.poral barons, who had brought over the
king to their side, excluded the bishops from the delibe-
rations, and adopted only those canons which did not
nearly affect them, without obliging themselves to the
desired restitution of Church property. The wide-
extending depredations of the Normans, who plundered
churches and cloisters with particular fury, had now
begun. These invaders destroyed the city of Rouen in
841 ; in 845 they appeared before Paris, and in 853
they murdered one hundred and sixteen monks of the
celebrated monastery of Marmoutier. Through the in-
capacity of the king, and the v/ild avarice of many of
the nobles, the bishops often saw themselves necessitated
to undertake the defence of cities beleaguered by the
Normans, or to raise bodies of troops and to place
themselves at their head.

That glory of ecclesiastical learning, and that long
series of theological writers, who went from the schools
of Charlemagne, and who formed themselves during the



PERIOD THE THIRD. 209

interval of peace and tranquillity which he ^s^ave to
Europe, threw their splendour on the reign of Lewis
and of his sons, down to the year 8/0. Agobard Lupus
abbot of Ferrieres, Angelmus a monk of Luxeu, Pascha-
sius Radbertus, Ratramnus, Prudentius of Troyes,
Florus, Amalarius, iEneas of Paris, Jonas of Orleans,
Joannes Erigena, Usuard, Remigius of Lyons, Ado of
Vienne, were all more or less contemporaries ; none
survived the year 8/5, and, as they left behind them no
scholars, or scholars of only little learning, and as so
many seats of education Avere destroyed, schools dis-
persed, libraries burnt, and as the bishops and priests
had to contend with foreign and domestic misery, the
ecclesiastical literature of the following years presents
an aspect dreary and barren.

Through the w hole of the tenth century, the troubled
state of the land, which had now become the defence-
less booty of the Normans, and of the nobles, who during
the impotence of the kingly authority ruled with tyran-
nic sway, cast its influence also upon the Church. Si-
mony, plunder of ecclesiastical property, and contempt
of all ecclesiastical order, were occurrences of every
day. The ignorance of the clergy obliged Frotier
bishop of Poictiers, and Fulrad bishop of Paris, about
the year 910, to engage Abbo, a monk of St. Germain,
to compose a series of homilies on the principal truths
of Christianity, which might serve their priests as
themes for sermons. The synod of Trosley, in 909,
lamented that numbers of men had grown old who had
never learned the creed or the Lord's prayer. During
the civil dissensions of France, when the regal power of
the last Carlovingians yielded to the might of the greater
vassals, and whilst the royal prerogatives were divided
amongst many, the political position and the influence
of the Church were weakened and disturbed. We no
longer hear the episcopacy, assembled in numerous
synods, raising its voice against the abuses of the times,
— for synods were now rarely convened — we see only
individual prelates, powerful by their family connexions
or by their political stations, in particular the arch-

VOL. III. P



210 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

bishop of Rlieims, who, judgmg and determiniiiG; by the
course of poUtical events, usurped their sees. But the
see of Rheims became itself, about the year 925, the
prey of a powerful noble, Herbert count of Vermandois,
who forced into it his son Hugo, a youth of fifteen
years of age. The pope, the unworthy John X, con-
sented to this act, but commissioned Abbo bishop of
Soissons to undertake the spiritual administration of
the diocese. Count Herbert opposed this, and conferred
the spiritual jurisdiction upon Waldrich bishop of
Acques, who had been driven from his see by the
Magyari. King Rudolf, when, in 932, he was at enmity
with Herbert, and had taken possession of Rheims,
caused Artold to be elected archbishop. The new pre-
late received the pallium from the pope John XI, and
in 936, after the death of Rudolf, crowned his successor
Lewis IV. But in 940, he fell into the hands of count
Herbert and his allies ; he was compelled to resign, and
Hugo was again elected archbishop in a synod assem-
bled at Soissons, under the arms of his father ; he was
consecrated at Rheims, and maintained himself until
the year 946, when Rheims fell into the hands of king
Lewis, whose forces were joined with those of the Ger-
man king Otho, and Artold was again placed in his see
by the archbishops of Treves and Mentz. Hugo en-
deavoured to defend himself by force of arms : the
archbishop of Treves, as papal plenipotentiary, assem-
bled two synods at Verdun and Mousson, both of w hich
declared in favour of Artold ; the same declaration was
made by the synod of Ingelheim, which was convened
by the papal legate Marinus in 948, at which, however,
only Rudolf of Laon and Artold appeared from France,
as the duke Hugo the Great, whose power was more
mighty than that of the king, prevented the attendance
of the other French prelates. Hugo was here excom-
municated, and Artold remained in quiet possession of
the see of Rheims,

Hugh Capet, who, in 98/, ascended the throne, and
gave to France a new race of kings, had possessed as
duke of France greater power than the last of his pre-



PERIOD THE THIRD. 21 1

decessors, ^vhoso immediate possessions were confined
to the city of Laon and its surrounding territory. But
the founders and the supporters of his kingdom were
principally the bishops ; they it was, w^ho by their
act of coronation and anointing gave to him in the
eyes of his contemporaries, a valid claim to the regal
dignity; whilst his rival the duke Charles, of lower
Lorraine, who was the real heir to the crown, but who
had not received the regal unction, was never recog-
nised as king, even by his own adherents. The king-
dom had now need of the Church, and the Church of
the kingdom. No one had a greater interest than the
clergy to see the kingdom raised from that state of im-
potence and degradation into which it had been cast by
the triumph of the feudal system and the entire inde-
pendence of the nobles. The bishops, too weak to de-
fend themselves against the oppression of these nobles,
required the assistance of a powerful protector. It was
their interest to maintain themselves in that immediate
position wdth the king, which had been endangered by
the usurpations of the dukes ; for as it is said by a con-
temporary, " through the w eakness of the kingdom the
duke of Aquitaine, and the other great nobles, began
to exercise over the bishops that power which had
before been possessed by the kings;"* that is, they
endeavoured to make the bishops their vassals, and
gave to them the investitures of the temporalties of
their bishoprics ; this was done by the duke of Aqui-
taine, in 1020, to the bishop of Limoges, and by Thi-
baut count of Chartres to the abbot of the cloister of
St. Peter. But although in later times no particular
acts of this kind occurred, still the clergy beheld in
these precedents an attack upon their ancient freedom,
and never was it conceded by them that the election of
a bishop required the consent of any other than the
king, or that any other person could confer investitures.
Hence those prelates whose dioceses were not within the
hereditary domains of the first Capetians, were called to

* Chron. Rich. Mon. Clun. ni)inl Bouquet, x. 264.

p2



212 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

the royal councils ; and although the bishops sometimes
attended the councils of the great nobles, this was a
voluntary participation such as they had formerly taken
in the municipal assemblies, but no service. Lastly, it w as
the clergy who brought the nobles, w4io exercised an
almost sovereign authority in their states, to this recog-
nition (which w^as most effective for the formation of the
regal power), that a public foundation, such as the erec-
tion or endowment of a monastery, required the con-
currence of regal authority.

In these times of tyranny and slavery, of harsh
power on the one hand, and of weakness on the other,
the temporal jurisdiction, which had before been exer-
cised by the kings in France, was forced upon the
Church, by the necessity of circumstances. Not unfre-
quently did the kings call for spiritual censures against
their vassals, whom they could not subdue by force of
arms ; but more frequently did the wealaiess of the law
compel the bishops to have recourse to excommunica-
tion, and the excommunicated man was obliged, when
he sought to be freed from censure, to lay his cause be-
fore the bishop, who alone could absolve him. And now
all those who were without protection, and who were
suffering from unjust oppression, sought an asylum at
the tribunal of the bishops ; here alone they found the
will and the power to assist them, here a mild trial
according to the forms of law, whilst in other places
the sw^ord decided. By the introduction of the peace
of God and of the trnce of God, the circle of ecclesias-
tical jurisdiction was enlarged, as all violations of the
peace and of the truce were considered as crimes against
religion, and were punished by ecclesiastical censures.
But this relation of the episcopacy with the sovereign
and the people, as well as the necessity of defending
themselves against attacks and usurpations of all kinds,
involved the bishops in an endless contest with the feu-
dal nobility ; in which being physically the weaker
party, they endeavoured to sharpen their arms of eccle-
siastical censure. Thus originated the Interdict, of the
use of which w^e find the first example about the end of



PERIOD THE THIRD. 213

the tenth oontury. The interdict was in reahty an exten-
sion of the excommunication from the person of the
evil-doer to his possessions. The ban to which the
offender often showed himself indifferent as long as it
affected only himself, was laid upon his castle, then
upon his domains ; that is, it was prohibited to celebrate
in them the divine worship, or publicly to administer
the sacraments. Sometimes also, the ban was laid upon
countries which had become the prey of powerful
tyranny. Thus about the beginning of the eleventh
century, Aldian bishop of Limoges adopted this as the
only means of freeing his diocese from devastation and
his people from plunder, when he forbad the celebration
of the public service in all the churches and cloisters of
his bishopric. As this expedient was not so far extend-
ed as to deprive the innocent of the necessary means of
sanctification, the bishops thought that they might inflict
this punishment for the public welfare, and for the duty
of self-preservation. But there could not fail occasions
in which so powerful a weapon, which ought to have
been employed only with the greatest prudence and
justice, would, in the hands of unworthy and worldly-
minded bishops, be wielded only for evil. As early as
the year 1026, it happened that bishops in contests with
powerful nobles, subjected without cause their dioceses,
and sometimes a whole province, to an interdict. This
was done by Robert, the unworthy archbishop of Rouen,
who had publicly married, and who in a quarrel with
Duke Robert, placed the entire province of Normandy
under this sentence.

The confusion of ecclesiastical order and discipline
w^hich continued in France to the first half of the
eleventh century, until Leo IX adopted strong measures
against it, shows itself in the disturbed relations be-
tween the bishops and the abbots. Some bishops required
from the abbots an oath of fidelity, the same that was
required by feudal lords from their vassals : an oath of
this kind was taken by Joceline abbot of Fleury to the
bishop of Orleans. Many bishops about the year 993
endeavoured to deprive the monasteries of all their



214 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

tithes, which, as they asserted, the monks had accjuired
by usurping them from their lawful owners, the secular
clergy : for this purpose, the bishops held a synod at
St. Denis, near Paris ; but the monks, supported by the
people, defeated the attempts of the prelates. But
consequences more formidable still were threatened by
another abuse — the daily increasing violation of the law
of celibacy. Under the Carlovingians, the decrees
against the mixed society of ecclesiastics and females
w^ere frequently renewed, both in the capitularies and
in the canons of synods. Priests were permitted to
retain in their dwellings, only their mothers, their sis-
ters, or such persons upon whom no suspicion could
rest. But in these laws there is no mention of the
marriage of priests, for all of them are founded upon
the persuasion, that down to the end of the ninth cen-
tury married priests were not to be found in France.
The pope Nicholas I severely reproved Ado bishop of
Vienne, who had sanctioned the marriage of a sub-
deacon. The first example of an ecclesiastic who had
formally married is found in the diocese of Chalons, in
894 ; and to the bishop Mancio so extraordinary did
this example appear, that he consulted with the bishops
of the province of Rlieims on the punishment with which
the offending priest should be visited. A synod of
Bourges, in 1031, decreed that every ecclesiastic re-
ceiving the order of subdeacon should solemnly vow in
the presence of the bishop never to take to himself a
wife or concubine, or if he were already married, to
separate from his wife. But in Normandy and Bretagne
this law of the Church was about this time violated
without shame. After the invasion of Rollo, the rudest
and the most ignorant of his Norman followers found
their way by degrees amongst the clergy : they con-
tinued when ecclesiastics to carry arms, and to live in
every respect as laics ; they had wives and concubines;
and, as their prelates gave them the example (for not
only the above-named Robert of Rouen, but his succes-
sor also, Mauger, lived in open matrimony), the priests
of the country and the canons entered without remorse



PERIOD THE THIRD. 215

into the same state. About the same time, 1034, Os-
caiid, bishop of Qnimper in Bretagne, espoused a wife,
and in the neiglibouring diocese of Mans, Siegfried,
who had purchased his see by the cession of some do-
mains, hved pubhcly in a state of concubinage.

Attempts w ere now made to secure benefices as inhe-
ritances in famiUes: bishops gave manors of their dioceses
as dowers to their children ; and with these scandals,
simony, which now began to spread universally, was in
close connexion. Dukes and counts made public traf-
fic of the bishoprics and abbeys within their territories:
they squandered them upon their relatives, or sold
them to the highest bidders. The evil went so far, that
a bishopric was once sold v^^hilst the bishop was still
alive ; another was bequeathed by a nobleman to his
wife. Next to simony, and the incontinency of the
clergy, the greatest and most oppressive evil was the
entire lawlessness and rapacious anarchy, the war of all
against all, which the bishops sought to remedy by the
truce of God. Of eighteen synods which w ere held in
France during the course of the eleventh century,
almost every one engaged itself in devising means to
arrest these three great evils of the times.

Notwithstanding these horrors, which were great im-
pediments to learning, the schools of the cathedrals
continued to flourish, and the cloister-schools were
multiplied, in consequence of the reform introduced
into many of the religious houses. The reformed abbeys
were the most noble and the most vigorous members
of the then emaciated body of the French Church : they
were the seminaries in which were formed the best of
its bishops. Now were seen the good effects of the
immediate subjection of these monasteries to the see of
Rome ; for by this they w^ere defended against the
devastations of the temporal barons. In the tenth cen-
tury there are but few names which form the chain by
which the tradition of ecclesiastical learning is conveyed
to us : Remigius of Auxerre, Hurbald of St. Amand,
the celel)rated Gerbert, abbot of Fleury, and Fulbert of
Chartres. The last-named lived also in the eleventh



216 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

century, and under his direction the school of Chartres
was the most flourisliing episcopal seminary in France.
The school of Rheims preserved its primitive fame
under the scholars of Gerbert, and that of Tours was
frequented by many students under the well-known
Berengarius. Distinguished cloister-schools existed in
the abbey of Marmoutiers, which had been reformed
by St. Majolus of Cluny, and in the abbey of St. Be-
nignus at Dijon, after the abbot William (who died in
1031) had introduced into it a reformation of Cluny.
The best schools of Normandy were in the abbey of
Feram, which was restored in the year 1001, and about
the end of the period, in the abbey of Bee, in which
Lanfranc, the most learned theologian of his age, and
after him, his more celebrated pupil, Anselm, directed
the studies. In this abbey, so great a number of Ger-
man youths were taught, that Wilberam the scholr.stic
of Bamburg, who had himself been one of its pupils,
formed hopes that learning would spread from it into
his native land. Amongst other distinguished men,
pope Alexander II, Guitmund archbishop of Antwerp,
and Ivo bishop of Chartres were taught in this school.
The school of Paris was now in such repute, that it
drew to itself students from distant lands. St. Stanis-
laus bishop of Cracow, Adalbero bishop of Wurzburg,
Altmann bishop of Passau, and Gebhard archbishop of
Salzburg, were amongst its scholars.

A long hierarchical contest, which sprung from na-
tional distinctions and from political relations, disturbed
the peace of the Church in the west of France. As
early as the fifth century, the bishops of Bretagne^ par-
ticularly the bishops of Dol, had endeavoured to with-
draw themselves from the metropolitical jurisdiction of
the archbishops of Tours. In 566, a synod at Tours
passed decrees against them : and the entire subjection
of Bretagne to the power of France brought with it the
restoration of the archiepiscopal jurisdiction of the
Church of Tours. But about the year 847, Nominee, a
chieftain of Bretagne, who wished to free his native
land from the ecclesiastical as well as the political



PERIOD THE THIRD. 21/

dominion of France, and to f^ain the crown for liimself,
renewed the separation. His first endeavour was to
remove the bishops who might oppose his undertaking :
he accused them of simony, and sent them to Rome to
be judged by the pope. But when, contrary to his ex-
pectations, no sentence of condemnation was passed,
he called a synod at Coetlou near Vannes : he induced
the accused bishops— they were the bishops of Vannes,
Quimper, Laon, and Dol — by menaces of death, to
declare themselves guilty ; he then placed in their sees
men devoted to himself ; he founded two new bishop-
rics at Treguier and St. Brieu, and raised the Church
of Dol to the rank of a metropolitan. He next declared
Actard bishop of Nantes deposed, without a trial, and
tlien caused himself to be crowned king by his bishops.
Actard was restored after the death of Nominoe, and
Solomon, the succeeding king, who endeavoured in vain
to obtain from the pope the pallium for the bishop of
Dol, through respect for the desire of the pontiff, rein-
stated the banished bishops of Laon and Quimper in
their churches. His atttempt to restore the bishops
who had been last exiled by Nominoe was the cause of
a conspiracy which deprived him of life. The bishops
of Dol renewed from time to time their pretensions to
metropolitan jurisdiction. Gregory VII seems to have
supported them, for he sent the pallium to Even bishop
of that see ; but he finally left the decision of this ques-
tion to the judgment of a synod at Xaintes, which, in
1080, had decreed that the bishops of Bretagne were
to be subject to the metropolitan of Tours ; but this
tedious question occupied more than a century before
it was definitively concluded.



218 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

SECTION II.

THE CHURCH OF GERMANY, FROM 888 TO 1073.*

At the decline of the French monarchy, after the depo-
sition and death of Charles the Fat, in 888, the five
nations of the East Franks, Swabians, Bavarians, Thu-
ringians, and Saxons, formed the German kingdom. To
these were added, in the south-east, the marquisate of
Carinthia, which was sometimes united with Bavaria
and sometimes separated from it ; in the west, Lorraine,
which was now attached to Germany and now to France ;
and, after the year 1022, the kingdom of Burgundy.
The chief church in all Germany was, and continued to
be, after the time of St. Boniface, the church of Mentz.
It suffragan churches were, first, Strasburg, Worms,
Spire, Constance, Chur, Augsburg, Eichstadt, and
Wurzburg : this number was raised to twelve, when the
Saxon bishoprics, Paderborn, Halberstadt, Hildesheim,
and Verden were added to it. Cologne, which had
been appointed one of the suffragan churches of Mentz
by Boniface, was acknowledged as a metropolitan in
the eighth century, and counted as its suffragan churches
the bishoprics of Luttich (formerly Tongers, and since
the year 708, Maestricht), Utrecht, Munster, Min-
den, and Osnaburg. The metropolitan province of
Treves had been formed from early times of the three
churches of Lorraine, Metz, Toul, and Verdun. The
Bavarian bishops of Saben (called since the tenth cen-
tury Brixen), Freysing, Ratisbon, Passau, honoured the
church of Salzburg as their metropolitan, after the year
798. To the archbishopric of Magdeburg, which was



* Regino, Ditlimar of Merseburg, Adam of Bremen, Lambert of
Aschaifenburg ; Witticliiudi Mon. Corbej. Annales (to 957) in JMei-
bom, SS. Rerum Germ., torn. i. ; Adelboldi, Vita Henrici II, in
Leibnitz 8S. Brunsvic. torn. i. ; Wipponis, Vita Conradi Salici, in
Pistorius, torn. iii.

Sigismund. Called, Annales Ecclesiastici Germania^, toni. iv. v.



PERIOD THE THIRD. 219

founded in the year 968, the bishops of Zeiss (known
since the year 1029 by the name of Nanmburg), Mirse-
burg, Meissen, Havelberg, and Brandenburg, were
subjected. The archiepiscopal see of Bremen and
Hamburg had under it the bishopric of Aldenburg
(since called Lubec), which was founded in 952, and
from which, in 1052, the two bishoprics of Mecklen-
burg (afterwards named Schwerin) and Rasseburg were
formed. With the inheritance of Burgundy, the metro-
politan church of Besancon, with its suffragans Basil
and Lausanne, of which the former had belonged to
Germany since the year 888, and the archiepiscopal
churches of Lyons and of Aries, were added to the king-
dom of Germany.

The first German synod, which was held in 894, at
the royal villa of Tribur, and which consisted of twenty-
two bishops, w'ho met to restore and to confirm eccle-
siastical discipline and authority, exhibits to us a close
connexion between the Church and the power of the
state. With the consent of king Arnulf, and of the
temporal barons who were present, it was decreed that
a person who had been excommunicated by a bishop,
and who would not give satisfaction, should be im-
prisoned by the counts ; that in disputes between a
priest and a laic the bishop should judge ; that an or-
dinance of a bishop should be preferred to that of the
count, when they were opposed. At the request of the
archbishop of Cologne, and with the consent of the
pope, the rank of metropolitan was taken from the
archbishop of Bremen, and a place was assigned to him
amongst the bishops ; but in the year 9 1 1 the former
dignity was restored by Sergius IIL

After the death of Arnulf, iii 899, when his son Lewis,
a youth of sixteen years of age, bore the name of king,
the all-destroying incursions of the Hungarians com-
menced, and Germany, weakened and internally con-
fused by the gradual partition of all property into feuds,
by the forced transition of the defenceless land propri-
etors into a state of servitude, became the prey of a
confusion, against which the clergy, as well as other



220 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.
Artur Rogóż
Administrator
Posty: 4635
Rejestracja: 24 maja 2010, 04:01
Kontakt:

Re: A history of the church - tekst po angielsku

Post autor: Artur Rogóż »

classes, could not defend themselves ; for they possessed
not that strict unity and that unanimity of feeling which
they could find only in a close adherence to their centre-
point, the see of Rome. This see itself was at this time
the sport of unworthy parties.* The chief prelate of
Germany, Hatto archbishop of Mentz, now conducted
the affairs of the kingdom, in conjunction with the
duke of Saxony. It appears that to him the French
duke Conrad ow ed his elevation to the throne after the
death of Lewis. But Germany and the German Church
now stood upon the brink of that gulph into which
France and its Church had been plunged. Otbert
bishop of Strasburg was murdered in 913; Einhard
bishop of Spire w^as deprived of his see ; and Solomon
bishop of Constance was held in confinem.ent by the
Swabian counts, Erchanger and Berthold. Arnulf duke
of Bavaria gave away the bishoprics of his dukedom
according to his own caprice. Happily, however, after
the death of Conrad, in 9 18, the powerful and intelligent
race of the Saxon dukes ascended the throne, and saved
the German from the fate of the French Church. In
the year 916, a synod was held at Altheim, over which
a papal legate presided, for the removal of gross eccle-
siastical abuses ; but the bishops of the north of Ger-
many were not present.

Under the beneficent reign of Henry I (from 919 to
936) the German Church by degrees arose from its de-
gradation ; only the bishoprics of Bavaria suffered
under the misrule of the duke Arnulf, for Henry had
conceded to him as the price of his subjection the right
of presentation. He squandered their goods amongst
his feudal followers. But such a right was obtained
by no other of the German dukes ; and under the wise,
energetic, and pious government of Otho I (939-9/3),
who, by his victory on the Lech, arrested for ever the
Hungarian incursions, the Church of Germany arose to
such a height of splendour, that it far outshone the
Churches of all other lands. In the beginning of the

* See page 133 et seqq.



, PERIOD THE THIRD. 221

reign of Otho, Gerhard l)isliop of Passaii presented to
pope Leo VII so dark a picture of the moral degrada-
tion and of the ecclesiastical abuses of Germany, that
the pope sent him back as his legate, with full powers
to restore discipline, and exhorted all the German
bishops to show him obedience, and to afford him as-
sistance in all things. But in later times, extraordinary
powers of this kind appear not to have been necessary;
and the legatine powers which the pope conferred upon
Bruno arclibishop of Cologne were exercised only for
the reformation of particular monasteries. This same
Bruno, the brother of the king, presided over the eccle-
siastics of the court as chief chaplain, and employed
himself in the education of worthy young priests, from
amongst whom Otho generally selected the bishops and
abbots of his kingdom ; for at this time the institution
to bishoprics ordinarily followed the royal nomination ;
and it was an exception when, at the request of Poppo
bishop of Wurzburg, Otho granted to the chapter of
that see the free election of their prelates. But Otho
repaid the loss of free election by the conscientious
prudence with which he selected the bishops. Hence
the number of distinguished prelates who marked his
reign. Men such as the blessed Ulrich bishop of Augs-
burg, and Bruno archbishop of Cologne, and at the same
time duke of Lorraine, were in temporals as well as in
spirituals the fathers and the guardians of the people.
To Madgeburg, a see of his own foundation, Otho gave
that excellent prelate the archbishop Adalbert ; and
Frederic archbishop of Mentz was, notwithstanding his
equivocal politics, a model for his clergy. Amongst
the cloisters, Corbey, which possessed the historian
Wittokind, and the abbey of St. Gall, where Notker
translated the Psalms into German, and where Ecke-
hard lived, to whom Otho entrusted the education of
his son Otho II, were at this time in high repute. This
regular and flourishing state of the Church exercised a
beneficent influence upon social life, and many cities
now arose rapidly under the protection of their bishops.
A great change was introduced into the hierarchy of



222 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

the German Church, when Gerhard bishop of Passau
induced the pope Leo VII to confer upon him the dig-
nity of metropoHtan of Lorch. Herokl archbishop of
Salzburg used every effort to avert this hivasion of his
right and of his diocese ; and in the year 947 pope
Agapite terminated the dispute between the two
churches, by assigning the southern and western Pan-
nonia to the archbishop of Salzburg, and the eastern
Pannonia, with Moravia, to bishop Gerhard, who placed
his see at Lorch, as the pope wished not to erect a new
metropolitan, but to restore one that had before existed.
But Adalbert, the successor of Gerhard, appears to have
renounced his claims to the Church of Lorch, and to
have contented himself with Passau. In 973, pope
Benedict VI confirmed to Frederic archbishop of Salz-
burg the exclusive possession of the metropolitan juris-
diction in the provinces of Pannonia and Noricum, that
is, in Bavaria and Austria ; but when Pelegrinus bishop
of Passau related to pope Benedict VII all that he had
done for the propagation of Christianity amongst the
Magyari, he received the pallium, as archbishop of
Lorch, in the year 975.

Under the two following Othos, the son and the
grandson of Otho the Great, the majority of the Ger-
man bishops who were now generally chosen, consisted
of men who were worthy of their high vocation. Dis-
tinguished by the union of all episcopal virtues were
the holy Wolfgang of Ratisbon, Gerhard of Toul, Con-
rad of Constance, who had been three times to Pales-
tine, Pelegrinus of Passau, and Bernward of Hildesheim.
With Bernward, the powerful Willigis (who to the sur-
prise and dissatisfaction of many, as he was the son of
a woodman, had ascended the archiepiscopal throne of
Mentz, whilst the greater number of the surrounding
bishoprics were possessed by the sons of dukes and
counts) contended for jurisdiction over the cloister of
Gandersheim. This dispute was caused by Sophia, a
sister of the emperor Otho, who would receive the veil
only from the hands of an archbishop, and therefore
persuaded Willigis to assume jurisdiction over this



PERIOD THE THIRD. 223

cloister, wliich belonged to the diocese of Hildeslieiin.
Whilst Bernward submitted his cause to the pope and to
the emperor, Willigis procured the right over the clois-
ter to be adjudged to liim by a synod that was held at
Gandershcim. A synod at Rome, however, declared for
Bernvvard ; and a papal legate, the cardinal Frederic,
convened a synod at Polden, where Willigis comported
himself with haughtiness, departed suddeidy from the
council, and drew down upon himself from the legate a
sentence of suspension. In vain did the pope and the
emperor call to Rome the German bishops, who then,
like the temporal princes, were indignant at the long
absence and estrangement of Otho from Germany.
They went not. Two new synods, one at Frankfort,
the other at Todi, in Italy, could lead to no decision.
Otho II died, and it was not till the year 1007, that
tliis controversy was terminated by the mediation of
Henry II, when Willigis solemnly renounced his pre-
tended right. On account of fresh pretensions of the
archbishops of Mentz, another synod at Frankfort, in
1027, confirmed the jurisdiction of the bishop of Hil-
desheim over the long-contested cloister of Ganders-
hcim.

Henry II, who was indebted for his victory over the
pretenders to his throne principally to the bishops,
performed an act of justice by the restoration of the
bishopric of Merseberg. This see had been destroyed
in 981, twelve years after its foundation, to satisfy the
ambition of the bishop Giesler, who placed himself in
the archiepiscopal see of xMagdeburg, and it was for the
greater part, incorporated with this latter church.
Pope Gregory V, in conjunction with Otho III, had de-
creed the restoration of Merseburg in a synod held in
Rome, in the year 998, but Gieseler contrived to delay
it. After his death, in 1004, Henry raised to the see
of Magdeburg Tagmo, a priest of Ratisbon ; he and
the bishops of Meissen and Zeiss restored those portions
which had fallen to their churches ; the bishopric of
Merseburg was declared to be restored, and was given
to the chaplain Wigbert. Of more difficult execution



224 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

was the erection of a new see at Bamberg. This design
lay near to the heart of the pious king ; at the synod of
Frankfort, in 1006, he did what German king liad never
done before. In tears, and prostrate, he cast himself
before the assembled bishops until they complied with
his wish, although Henry bishop of Wurzburg, to whose
diocese Bamberg belonged, entered his protest against
their act. But he was at length moved by the persua-
sions of the bishop of Halberstadt and of the archbishop
of Cologne to cede his rights. Pope John XVIII con-
firmed the new bishopric, and in a second and more
numerous synod at Frankfort, at which the Burgundian
archbishops of Lyons and Tarantaise were present, the
deed of erection was subscribed by all the bishops, and
Eberhard of Wiiligis, the royal chaplain, was consecra-
ted its first bishop.

Henry, from a sense of religion and from the convic-
tion that the bishops were the chief supports of his
throne, gave his fullest confidence to the clergy ; bishops
and abbots were his constant companions and counsel-
lors ; they were placed at the head of his armies, and
their services were compensated by presents and the
grants of privileges. He was the first who granted en-
tire townships to bishops, doubtless, because by this
grant of power he wished to place the spiritual princes
on a level with the temporal barons, many of whom
were alienated from him and had shown signs of rebel-
lion. But it was not from royal munificence alone that
the riches of the German Church sprung. The kings
were accustomed to give to the poorer churches bishops
of rich families, who generally brought with them great
wealth to their sees. Thus Henry named the wealthy
Meinwerk, bishop of the then indigent church of
Paderborn ; Ansfred, when made bishop of Utrecht, be-
stowed upon it five rich provinces ; and Balderich II,
bishop of Liege, gave to his church the countship of
Loos. The cathedral school of Liege, which flourished
under the excellent bishop Notker (who in erecting and
in endowing churches performed works that appear in-
credible), was the seminary of bishops for all Germany.



PERIOD THE THIRD. 225

If Henry were sometimes rapricious in his nominations
to bishoprics, and often without need annulled elections
which had been made, he never permitted himself to
elevate to a bishopric one unworthy of that high station ;
and it is undeniable that the German prelacy was at this
period distinguished by its number of zealous and vir-
tuous prelates, such as Libentius of Bremen, Rethar
and Meinwerk of Paderborn, Adalbero of Metz, Eido of
Meissen, St. Wolbodo of Liege, Burchard of Worms,
Dithmar of Merseburg, the best of all German historians
who Hourislied before Lambert. The greater synods
were not frequently assembled after the middle of the
tenth century, for the diets with which they had been
generally united were now seldom convoked, and ceased
altogether under Henry. The synods, when they were
assembled, had generally some particular object pro-
posed, such as the founding of the see of Bamburg, the
illegal marriage of a prince, or the decision of contro-
versies on episcopal jurisdiction. Under Henry, the
synod of Seligenstadt, in 1022, was the only one that
appears to have been engaged on general ecclesiastical
subjects. Diocesan synods were indeed more frequent,
and their order has been described by Burchard bishop
of Worms.

When, at the death of Henry H, the royal race of
Saxony became extinct, the wisdom and the unanimity
of the bishops preserved the kingdom, which was already
divided by the dukes, from the anarchy and civil war
into which it would have been inevitably cast by the
ambition and self-interest of the temporal barons. By
the exertions of the bishops the election of that most
worthy man, the French duke Conrad, was effected with-
out opposition. The fame of Conrad is sullied, indeed,
by simony, to which the want of money, springing from
the poverty of his inheritance, conducted him. To an
ecclesiastic named W^aldrich, he bartered the bishopric
of Basil for a large sum of gold ; and in the same man-
ner Reginald, a priest of Cologne, obtained from him
the bishopric of Liege. But after three years the con-
science of Reginald awakened him ; he journeyed to

VOL. III. Q



226 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

Rome, and laid his crosier at the feet of the pope, but
was restored to his see, upon condition of bestowing
abundant alms, and of founding a religious house.
Some time after, Conrad himself made a vow never
again to stain himself with simony, and if he did not
strictly observe his promise, it is nevertheless true, that
only men of high worth were placed in the German sees.
We might mention Poppo abbot of Stable, upon whom
Conrad forced the bishopric of Strasburg almost with
violence ; Reginbald bishop of Spire, the celebrated
Bruno bishop of Wurzburg, St. Bardo archbishop of
Mentz, who was so famed as abbot of Herzfeld, that on
his account the ancient right enjoyed by the cloister
of Fulda, of giving to the see of Mentz every alternate
archbishop, was interrupted. There flourished also in
the time of Conrad, St. Godehard bishop of Hildersheim,
who had been nominated by Henry II, famed for his
gift of prophecy, and for the exemplary virtues which
distinguished his cathedral school ; and Unwan of Bre-
men, the zealous apostle of the Christian faith in the
Scandinavian north, the friend of northern kings and
Sclavonian princes.

Henry III (1038-1056) is to be compared to Charle-
magne in this respect, that his interference with eccle-
siastical affairs, which was necessary from the exigencies
of the times, whilst it was exercised with greater wis-
dom and greater purity of intention, was advantageous
in its effects, and has left upon his memory the bene-
diction of his own and of later ages. The preservation
of ecclesiastical continency and the improvement of
ecclesiastical virtues in Germany lay nearest to his
heart. Mindful of the fault of his father, he warned the
bishops against simony, which from time to time again
appeared, which he viewed as the most dangerous of all
evils ; and St. Peter Damian bears this testimony to him,
that after God, he was the means of destroying the
heads of this terrible hydra. In the nomination to
bishoprics he excelled his predecessors ; and with jus-
tice did he select the men whom he placed on the papal
throne from his own episcopacy, at that time the most



PERIOD THE THIRD. 227

excellent in the Church. DistinG^uished above all others
was the school of Eichstadt, which almost at the same
time gave to Rome the pontiff Victor II, to Acquileia
the patriarch Gotebald, to Ravenna the archbishop
Gebehard, and in the course of the century bishops to
six Italian and to three German churches. Luitpold
archbishop of Mentz, was an ornament of the German
prelacy, and a contemporary writer* places him and the
emperor together as the two great lights of the Church,
whom God took too soon away, and after whose death
the decline of religion, of justice, of education and mo-
rality, suddenly appeared.

As soon as Henry, by the happy termination of the
schism,f had restored to the apostolic see its ancient
dignity and strength, Rome regained its due influence
in the ecclesiastical relations of Germany. The excel-
lent bishop Wazo of Liege, justly distinguished the
different relations in which the German prelates stood
with regard to him and to the pope ; " To the pope we
owe obedience and to you fidelity." In 1049, Leo IX
passed from France into Germany, and held a synod at
Mentz in presence of the emperor and of forty bishops,
in which were passed decrees similar to those that
had been framed at Rheims. The holy pope gave an
example of forbearance and moderation, when being on
another occasion in Germany, he pardoned at Worms a
deacon of Mentz, whom he had before deposed on ac-
count of his disobedience, and whom he now restored
at the intercession of the archbishop Luitpold. In
cases of simony, he and his successors were alike inexo-
rable. This evil, the source of almost all other ecclesi-
astical abuses, attained, after the too early death of
Henry III, a frightful height. During the long minority
of his son, the worthy prelates, who had been raised to
their sees in his reign and in that of his predecessor,
followed each other to the tomb, and other men forced
themselves into their places by intrigue, by court favour,
and by corruption. Soon was the German Church dis-

* Gozechini, Epistola apud Mabillon Analect. p. 444. f Sec p. 145.

Q2



228 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

figured by scandals and by crimes of many kinds. Even
Anno, the pious archbishop of Cologne, abused his
power by forcing upon the church of Treves his nephew
Cuno as archbishop, an act which was followed by the
cruel murder of the young prelate. Hozilo bishop of
Hildesheim, during a miserable contest for precedence,
in 1 063, converted the church of Goslar into a battle-
scene and was himself the cause of bloodshed. An in-
experienced youth, Henry, was now bishop of Spires ;
his title to this elevation was that he had been a play-
fellow of his royal master ; Hermann, vice-major-domo
of Mentz, obtained the bishopric of Bamberg at a price
paid by his relatives ; Rudbert abbot of Bamberg pur-
chased for himself, from the courtiers of Henry, the ab-
bey of Reichenau. Even the schism of Cadolous, which
sprung from German pride and Lombard corruption, was
promoted and favoured, as St. Peter Damian, in 1067,
complained, by the courtiers and counsellors of Henry.
A most baneful influence was exercised by Adalbert
archbishop of Bremen, who had won the favour of the
young king, and employed it without conscience for his
own interest and for the interest of others. This, in
many respects meritorious and learned, but vain, am-
bitious, and at the same time, prodigal and avaricious
prelate, who wished to erect for himself a patriarchate
in the north, and who had before disposed of bishoprics
according to his caprice, united himself with the count
Wernha, another favourite of the king, and carried on
with him a shameless commerce in bishoprics and ab-
beys. The property of abbeys they declared to be
royal goods, of w^hich the king could dispose at his
pleasure, and hence the most celebrated and the richest
cloisters, Sehngenstadt, Corbey, Kempten, Altaich,
Malmedy, Stablo, Lauresheim, were given as a prey to
temporal and ecclesiastical princes, to purchase their
favour or to ensure their silence. It was an act of
clemency, if from other cloisters only partial possessions
were taken. The consequence was, that whilst in
France, the cloisters, which were the best seminaries
for the clergy and schools of education, were reformed.



PERIOD THE THIRD. 229

ennobled, and multiplied, those in Germany became
scliools of disorder, or were entirely destroyed. An
attempt of Anno to reform the monastery of Saalfeld,
by the introduction of foreign monks, created such an
excitement in the neiirhbourine: cloisters, that the monks
abandoned them in crowds. The state of the secular
clergy was no better. The unworthy bishops who had
now intruded themselves into the different sees, carried
their ideas further in the ])ractice of that simony, by
Avhich tliey had obtained their churches. In the year
1070, the pope Alexander II employed against them
this bitter reproach, that they gave ordination for
money, and that they ordained those who could pay,
without any reference to their morality or capacity.

Thus a multitude of rude, ignorant, conscienceless
men found their way into the ranks of the German
clergy. They looked upon and treated their state as a
trade, and consequently felt neither the vocation nor
the inclination to practise that continency which was
required by the Church. The bishops, engaged in
worldly affairs, in the affairs of the state, and in projects
of aggrandisement, either deficient themselves in moral
virtue, or too timid to engage in a laborious and wide-
spreading contest, suffered the evil to grow unimpeded,
so that towards the close of the period, the greater part
of the secular clergy was either married or living in a
state of scandalous concubinage. Still it is difficult to
determine when clerogamy first commenced in Germany.
St. Boniface found married clergy in Germany, whom
he endeavoured to lead to a life of continency, or to re-
move from their stations. Under the first Carlovin-
gians, ecclesiastical authority was powerful enough to
enforce ecclesiastical laws, and the introduction or res-
toration of the canonical mode of life lightened the
burden of the bishops on this point. By this method
of life the temptation to marriage was removed from
the most influential part of the clergy, and the example
of so many monks who lived in their cloisters, in edify-
ing continency, must have w'orked powerfully on the
clergy of the country. But towards the close of the



230 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

ninth century, a time of universal confusion, the bands
of ecclesiastical discipline also began to relax. Leo
VII, in his epistle to the German bishops, written in 937,
referred them to the ancient laws of the Church against
the marriage of priests, and against their living in the
same dvveUing with females. The synod of Augsburg,
in 950, saw itself necessitated to renew the law, which
deposed priests who had married, and which obliged
those who had been married before their ordination to
live separate from their wives. From that period to the
middle of the following century, the subject is no more
mentioned. A letter, said to have been written by St.
Ulrich bishop of Augsburg to a pope Nicholas in favour
of the marriage of ecclesiastics, is a puerile fiction, put
into circulation by the married priests of the eleventh
century. In 1049, another decree against clerogamy
was published by the synod of Mentz, but it appears to
have produced no effect, and the evil soon became so
general, that means to arrest it, other than the repe-
tition of former decrees, were found necessary. The
chief seat of the evil, and at the same time the greatest
impediment to its remedy, were amongst the clergy of
the nobility, the chaplains and castle-priests of the
barons, by whom as they received from them their
ecclesiastical fiefs, they were treated as vassals : under
the protection of their patrons and feudal lords, they
were almost independent of episcopal jurisdiction, and
were void, in their ignorance and barbarism, of all sense
of the dignity and duties of their state. These men
took to themselves wives as it pleased them, or lived in
concubinage : their example worked the more easily on
the other clergy, as the cloisters had then greatly dege-
nerated, and the canons of the many destroyed cathedral
and collegiate foundations, not unwillingly cast away
with the other duties of their institute, the obligation
also of continency.

Hence it will be seen, that at the close of this period
the Church of Germany presented a knot difficult to be
unravelled, of licentiousness, of abuses, of corruption,
and of the desecration of all that was most sacred.



PERIOD THE THIRD. 231

The attempt to disentangle it, or rather to cleave it in
twain, with the sword of energetic and searching reme-
dies, must have produced a mighty commotion in every
department of ecclesiastical and civil life, and was the
origin of that conflict, to the issue of which no human
eye could penetrate.



SECTION III.

THE CHURCH IN ITALY.— THE PATARIA.*

The state of the Church in upper and central Italy
during the last years of the Lombard dominion is veiled
in darkness ; but from their names we learn, that the
higher clergy, after the time of Luitprand, were chiefly
Lombards. From the time of the destruction of Arian-
ism, a deep feeling of religion prevailed through the
nation. Churches and cloisters, were built in great
numbers, and w ere richly endowed. Anselm, duke of
Friuli and cousin of king Aistulf, was the founder and
the first abbot of the famed abbey of Nonantula, in the
province of Modena, and had in diiferent cloisters one
thousand one hundred and forty-four religious men
under his direction. Luitprand, who took the title of
Catholic King, in his laws confirmed decrees of synods,
and favoured the erection of pious establishments, prin-
cipally hospitals ; but towards the close of the Lombard
power this flourishing condition of the Church declined ;
and the historian of the nation, Paul Warnefried, la-
ments that, in his time, the once-honoured church of



* Altonis, Ep. Vercellensis, De Pressuris Ecclesiasticis. libri iii,
in cj. o])]). eel. Com. cle Buronzo, Vcnet. 1768, fol.; Eatherii, Ep.
Vcroiiciisi.s, opp. ciirant, P. et Ilicr. Balleriniis, Verona^ 1765, fol,;
Ai-niilplii Mecliolanons. Gcsta Mcdiolanen.sium ; Landulijhi Scnioris,
riistoria Mediolanensis in ]\Inratori Ser. Rer. Ital. toni. iv. ; IJonizonis
Sutriens, episcop. liber ad Aniicum, in Oeleli script, rcruni Boicar, toni.
ii.; B. Andreas Vita S. Arialdi et Landulplii (?) Vita S. Arialili, in
Puricelli de SS. martyribns Arialdi et Ilerlembaldo, INIediolan. 1657,
tol. ; Petri Daniiani ei)i8tolarum, libri viii, ed. Caetani. Paris, 1610, 4.



232 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

St. John fit Monza stood almost abandoned, and was in
the possession of incontinent and simonaieal priests.
Another proof of this state of the Church may be found
in the history of a monk in the country of Brescia, wlio,
in the year 790, announced to the people, that on ac-
count of the sins of the monks, the end of the world
was nigh. In his capacity of prophet he collected a
multitude of followers, whom he divided into troops,
called by him angels, under the direction of others,
whom he named archangels. He then proceeded to
acts of cruelty, particularly against the monks, until he
was seized and executed at Brescia.*

Under the dominion of the Franks, the Italian
churches acquired the same rights that were enjoyed
by the churches in the other parts of the empire. The
bishops became more wealthy and more powerful : by
the immunity of their property they received many
possessions which were placed under their protection :
in the assemblies of the state they obtained the first
places ; they co-operated, and often definitively, in all
state affairs. By degrees they obtained temporal power
over their episcopal cities. The first who acquired this
dominion was Nothing bishop of Brescia, who, in 851,
was named by the emperor count of that city : not all,
but only some, of his successors obtained this right of
countship. Many other bishops possessed at least this
right, that without their consent no royal officer could
sit in judgment in their cities. The Carlo vingian kings
enlarged by various means the power of the Church
throughout Italy. Under the kings Lewis I, Bernard,
and Lothaire, Adelhard abbot of Corbey and his bro-
ther the monk Wala possessed almost entire the govern-
ment of the state. In the absence of the kings they
were the administrators of the government. The royal
ambassadors were generally bishops or abbots ; and
when the king held his placitum, bishops and priests
formed the majority of its members. Hence it was
that during the government of the Carlovingians the

* Ridolfi Notarii historia reruni Brix. p. 17.



PERIOD THE THIRD. 233

property of churches and of cloisters was seldom alien-
ated, and that the abuse of giving abbeys to lay abbots
was of rare occurrence. Two national synods, which
were held at Pavia in 850 and 855, formed a series of
canons directed to the improvement of ecclesiastical
discipline.

The Italian prelacy was at this time most closely
united with the papal see, and thus it acquired greater
strength and a confirmed influence : only the arch-
bishops of Ravenna renewed from time to time their
opposition to Rome. As early as the year 708 the
archbishop Felix, at the time of his consecration at
Rome, by a protest similar to that contained in the
liber cliurnus, refused to bind himself to obedience to
the Roman see ; but he submitted after his return
from his Grecian imprisonment. New contests arose
when Sergius, a married layman, was raised to the
archbishopric, in the year 750. The pope Stephen II
called him to Rome, and threatened him with depriva-
tion ; but he justified himself, by the declaration that
his wife had been a deaconess, and that the former
pope was acquainted with his state when he gave him
consecration. Now followed the grant of the exarchate,
the source of new discords. The archbishop Leo op-
posed himself with all his power to the dominion of the
popes over the cities of the exarchate. He journeyed
to the court of Charlemagne, and at his return asserted
that the king had subjected these cities to him : so far
did he carry his pretensions, that only the Pentapolis,
from Rimini to Gubbio, remained to the pope ; the
other cities obeyed Leo. Pope Adrian appealed more
than once to Charles, but the issue of the controversy
is unknown. It appears indeed to have been the policy
of Charles not to oppose himself earnestly to the pre-
tensions of the archbishop, as the temporal power of
the pope, even without the possession of the exarchate,
appeared to him sufficiently great. The powerful arch-
bishop John (850-878) carried to extremes his oppo-
sition against the popes ; and it appears that the
archbishops of Ravenna again obtained possession of



234 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

the exarchate. His evil deeds extended themselves
even to the inhabitants of the Pentapolis : he imposed
tributes upon the bishops of that province, and took
from them their parish churches and cloisters. Three
times, but in vain, the pope summoned him to Rome,
to answer for his actions before a synod : the pope
Nicholas, at the request of the inhabitants of Ravenna,
visited that city, and restored to the rightful owners
all the property that had been seized by John or by his
brother. But when the emperor would no longer
defend him against the pope, the archbishop was com-
pelled to appear before a synod at Rome, to sign a
deed of submission, and to promise that he would visit
Rome every year ; that he would arbitrarily depose no
bishop in the exarchate, and would abstain from all
deeds of oppression and confiscation. But notwith-
standing these declarations, he again rebelled : he ac-
cused the pope to the emperor, and made common
cause with the Lotharingian bishops, Gunther and
Thietgaud, who had been judged by the pope. But
this new attempt of the archbishop produced no lasting
effect ; his successors returned to the ordinary relations
of subjection to the Roman pontiff.

From the schism of the Istrian bishops during the
controversy on the three articles, there arose in the
north-east of Italy a twofold patriarchate, at Aquileia
and at Grado : for the Catholics opposed to the schism-
atical bishop of Aquileia, who took the title of patri-
arch, the bishop of Grado, with the same patriarchal
title. At the close of the schism, the patriarch of
Aquileia, supported by the Lombard king Desiderius,
endeavoured, in 771, to recover the ancient authority
of his see, and to deprive the bishop of Grado of his
suffragan bishoprics in Istria. The doge of Venice and
the patriarch of Grado appealed to the pope against the
violence of Desiderius ; and the answer of Adrian de-
termined the bishops again to subject themselves to the
jurisdiction of the bishop of Grado, and the more as
Charlemagne had in the meantime taken possession of
Istria. But at a synod held at Mantua in 827, Maxen-



PERIOD THE THIRD. 235

tius the patriarch of Aquileia obtained his end. Dele-
gates of the Istrians complained before the synod that
their bishops, who had already taken the oath of fealty
to the kings of Italy, were compelled, when they went
to Grado to receive consecration, to take the same oath
to the government of Venice. The synod therefore
decreed that the bishops of Istria should henceforth be
ordained by the patriarch of Aquileia. It was in vain
that Venerius of Grado appealed to the pontiffs Eugene
II and Gregory IV : they confirmed the resolution of
the synod. Leo VIII, about the year 980, granted to
both patriarchs a superiority over all the metropo-
litans of Italy ; and in 1050 Leo IX traced the bound-
aries of each patriarchate. Grado was to be the
metropolitan church of Venice and of Istria : the patri-
archate of Aquileia was confined to the bishoprics of
Lombardy.

During the eighth century ecclesiastical studies w ere
neglected in Italy, even more than in the west of France.
The pontiff Adrian and Paulinus of Aquileia formed
exceptions to this general neglect. In the following
century, Lothaire required that schools for the higher
classes should be opened in many cities of Italy ; and
pope Eugene II decreed, in a synod held in Rome in
826, that every cathedral should possess a school for
the interpretation of the holy Scriptures, and that
schools should be estabhshed in every parish. But,
notwithstanding these attempts to restore literature,
Italy stood far behind France, and even behind Ger-
many, in ecclesiastical learning. Claudius of Turin,
who acquired his knowledge not indeed in Italy, An-
dreas, Agnellus the historian of the archbishops of
Ravenna, Anastasius Bibliothecarius the collector of
the lives of the popes, Joannes Diaconus the biographer
of the archbishops of J^aples ; later in the tenth cen-
tury, Atto of Vercelli, Ratherius of Verona, Luitprand
of Cremona, the satirical and bitter historian of his
time, — these are almost the only names of distinguished
men which Italy during this period can present.

After the decline of the Carloviugian dynasty, Italy



236 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

offers to our view a picture of discord, of the dissolution
of all social bonds, of dark immorality, and of misery,
compared with which, even the contemporary state of
France is tolerable. In the south, given as a prey to
the hirelings of Greece and to the Saracens, in the
north to the predatory inroads of the Magyari, who
were called in by the heads of contending parties, torn
by the wild and endless contests of rivals for the crown,
and by a series of private conflicts, the country ap-
peared to have been surrendered to the dominion of
barbarism. But, happily, the bishops, who were some-
times carried away in the whirlwind of unholy confusion,
possessed power and influence enough to protect at
least a part of the poorer and weaker classes of the
people against the tyranny of faction : by the weight
which they cast into the balance of the royal assemblies,
they were able to preserve a portion of public order, of
government, and of right. But even this last barrier
began to fail, when the chiefs of the factions seized
upon the bishoprics, and filled them with their own
creatures. This was done by king Hugo (925-946),
and after him by Berengarius : the principal churches
were given to foreign sycophants, or to the illegitimate
children of the king ; sometimes they were given away
in such a manner, that the king received the greater
part of their revenues. Under such a protection, Ma-
nasses bishop of Aries was enabled to appropriate to
himself five bishoprics, by seizing Verona, Mantua,
Trent, and, lastly, Milan. Hugo gave away cloisters to
his wives, to his feudal dependants, and to his spies.
Thus broke in upon Italy that confusion and anarchy
which Atto of Vercelli has painted in his book on the
" Sufferings of the Church," and which have been more
fidly described in the writings of the ill-treated Rathe-
rius, who was cast to and fro between Liege and Verona,
and who passed the greater part of his life in prison or
in exile. Freedom of election was lost; riches, con-
sanguinity, or political services were almost the only
paths that led to bishoprics : after the death or the
expulsion of a bishop, the property of his church was



PERIOD THE THTRD. 237

plundered, and his see was given to the highest bidder,
sometimes to a boy. The contempt of the laws of the
Church w'as almost universal amongst ecclesiastics and
laics, amongst bishops and priests. Laics no longer
trembled at a sentence of excommunication, as they
well knew that they who fulminated it had, by the
canons, already incurred a like censure. Bishop Ra-
th erius, in whose diocese many of the clergy were
ignorant of the Apostles' Creed, had to contend for
nearly every orie of his episcopal rights with his priests,
who were willing to except in his favour only the power
of ordination. Hence may we conclude that his asser-
tion, that it was almost impossible, in his time, to find
a man worthy to be raised to the episcopacy, can
scarcely be thought exaggerated.

It is natural to suppose that such a clergy was either
married or living in concubinage. They proclaimed,
that for the prevention of sin it was necessary for them
to have wives : the inferior clerics and rural priests
asserted the same necessity, as by the labour of their
wives they were in part supported. Attempts were
made, indeed, to arrest this evil, and the bishop of
Verona (Ratherius) appealed to the decrees of a synod
of Ravenna, to an imperial ordinance, and to a papal
legation, by which the celibacy of the clergy was to be
enforced : a law of Otho II excluded from all public
employments the sons of deacons, priests, and bishops.
But it was long before effectual remedies were applied.

The Othos saved and exalted the Italian episcopacy,
by placing in the different sees Germans, or men devo-
ted to them, but always worthy of their charge. These
prelates, by their constant endeavours to recover, to
preserve, or to increase the goods of their churches, by
their unceasing conflicts with hostile nobles or factions,
with their own vassals, or with the gradually strength-
ening corporations of cities, could do but little for the
restoration of fallen discipline and for the reform of
their clergy ; but this they effected, that in the com-
mencement of the eleventh century the episcopacy was
the first and the deciding power in all affairs of state.



238 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

For the material foundation of tlie Church possessed
within itself parts that were imperishable : frequently,
as the best possessions of bishoprics and of abbeys were
torn from them, these parts strove, as from a natural im-
pulse, to return to them again. The right of churches
fell not easily into obhvion, and defied all prescription ;
often did repentance on the bed of death restore to the
Church its alienated goods, and as the possessions of
the temporal nobles were often confined to their own
persons, and seldom, in these times of confusion and
conflict of the vassals, amongst themselves and against
the regal power, descended to the third generation, the
bishops, who by their rank were less exposed to per-
sonal misfortunes, and whose personal destinies had
less influence on ecclesiastical property, which was only
entrusted to their administration, could easily increase
this property, or collect it together when scattered. In
Italy, morever, the kings freely granted to the bishops
that which they refused to the nobles, or of which they
deprived them after any insurrection — the right of
coining money, taxes, and other regalia. The bishops
had before acquired dominion in the cities in which
they held their sees, and in the time of Henry II they
acquired entire countships. Thus the bishop of Parma
first gained possession of power in the city of Parma,
and afterwards, in the tenth century, acquired dominion
over the district, extending through a circuit of three
miles round the city: finally, in 1035, after the death
of the count, who left no male issue, Conrad II gave to
the bishop power over all the castles of the Parmesan
territory, that is, he conferred upon him the entire
countship.* It is true that at this time all the bishops,
the learned and the pious no less than the worldly-
minded and the ignorant, were animated with the
desire of gain, to increase the possessions of their
churches, and thereby their own personal power ; but
with the exception of the imperious and boundless ex-
tortions of which individual prelates, such as Heribert

* AfFo, Storia di Pamna, ii. 13.



PERIOD THE THIRD. 23S^)

of Milan, were guilty, it was not in general avarice or
ambition that awakened within them this desire, but
necessity, and the instinct of self-preservation. For in
the impotency of the pul^lic ])ower, extensive possessions
of lands required a multitude of vassals and of followers
as the necessary condition of personal existence and of
certain influence : without these broad material found-
ations the bishops would have been in a state of con-
tinual and oppressive dependence, if not of slavery ;
they would have been subservient instruments in the
hands of the temporal nobles, who would have employed
their sacred office for the furtherance of their own
interested views. In these times, when the feudal
system had been carried to its height, the prevailing
principle which put all things in motion, was, not an
attempt to obtain legitimate freedom and independence,
an equality of rights and an unimpeded development of
spiritual and material powers, but an endeavour to
reduce others into subjection, and to raise upon the
ruins of the freedom and independence of other men
a kingdom composed of vassals and adherents. The
Church had, therefore, to wage a twofold conflict : first,
it had to free itself from the chains in which dukes,
counts, and other nobles, by the power and the forms
which feudal law administered to them, sought to en-
slave it : herein the Church had the kings for its con-
federates. But when its former protectors and allies,
the kings, contrary to their legitimate authority, en-
deavoured to subject the Church to their own power,
and to make it serve their own political designs, and even
their caprices, then was the Church compelled to enter
the lists in this second and more difficult combat for its
own emancipation. The first conflict was during the
last three centuries of the present period, the second
belongs to the following.

Whilst in Italy the powerful princely families on the
other side of the Ader fell away, and their possessions
were divided, so that in the beginning of the eleventh
century, only the margraves of Tuscany, Ivrea, and Ve-
rona, were left with power; the bishops had so far



240 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

strens^thened and increased their power, that the Italian
kingdom had well nigh become an ecclesiastical aris-
tocracy. When Adelbold, the biographer of Henry II,
enumerates the i)rinces who called into Italy the Ger-
man king, he names one temporal prince, the Margrave
of Tuscany, and ten ecclesiastical, two archbishops and
eight bishops. What treatment they had to expect
from native successors to the crown, preceding centu-
ries have shown, and it had been proved but recently
by the rival of Henry, the rude Arduin, margrave of
Ivrea, who caused Peter bishop of Vercelli to be mur-
dered, and had himself laid violent hands on the bishop
of Brescia. The bishops therefore unanimously deter-
mined in favour of Henry, and were the chief supports
of the German government in Italy. Hence, when in
1026, some temporal nobles who wished to exclude
Conrad II, offered the Italian crown to William duke
of Aquitaine, they added to their offer this condition,
that he should depose the bishops, and appoint others
to be named by them. The most powerful prince in
the north of Italy at this time was the ambitious, artful,
and imperious archbishop Heribert, who ruled not only
the populous city of Milan, but also the neighbouring
cities of Lombardy. To him, Conrad, as he was in-
debted to him for the undisturbed possession of the
crown, gave all the feudal rights over the bishopric of
Lodi, with the right also of investing the bishop. These
rights he forced upon the unwilling inhabitants of Lodi
by a war of desolation. At the same time he was in-
volved in a bloody warfare with the Valvassori, or the
inferior feudal inhabitants of the cities who revolted
against him, and opposed to him a powerful confedera-
tion, called the Molta. The origin of this war was his
desire to take from them their feudal possessions, which
they wished to be considered as their own inalienable
property. The emperor unwilling to favour these pro-
ceedings of the archbishop, caused him and the bishops
of Vercelli, Piacenza, and Cremona, who were united
with him, to be apprehended and imprisoned at Pavia,
in 1036. Conrad then named a new archbishop of



PERIOD THE THIRD. 24 1

Milan. But this proceeding gave offence even to the
most devoted adherents of the emperor in Germany.
Heribert, who soon escaped from his captivity, effected
a reconcihation with Henry III, after the death of his
father Conrad, in 1039.

From the pohtical contests in which the power of the
Church and the energies of its bishops had been ex-
hausted, we must now turn to the religious relations,
which from this time arose with power and even against
the will of the chiefs in the Church, which created a
commotion and an ebullition in the minds of the people,
which confounds all the calculations of human policy,
of base self-interested motives and of coward servility.

The degeneracy of the clergy in Italy during the
tenth century, came into existence more easily than it
could be suppressed. The bishops had neither the
the power, the inclination, nor the leisure to engage
earnestly and perseveringly in ecclesiastical reform ;
and if some amongst them from time to time renewed
the ancient laws of the Church, they did so more with
the view to meet public opinion, or in some degree to
calm their consciences, than with the resolution to en-
force them. The reformation indeed should have com-
menced with themselves. They it was who gave to their
clergy the frequent example of worldly life, they who
took from the churches of their dioceses, even from the
parish churches, their revenues, which they afterwards
expended in pomp and pride, or in enriching their rela-
tives. The picture which contemporaries give us of
the clergy in the capital of the north of Italy, may be
supposed to represent, in a greater or less degree, the
ecclesiastics of Lombardy in general ; few of them per-
formed the duties of their state, or lived amongst their
flocks : some spent their time in the pleasures of the
chase ; others kept hotels or carried on traffic ; nearly
all had obtained their ordination by simony, and lived
with wives. A synod at Pavia, in 1022, over which
Benedict VIII presided, formed many canons against
the incontinency of the clergy, and Henry II, in his
confirmation of these canons, designated this inconti-

VOL. III. R



242 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.
Artur Rogóż
Administrator
Posty: 4635
Rejestracja: 24 maja 2010, 04:01
Kontakt:

Re: A history of the church - tekst po angielsku

Post autor: Artur Rogóż »

nency as the source of all crime and corruption. But
the state of things continued the same ; and in Rome,
according to the testimony of St. Peter Damian, after
the Tusculan pope had by his shameful life opened the
school of vice, the priests began to marry. Simony was
in Milan a deeply-rooted evil ; Paschal II had, about
the year 820, accused the Church of Milan, that in it
ordinations were purchased by money, and after that
time such appears to have been the inclination of the
Milanese clergy to a schism against the see of Rome,
that for two hundred years all direct influence of the
pope upon the Church of Milan was interrupted. This
spirit was defended by the popular pretext, that the
church of St. Ambrose ought not to be degraded.

The first who combated the immorality of this clergy
was Anselm da Baggio, a priest of the cathedral of
Milan ; but Guido the archbishop, who was himself
stained with the twofold sin of simony and inconti-
nency, took Anselm with him into Germany, and, to
remove him from Milan, procured from the king his
nomination to the see of Lucca. But now two other
of the Milanese clergy, Landulf Cotta and Ariald, sup-
ported by a powerful and rich citizen named Nazarus,
entered upon the same path. Their daily sermons
against the simonaical and Nicholaite heresies (thus
they denominated the marriage of priests), worked
powerfully upon the people ; and as most of the eccle-
siastics connected with the most powerful families, all
who drew profit from the trafiic of ecclesiastical offices,
had the chieftains or greater feudal lords and the Val-
vassori, their relatives and their wives, at their side,
there arose in Milan, and soon afterwards in the entire
diocese, two parties, opposed to each other : the one
powerful by rank, riches, and a community of interests,
the other strong in its enthusiasm for the good cause,
and in the energy of the will of the people. The ad-
herents of Ariald and Landulf were called by their
opponents by the contemptuous name of Patarini, or
idiots : as, for the greater part, they were composed of
persons of the poorer classes ; but they preserved the



PERIOD THE THIRD. 243

name, as did in a later age the Gueux,* as a title of
honour. Their power had become so great in 1057,
that they compelled the ecclesiastics to subscribe a
decree of the people for the universal restoration of
clerical celibacy. The clergy, in this difficulty, had
recourse to the bishops, and to the pope Stephen IX,
who commissioned the archbishop Guido to decide their
cause in a provincial synod. In this synod, which was
held at Fontaneto, near Novara, Gregory, the iniquitous
bishop of VercelU, undertook the defence of the married
clergy. Ariald and Landulf were invited to the synod;
and as they refused to appear before so partial a tribu-
nal, they were excommunicated. But at Rome, Ariald
met with a favourable reception from the pope : two
legates, Anselm bishop of Lucca, and Hildebrand (after-
wards Gregory VII), were sent with him to Milan, where
the opposition of the two parties had burst forth into
a civil war. The legates exhorted those whom they
found of good disposition, and condemned the absent
Guido as guilty of simony. Ariald and Landulf pre-
vailed upon the people not to receive the sacraments
from the married clergy. Violence and cruelty were
exercised by both parties : the nobility, who had hither-
to protected the clergy, either left the city, or watched
for an opportunity to take revenge. Landulf, who had
been twice wounded by assassins, and Ariald, now
preached against simony with the same zeal which had
before animated them against the marriage of the
clergy. The cardinal Peter Damian bishop of Ostia,
and Anselm bishop of Lucca, appeared in Milan in
1 059, whither they had been sent by the new pope
Nicholas II. The party of the ecclesiastics endeavoured

* A name taken by the insurgents in the Netheriands, who, during
the sixteenth century, rebelled against the Spanish government. When
they had, on one occasion, forced themselves into the presence of the
regent Margaret, she was seen to turn pale through fright ; when the
Count de Barlaimont whispered to her in French, " Let not a troop of
beggars (Gueux) alarm you." The words were heard by some of
those present, and the title given to them by tlie count was afterwards
adopted by the rebels in one of their drinking parties. See Schiller's
Geschichte des Abfalls der vereinigten Niederlandc. ( Transl.)

R 2



244 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

to excite against them the minds of the people : they
came, it was said, to subject the hitherto free church
of St. Ambrose to the yoke of the see of Rome ; this
disgrace was not to be endured. A tumult was the
consequence ; but it was soon calmed by the prudent
Damian. The humbled Guido promised upon his oath
to eradicate simony, to enforce with severity ecclesias-
tical celibacy, and subjected himself to penance. Of
the other ecclesiastics, the better part, those who had
lived continently, were restored, by the presentation to
them of the emblems of their orders ; the others were
suspended, but all entered upon a course of canonical
penance. In the meantime, those who were animated
by a like zeal for the purity of the Church united them-
selves more closely together, and the Patarini grew into
an extensive confederation, named the Pataria, which
extended from Milan over the whole of Lombardy. The
Lombard bishops, in 1059, were compelled by them to
attend a synod at Rome, and Guido solemnly bound
himself to show obedience to the pope ; but corrupted
by presents, these bishops, at their return from Rome,
neglected to publish the decrees against the simonaical
and Nicholaite priests. The bishop of Brescia, the only
prelate who did publish them, was punished almost with
death by his degenerate clergy. The discontent caused
by this conduct strengthened the Pataria : in Brescia,
Cremona, Piacenza, and in other cities, many persons
separated themselves from the communion of the cri-
minal clergy. The inhabitants of Pavia and of Asti
would not receive the bishops who had been named for
their cities by the king, because they had obtained their
dignities through simony. In 1 06 1 , Ariald, and many
other clergy who had joined him, introduced into Milan
the canonical mode of life in community.

Anselm da Baggio, who was the first to oppose the
iniquitous lives of the Milanese clergy, now ascended
the papal throne, with the name of Alexander II. But
the Lombard bishops wished to have a pope who would
not molest them and their clergy with inconvenient
propositions of reform, and who would protect them



PERIOD THE THIRD. 246

against the Pataria. Hence the elevation of Cadalous.
In Milan, the party of Ariald obtained a powerful leader
in the person of the brother of the deceased Landulf,
Herlembald, who had recently returned from Jerusalem.
The pope, who approved of his designs, appointed him
standard-bearer of the Church. The archbishop Guido
and the majority of his priests broke the promise which
they had given to the legates, and relapsed into their
former course of life. Herlembald went therefore to
Rome, and in 10(56 brought back with him a bull of
excommunication against Guido; but this archbishop
knew how to inflame the minds of the varying populace
by his declarations that the freedom of the Ambrosian
church was threatened by Rome. Rich presents did
the rest ; and Ariald, abandoned by his followers, was
so ill-treated by the clergy, that he was left for dead.
He recovered, but fell again into the hands of the crea-
tures of the archbishop, and was most cruelly murdered
by two ecclesiastics. His body was found ten months
after his death, free from corruption ; and people and
clergy now contended with each other in their enthu-
siasm in giving him the honours of a martyr. Soon
after, when Alexander H came to Milan, he was so-
lemnly canonized.* Two papal legates, the cardinals
Mainard and Joannes Minutus, endeavoured to restore
peace in Milan, by an ordinance, which was drawn up
with great prudence. In it the prohibitions of simony
and of all connexion of priests with females were re-
newed, and the laity were at the same time forbidden
to ill-treat or to plunder the clergy, under the pretext
of one or other of these crimes.

In Florence also simony was the cause of a schism.
The monks of Vallorabrosa required of the people to
separate themselves from the simonaical bishop Peter,
and to receive no sacrament from the priests w horn he
had ordained. Peter Damian reproved their too great
precipitation, as the bishop had not yet been convicted
of the crime of which he was accused ; and at the same



* Giulini, Memorie spettanti aUa Storia tli Milano, iv. 106 et seqq.



246 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

time he exhorted the Florentines to submit the affair
to the decision of the pope. Following this advice, the
monks and their friends went, in 1063, to Rome, and
offered, in confirmation of their complaint, to submit
to the ordeal of fire. The pope, who had convened a
numerous assembly, was unwilling either to depose the
bishop, whose cause was defended by nearly all the
prelates present at the synod, or to admit the monks to
the ordeal. Hildebrand alone espoused the cause of
the monks, and was menaced with death by the duke
Godfrey, in his zeal for the bishop. The monks were
dismissed with the admonition to abstain from preach-
ing against the bishop ; but in Florence the agitation still
continued, nor were the monks silent. Finally, St. John
Gualbert was called from his monastery to act as arbi-
trator ; he conjured the bishop to acknowledge his fault,
and to terminate the scandal attending it ; but in vain :
it was then determined to proceed to the ordeal. At the
command of St. John, a simple monk named Peter, who
in Vallombrosa attended the cattle, after he had ofi'ered
the holy sacrifice, passed through the flames of two long
fires, and, to the astonishment of all, went through un-
injured. The people with one voice exclaimed that the
bishop was condemned : the pope, at the representation
of the Florentines, deposed him, and he entered, to pass
his life in penance, into a cloister. Peter the monk,
who was henceforth surnamed the Fiery (Igneus), was
afterwards made abbot, and some time later was created
at Rome cardinal and bishop of Albano : he died in
1087, having performed many signal services to the
Church.

The Pataria in the meantime made great advances
in the Lombard cities. At Cremona, twelve men bound
themselves together by oath ; they were soon joined
by the populace ; and now all married priests or dea-
cons were driven from the city, and the bishop himself,
who had wished to seize a priest of the Pataria, was
ill-treated. An embassy to the pope brought back from
Rome an epistle, in which their co-operation in the
great contest which the see of Rome had commenced



PERIOD THE THIRD. 247

was accepted. The Placentiues joined the Pataria, and
banished from their city their bishop Dionysius, who
had been deposed by the pope. At Milan, the arch-
bishop Guido, wearied with the protracted contest,
resolved to abandon his dignity : he therefore sold it to
an ecclesiastic of high birth, named Godfrey, who, with
the approbation of the Lombard bishops and the Milan-
ese chieftains, went into Germany to the king, with the
episcopal ring and staff, and promised, if he should re-
ceive the investiture, to destroy the Pataria, and to lead
Herlerabald captive into Germany. He obtained the
investiture, but Herlembald again seized his arms, and
besieged Godfrey in his castle. To liberate him, the
simonaical party set fire to Milan, and consumed half
the city in the flames. The Pataria then, in 1072, in
presence of the papal legates, elected a new archbishop,
Atto, a priest of Milan. He was seized by the opposite
faction, dragged before the altar, and compelled to
renounce his archiepiscopal office. But Herlembald
obtained a victory over his enemies ; the pope declared
Atto's oath of renunciation to have been invalid, and
confirmed his election as rightful archbishop of Milan.
Delegates from the German king, on the contrary, an-
nounced to the Lombard bishops at Novara, that it was
the will of their royal master that Godfrey should be
archbishop : he was then consecrated. Neither Atto
nor Godfrey could exercise the functions of their epis-
copacy. Atto had not been consecrated, Godfrey had
not been acknowledged in Milan. Herlembald, power-
ful in the strength of the Pataria, was uncontrolled
ruler of Milan and of the diocese : the new pope Gre-
gory Vn entered upon an epistolary correspondence
with him, and showed him marks of the greatest respect.
But the party of the nobles maintained an uninterrupted
union with the German court, and bound themselves to
disperse the Pataria, and to remove Herlembald out of
the way : they rendered ineffectual the exhortations
and representations by which the pope sought to induce
the king to withdraw his influence from the schism. In
the first synod which Gregory convoked, Guibert arch-



248 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

bishop of Ravenna uttered many bitter complaints
against the Patarinians of Cremona and Piacenza, but
he found an eloquent adversary in Dodo, a citizen of
Cremona. About the year 1074, the Pataria began to
decline in Milan. The nobles who had left the city
gradually returned ; the courtiers, the adherents of the
nobility and the party of the clergy, drew nearer to-
gether, and allured many of the people into their
interest, by appealing, with correct calculation of the
effect, to their remembrance of an ancient confederacy
to defend the integrity of the church of St. Am-
brose. Many fell from the Pataria. A conflagration,
which again consumed a great part of the city, was
declared to have been sent in punishment of the sins of
the Patarinians. Herlembald was slain in battle in
1075 : a priest named Leoprand, who since the death
of Ariald had been the principal ecclesiastic in the
Milanese Pataria, was seized, and condemned to lose
his nose and ears ; all who would not abandon their
party joined the Pataria of Cremona. After the death
of Herlembald, the king Henry sent into Italy the count
Eberhard, who had before been excommunicated by
pope Alexander. The count convened a Lombard as-
sembly on the plain of Roncaglia, thanked the Milanese
who had slain Herlembald, and denounced all the Pa-
tarinians as public enemies of the king ; he then fell
upon the unexpectuig Placentines, whom he drove from
the city, but was compelled to retire before the better-
prepared Cremonese. The chieftains of Milan, in obe-
dience to the command of the king, now elected the
priest Theobald, who had sworn fidelity to Godfrey; and
the king, from whom Godfrey had received investiture,
and at w hose command he had been consecrated by the
Lombard bishops, now invested Theobald. The rupture
of Henry with the pope soon followed this event.

The condition of the whole of Italy, and of the Ital-
ian Church, from the tenth to the end of the eleventh
century, was most unfavourable to theological studies.
Milan, however, had two schools of philosophy, in which
teachers paid by the archbishop instructed the younger



PERIOD THE THIRD. 219

ecclesiastics. Similar schools are mentioned as exist-
ing at Parma, Bologna, and Faenza ; but the studies
appear not to have passed beyond the Trivium (gram-
mar, rhetoric, and dialectic), and the Quadrivium
(arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy). Lan-
franc of Pavia now acquired in Italy the knowledge
which he afterwards imparted to France and England.
Amongst the ecclesiastical writers, Peter Damian ranks
before all others. This holy man was born at Ravenna
in 1007, and was educated in the severe ascetics and
serious studies of the cloister at Fonte Avellana. In
1046, at the desire of the emperor Henry III, he accom-
panied the pope Clement II to Rome, to act as his
counsellor and assistant, and took an active part in the
most important affairs of the Church. Simony and the
incontinency of the clergy he combated by his writings,
by his journeys, and by the synods over which he pre-
sided. In 1057 he was created cardinal and bishop of
Ostia ; but as he wished to close his days in the cloister
of his youth, he resigned his dignities in the year 1069.
He was frequently called, however, from his solitude
to undertake different legations, and died at Faenza in
1072. His writings, in which is visible an extensive
knowledge of the Scriptures, of the fathers, and of the
canons, consist of a rich collection of letters, and prin-
cipally of treatises against the prevailing vices of the
times, and against the corruptions of the clergy. Arnulf
wrote, not without partiality for the married and simo-
naical clergy, the history of Milan from 925 to 1076 ;
but towards the end of his work he retracted these
offensive opinions. He was surpassed in shameless
partiality, in the same cause, by his contemporary,
Landulf the Elder.



250 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.



SECTION IV.

THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND, IRELAND, AND SCOT-
LAND.*

The introduction of Christianity into Anglo-Saxon
Britain had been so far completed at the commence-
ment of this period, that the new religion was the domi-
nant religion of the land in all the kingdoms of the
Heptarchy. Pagans were to be found only in those
places in which priests and instruction had not yet
penetrated. Under Theodore archbishop of Canter-
bury and his immediate successors, the number of the
bishoprics was increased from seven to seventeen. The
bishops were originally chosen at the national synod, at
which the primate presided, afterwards by the clergy
of the diocese, with the intervention of the people.
But by degrees the principles of the feudal system began
here also to prevail : the kings reserved to themselves
the confirmation of the election, and the investiture
with the crosier and ring, of the prelate elect ; here



* Beda, Clironicon Aiiglo-Saxonicum, ed. Ingram. Londini, 1823-4;
Guilielmi Malmesburiensis, De rebus gestis Regum Anglorum, libri v.
(to the year 1126) ; De rebus gestis Pontificum Anglorum, in SaviUe,
Rerum Angl. Scriptores, Lond. 1596, fol. ; Ingulphi, Abb. Croyland-
ensis, Descriptio Compilata (to 1066), in Saville ; Asserii Meneven-
sis, Annales rerum gestarum Alfredi, Oxon. 1722 ; The Lives of
St. Dunstan, by Britferth and Osbern, in the Acta SS. Maji iv. 344 ;
of Osbert, in Surius, Vitte 8S. 309 (in Wharton's Anglia Sacra, ii.
211, under the name of Eadmer) ; Eadmeri, Vita S. Oswaldi in
Whai'ton, tom. ii.; Wolstani, Vita S. Ethelwaldi, in Mabillon, Acta
SS. O. S. B. Sasculi V.; O'Connor, Scriptores Rerum Hibernicarum,
Buckingham, 1814-1826, 4 vols. 4to.

For Scotland, The Chronica, in Lines' Critical Essay, London, 1729,
2 vols., and in Pinkerton's Enquiry into the Ancient History of Scot-
land, London, 1789, 2 vols.; Willvins, Concilia Magnae Britannice et
Hibernian, Lond. 1737, fol. tom. i.

Alfordi Annales Eccl. Britannife, Leodi, 1663, tom. ii. iii. fol.;
Lingard, Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church, Newcastle, 1806,
2 vols.; Lanigan, Ecclesiastical History of L-eland, Dublin, 1829,
vol. ii. iii.



PERIOD THE THIRD. 251

also, as in other places, the monarch began to antici-
pate the election by recommendation or nomination.
Every bishop had at his cathedral a number of ecclesi-
astics who lived together according to canonical insti-
tution, and these communities served at the same time
as seminaries for the education of the future clergy.
For the institution of parish churches, England was in-
debted principally to the archbishop Theodore, who, to
incite the thanes to the erection and endowment of
these churches, secured to them and to their heirs the
right of patronage. Tithes were introduced in an early
age, for Boniface and Egbert of York make mention of
them in the eighth century, as being then a tribute that
had long been paid ; at the synod of Calcuith, the pay-
ment of them was strictly enforced. Cloisters which
had been erected in the primitive times of Anglo-Saxon
Christianity, and which were rapidly multiplied, supplied
in many provinces the want of parish churches. Ben-
net Biscop abbot of Weremouth in the north, and Aid-
helm bishop of Sherburne, and Egwin bishop of Wor-
cester in the south, were the principal promoters of the
monastic institute during the seventh century. The
abbeys of Evesham, Malmesbury, Weremouth, the an-
cient Glastonbury of the Britains — " the mother of the
saints," were amongst the earUest and the most flourish-
ing. Besides these, there soon arose others, connected
with female cloisters and erected near them ; of this
kind w^ere Whitby, Coldingham, and Winburn. In these
double monasteries the monks could not enter the dwel-
ling of the nuns, nor the nuns that of the monks. The
monks, no less than the nuns, were subject to the ab-
bess ; she appointed their prior. The object of these
double cloisters (and there is scarcely an example of a
cloister of nuns distinct from a monastery of men during
the seventh and eighth centuries) appears to have been
to relieve the nuns from the care of administering pro-
perty and other such unfeminine occupations.

The property of the Church was free by immunity
from all burthens and taxes, with the exception of the
trinoda necessitas, that is, the levies for the support of



252 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

the army, for the repairs of roads, bridges, and for-
tresses. By an ordinance of king Ethelwulf, in 854, the
tithe mcmsus of the goods of cloisters, as well as of
hereditary lay possessions, was free from all imposts.
To participate in the rights and immunities that were
enjoyed by monasteries, many noble laics, men and
women, erected monasteries, of which they named them-
selves abbots and abbesses, and in which they lived with
their followers and others, who had gathered around
them, after the manner of the world, without order and
without rule. The synod of Cloveshoe remarked, that
avarice and tyranny had been the source of this disor-
der, but the Church was never able to suppress these
nominal cloisters. They were destroyed during the de-
vastations of the pagan Danes.

The English Church from the time of its origin stood
in the closest connexion with the see of Rome. Fre-
quently did ecclesiastics and laics journey to that city
to venerate the tombs of the apostles, and to obtain the
benediction of the sovereign pontiff. Eight Anglo-Saxon
kings undertook this pilgrimage : others sent ambassa-
dors with presents, that they might be made partakers
of the apostolical benediction.* The English metro-
politans, to obtain the confirmation of their election
and to receive the pallium, were required to appear in
person before the pope, that he might be convinced of
their fitness for their station. This requisition was con-
sidered burdensome in England, both on account of the
length and dangers of the journey, and because the
gifts which these prelates were accustomed to present
on these occasions, were by degrees considered obliga-
tory. As early, therefore, as the year 801, the English
bishops requested pope Leo III to send the pallium to
their metropolitan, without requiring their presence in
Rome. But the pope did not comply. At length,
Canute the Great, when in Rome, in the year 1031, ob-
tained from the pope, that the sum of money which had



* Kinulphi Regis Epistola ad Leonem Papam, in Williins Concilia,
Brit. i. 164.



PERIOD THE THIRD. 253

formerly been paid when the pallium was given, should
be no longer exacted. The duty, however, of personal
attendance was still continued. Religious foundations
had been early placed in England, as in other countries,
under the immediate protection of the head of the
Church : even kings sought from the pontiff his confir-
mation of their grants to monasteries.

A school for the education of young Englishmen who
had embraced the ecclesiastical state, was founded in
Rome, in 714, by Ina, king of Wessex, who ended his
life in that city. It is uncertain whether the Peter-
pence (Rome-Scot), which was probably introduced by
king Oflfa of jNIercia, about the year 790, were originally
intended for the maintenance of this school, or for the
Church of Rome and the wants of the papal see. Every
family possessing property contributed each year a silver
penny, which the bishops collected annually in their
dioceses, and in the time of Gregory VII this contribu-
tion amounted to more than two hundred pounds of
Saxon money. It is, however, not improbable, that the
kings obliged themselves to a yearly tribute of money,
and that later, one of them, perhaps Ethelwulf, in 855,
instituted the Peter-pence as a general tax for the pay-
ment of this sum.

Synods were often held at the desire of the pope ;
one of these was the synod of Cloveshoe, in 747- St.
Boniface had severely reproved, in a letter to the king
of Mercia, the prevailing immorality of England, and
had, it is likely, given information of the same to the
pope Zachary. The pontiff then commissioned the
bishops to meet the most flagrant abuses by a series of
canons. In the year 785, pope Adrian sent the bishops
of Ostia and of Todi, as his legates, with a collection of
canons for the English Church. Two synods were now
held, one at Calcuith in Mercia, the other in Northum-
bria, and a solemn engagement was entered into by the
bishops to enforce the observance of the canons sent to
them by the pope. The unity of religion and of the
Church must have compensated in the Anglo-Saxon
states for political unity, which was but imperfectly



254 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

and weakly preserved by the Bretwalda. Had not the
Church being confined and disturbed in its best works,
by the endless wars and revolutions which gave to
England the appearance of a general camp, it would
have developed its power in the first centuries of its
existence (such was the interior capability of the
people, and their inclination to deep and serious
piety), in the fruits of an extraordinary morality and
education. Egbert's universal sway from the year
826 could produce no unity of legislation or govern-
ment amongst the Anglo-Saxons, who were still di-
vided into states and nations, and in the last years of
his administration commenced the invasions of the
Danes and Normans, who for seventy years, from the
year 832, penetrated into every part of the island,
bearing with them fire and the sword. They reduced
churches and cloisters to ashes ; they murdered thou-
sands of priests and monks, and impeded all progress
towards improvement.

In the seventh century, Canterbury was, and con-
tinued for some time to be, the only metropolitan
church in all England. In the year 735, Egbert bishop
of York, brother of the king of Northumbria, on the
authority of the original ordinance of St. Gregory the
Great, obtained a papal decree, by which all the bishop-
rics on the north of the Humber were subjected to his
metropolitan jurisdiction. It was not long before Offa,
the powerful king of Mercia, sought to remove the
bishops of his kingdom from the jurisdiction of a foreign
prelate. He effected his purpose ; and the above-named
synod of Calcuith, which was held in 785, under a
papal legate, decreed that the church of Litchfield
should be raised to an archbishopric ; Aldulf bishop of
Litchfield received the pallium from pope Hadrian.
But when Kenulf king of Mercia had subjected to him-
self the kingdom of Kent, the cause of the separation
from Canterbury no longer existed. Ethelhard arch-
bishop of Canterbury went, therefore, to Rome, to in-
duce the pontiff to take from Litchfield its newly-
acquired dignity : the king also consented, and Ethel-
hard assembled, in 803, a synod of the twelve suffragan



PERIOD THE THIRD. 255

bishops, at Cloveslioe, which restored to the see of
Canterbury its ancient extent of jurisdiction. The
English hierarchy consisted therefore of the primate of
Canterbury, whose suifragan bishoprics were, Rochester
in Kent, London in Essex, Dunwich and Helmham
(afterwards Norwich), in East Anglia; Dorchester,
Winchester, and Sherburne (afterwards Salisbury), in
Wessex ; Selsey (afterwards Chichester), in Sussex ;
Litchfield (afterwards Coventry), Hereford, Worcester,
and Lincoln in Mercia ; of the archbishop of York to
whom Sydnacester (formerly Lindisfarne and afterwards
Durham"), Hexham which was destroyed in the devas-
tations of the Danes, and Whithern (Casa Candida), the
bishopric founded by Ninian for the southern Picts
in Galloway, were suffragans. In the eighth century,
the young English Church, in consequence of its in-
tercourse" with the Church of Ireland, acquired a pre-
eminence in learning, which was felt and acknowledged
on the continent. The learned Daniel bishop of
Winchester was frequently consulted by St. Boniface.
Aldhelm abbot of Malmesbury, afterwards bishop of
Sherburne, was the first poet of his nation, both in the
Anglo-Saxon and Latin language. But above all others
the venerable Northumbrian Bede, the excellent histo-
rian of the English Church, the teacher of his people in
his own and of succeeding centuries, merits to be here
mentioned. For sixty years he studied, taught, and
wrote in the united cloister of Weremouth and Yarrow.
He surpassed evei7 contemporary in his acquaintance
with the science of the age ; and it was with justice
that the synod of Aix-la-Chapelle named him, a century
after his death, the wonderful doctor of modern times.
He left behind him commentaries upon nearly all the
books of the holy Scriptures, drawn from the writings
of the fathers. These commentaries were used for
centuries, as the best and most esteemed helps to exe-
getical studies. He died on the evening on which he
had completed his Anglo-Saxon translation of the gos-
pel of St. John. His disciple Egbert, the son of a king,



256 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

archbishop of York, and a scholar as indefatigable as
his master, educated the celebrated Alcuin, to whom
the school of York was afterwards indebted for its
European fame.

The epistles of Alcuin, of which admonition and
severe reproof are the subjects, prove that in his time
the zeal for ecclesiastical studies, as well as moral feel-
ing, and the former intensity of devotion amongst the
Anglo-Saxons, were greatly diminished. Now, too,
were begun the destroying invasions of the Danes. The
highly-venerated Lindisfarne was laid waste in 793, and
again in 875. In Northumbria, with the destruction of
the abbeys, monastic discipline fell aw ay, and was not
again fully restored until the time of William the Con-
queror. The abbeys of Croyland, Medeshamstead, and
Ely, met the same fate : all England was covered with
ruins, and bodies of the slain. Alfred exalted and freed
his people, but he could not effect the expulsion of the
Danes. They received baptism, and mingled with the
Anglo-Saxons, but their manners, and even their wor-
ship, continued for a long time tinged with paganism.
The natives, who had become uncivilised by long wars
and its attendants, anarchy and licentiousness, were
sunk by their mingling with the pagans into still deeper
immorality and barbarism. Alfred published a new
code of laws, and endeavoured to remove the general
ignorance (which had become now so prevalent, that
he could find no one amongst his people who could
translate a Latin letter into English), by calling to his
assistance scholars from foreign lands. For this pur-
pose, he sent in 883 a solemn embassy to Gaul, which
returned, bringing with it from Corby the Saxon priest
John, and from Rheims the provost Grimbald. He
himself translated the Ecclesiastical History of Bede,
Orosius, Boethius, the Pastoral of St. Gregory, a por-
tion of the Psalms, and extracts from St. Augustin, into
English. Plegmund archbishop of Canterbury, and
Werfrith bishop of Worcester, seconded his efforts ; the
result of which was, to impart to the higher clergy



PERIOD THi; THlIll) 25/

some degree of knowledge. As all the sources of the
education of the clergy, the cloisters and canonical in-
stitutions, had been destroyed by the Danes, any one
"who presented himself, or who "was, amongst the un-
worthy, the less unworthy, was ordained. Even married
men were admitted to orders, and in the necessity of
the Church, the bishops were not able to exact conti-
nency from them. The consequence was, the decline
of ecclesiastical discipline, and, in particular, of sacer-
dotal celibacy. Until the year 860, marriage amongst
the English clergy was unheard of, or was at least by
no means common : the bishops, therefore, had no oc-
casion to enforce celibacy by new canons. But this
order of things was changed by tlie Danish wars. About
the year 870, Fulco archbishop of Rheims, in his letter
to king Alfred, expressed his expectation that Plegmund,
the new archbishop, would resolutely oppose the asser-
tion, that matrimony was permitted to priests. A
synod held at London under king Edmund in 944, in
its very first canons exhorted ecclesiastics to observe
the duty of continency. But notwithstanding these
decrees, the number of priests who lived in the married
state appears to have increased. Those canons whose
institutes had survived the age of destruction, or which
had been recently founded, neglected the observance of
their rule, together with the duty of living in commu-
nity : many of them married, lived upon the rents of
the lands of their prebendaries, and left the duties of
the cathedral to hired vicars. That love for the mo-
nastic state which had formerly led so many kings, so
many sons and daughters of kings and of nobles, into
solitude, was extinguished in this almost now savage
nation, and Alfred was compelled to call from France
monks and youtlis to people the monastery which he
had founded at Ethelingey. King Edgar, in 9G0, tes-
tifies, that under his predecessors the cloisters of monks
and of nuns had been either destroyed or abandoned
throughout the entire nation. Many Englishmen went
into France to enter the abbey of Fleury : here Dun-

A^OL. III. S



258 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

Stan, Oswald, and others were educated, and from this
cloister in later times came those who were the restorers
of the monastic state in England.

Dunstan, the nephew of Athelm archbishop of Can-
terbury, was first instructed by some Irish ecclesiastics
of Glastonbury. Wearied of a life in the world and at
the court, he embraced the sacerdotal state, became a
monk, and afterwards abbot of the above-named abbey.
The prudent Turketul, who had been chancellor of
England, and afterwards the restorer and abbot of
Croyland, recommended Dunstan to the favour of king
Edmund. The monarch conferred upon him Glaston-
bury and its possessions. Edred, the successor of
Edmund, whose full confidence Dunstan possessed,
offered to him the bishopric of Winchester, which
Dunstan refused, as his presence at the royal court
would withhold him from the performance of his duties.
Edred was followed, in 955, by the voluptuous and pro-
digal young Edwy, whose enmity Dunstan had already
earned, by the severe censures passed upon his morals,
and by his fidelity as treasurer to Edred. On the day
of his coronation, the young king suddenly left the
table, at which his thanes were assembled around him,
to repair to the company of two criminal women, Ethel-
giva and her daughter, the former of whom had conceived
the design of securing by marriage the royal dignity for
herself or for her daughter. Dunstan, and Kinsey
bishop of Litchfield, were commissioned by the insulted
assembly to recall Edwy to the hall. Ethelgiva and
Edwy revenged themselves on Dunstan. He was driven
from his cloister ; and, to avoid greater danger, was
compelled to retire to Flanders ; the monks of his two
abbeys of Glastonbury and Abingdon were also driven
from their homes. During the absence of Dunstan,
Edwy continued his connexion with Ethelgiva, although
he was now married. She fell into the hands of arch-
bishop Odo, who, in virtue of a law against women who
lived in adultery, banished her to Ireland. It was not
long before the caprice and folly of Edwy caused an



PERIOD THE THIRD. 259

insurrection in the northern provinces : lie was obliged
to fiy, and Etlielgiva, who had returned from Ireland,
accompanied him in his flight. She fell into the power
of the insurgents, by whom, or by the followers of the
archbishop, she was put to a most cruel death.

Edgar, whom Edwy, in 957, was obliged to recognise
as king of Mercia and Northumbria, and who, after the
death of Edwy, again united all in one monarchy, re-
called Dunstan from his exile. Dunstan now filled, in
succession, the sees of Worcester and of London ; and
when Byrhtelm archbishop of Canterbury was necessi-
tated to return to his former see of Sherburne, Dunstan
was promoted to the primacy of the English Church.
He went to Rome, and received the pallium from pope
John XII, and at his return, resigned the see of London
to /Elfstan, and that of Worcester to Oswald the nephew^
of Odo. With firmness immovable, Dunstan opposed
himself to the king, and even to the pope, when the
duties of his station required him. Edgar, who had
violently taken from a monastery the daughter of an
English nobleman, was required to separate himself
from her and to subject himself to a canonical penance
of seven years, with the condition of forming new laws
for the better administration of justice. A powerful
man, who had contracted an illegal marrias:e, was ex-
communicated by Dunstan. Favoured by the king, the
nobleman appealed to Rome, and obtained a papal
mandate, which enjoined the archbishop to remove his
censures. "I will do so," was the reply of Dunstan,
" if the offender w ill repent and give satisfaction." The
nobleman, terrified, broke his illegal connexion, ap-
peared before the synod which was then held, and
humbly asked for pardon. He was then admitted by
Dunstan to the sacraments. But the great contest in
which Dunstan engaged with that firmness which marked
his entire character, supported by the bishops Oswald
of Worcester and Ethelwald of Winchester, was the
reformation of the dissolute clergy. In Flanders, he
had witnessed the happy results of the zeal of the abbot
Gerhard, who had reformed many cloisters, and had

s 2



260 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

replaced the degenerate canons of cathedrals by Bene-
dictine monks. After his return, he endeavoured to
raise the monastic institute from the depths into which
it had fallen. From his own resources, he founded an
abbey at Westminster ; he recalled the exiled monks of
Glastonbury and Abingdon, and exerted himself to re-
awaken in the nation the loA^e for a cloister-life, and
that noble spirit of generosity which had endowed
former monasteries. He raised distinguished men of
the monastic state to ecclesiastical dignities. He ob-
tained from the pope and from the king authority to
remove from the churches all such canons who refused
to live according to the rules of their institute and to
observe the laws of continency, and to replace them
with monks. At a synod which was convened for this
purpose, the king declared it to be his intention to
enforce the decrees and regulations formed for the
reformation of incontinent and worldly-minded ecclesi-
astics, with all the weight of his authority. It was
resolved, therefore, to give to ecclesiastics of the higher
orders the alternative between the observance of these
regulations and the resignation of their benefices.
Oswald bishop of Worcester introduced the reform into
his diocese without violence, by building in the vicinity
of his cathedral a new church, which he gave to
monks, and in which he himself celebrated mass. The
people abandoned the old church and its clergy : many
of the canons put on the monastic habit, and finally the
cathedral was given without opposition to the Benedic-
tines. In Canterbury the canons, who were, perhaps,
less corrupted than others of the same class, continued
in possession of the metropolitan church. In Winches-
ter, bishop Ethelwald was met by a determined oppo-
sition. The canons, many of whom had put away their
first wives and had taken others, whilst many squan-
dered away their revenues without allotting any part of
them to Divine service, in drunkenness and dissipation,
were encouraged by powerful relatives and protectors.*"

* Wulstani Vita St. Ethewoldi, p. 614 ; Annal. Wilton, p. 289.



PERIOD THE THIRD. 261

They deluded him with empty promises of amend-
ment. At length, he ordered a number of monastic
habits to be brought into the church, before the assem-
bled canons, and required them either to put on that
dress and to embrace the monastic institute, or to re-
sign their places in the cathedral. Three of them chose
the former proposal, the others retired and were com-
pensated for their losses out of the goods of the bishop-
ric. A colony of monks from Abingdon succeeded
them. Some of the deprived canons revenged them-
selves by poisoning the bishop, but through the grace
of Christ he recovered. In the following year, 964, the
canons of the New Minster were replaced by monks
from Abingdon. Dunstan, Oswald, and Ethelwald,
encouraged, by their example, other bishops to found
new, or to restore the ancient cloisters : and king Edgar
could boast that in the first six years of his reign seven-
and-forty cloisters were either founded or restored by
himself or by his bishops ; in some others, monks were
placed instead of canons. As the cathedral institutes,
which had been converted into cloisters, had no abbots,
and as the bishop held the place of abbot, it was decreed
in a synod of Winchester, at the instance of Dunstan,
that for the future the bishop should be chosen by the
monks of the cathedral, with the consent of the king,
from their own, or from a neighbouring cloister. It
w-as hoped that in this manner the election of prelates,
who would maintain cloister discipline, would be en-
sured. It was desired, about the same time, to obviate
all future attempts of the secular clergy to place them-
selves in the stations now occupied by the monks. To
establish an uniformity of observance in the English
cloisters, the Concordia of the English Benedictines
was adopted in the same synod. In this statute the
customs of the abbey of Fleury, which had been re-
formed after the model of Cluny, and of the abbey of
Ghent, together with some ancient observances of the
Anglo-Saxon cloisters, were blended with the rules of
St. Benedict.

In reference to the other clergy, Dunstan renewed



2(>2 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH,

the ancient law of celibacy, and as long as Edgar lived
he met with no public opposition. But after the death
of the king, in 975, the deprived secular clergy and
their adherents took advantage of the confusion occa-
sioned by the minority of Edward, and the machina-
tions of his step-mother, again to obtain possession of
their churches. The Ealderman iElfhar of Mercia ex-
pelled the monks from the cloisters of his province ;
whilst the princes of East Anglia, and of Essex, Athel-
win, Alfwold, and Brithnod, took the religious under
their protection. To avert the outbreak of a civil war
a synod was held at Winchester, where the influence of
Dun Stan, and of the bishops who favoured his designs,
obtained a decree in favour of the monks. But the
married priests and their sons did not yet consider their
cause as lost : at the synod of Colne, in 978, Beornhelm,
an Irish or Scottish bishop, appeared as their advocate,
and pleaded their cause with great eloquence, when
suddenly the floor of the hall, in which the council was
held, gave way. Some were killed, others were maimed;
Dunstan being supported on a beam, remained unhurt.
This event w^as viewed as a judgment of God, and the
monasteries were for the present saved.

The reign of Edgar, and the administration of
Dunstan, formed the last period of glory in the
history of the Anglo-Saxons. After the death of
this holy bishop, in 923, the long contest between
the families of the Anglo-Saxons and of the Danes
who had settled in the country commenced. The
Danes, who were in almost exclusive possession of the
north of England, strengthened by new comers from
the Scandinavian tribes, their confederates, aimed at
placing a king of their ow^n nation on the throne, and
they succeeded. But England was again first given as
a prey to all the horrors of a war of devastation and
plunder. The general massacre, in 1002, of the Danes
w^ho dwelt in the Saxon provinces, called for an awful
revenge. In 1011, Elphige archbishop of Canterbury
died the heroic death of a martyr. He was slain by
the Danes because he refused to persuade the king to



PERIOD THE THIRD. 2G3

])ay them a large sum of gold, and to induce his bre-
thren to offer a rich ransom for his liberation. Contests
and rivalry were renewed in the Church between the
monks and the canons. iElfric archbishop of Canter-
bury, about the year 1006, introduced Benedictines into
his cathedral, but not unfrequently were the churches
taken by their lay patrons from the religious and given
to the seculars ; and during the devastations of the
Danish wars many monasteries were again destroyed.

After three Danish kings had reigned in England, the
country obtained a sovereign from the family of their
ancient princes, in the person of the holy Edward the
Confessor (1042-1066). He had lived long in Nor-
mandy, and during his reign the Norman influence in
England became predominant. Edward surrounded
himself with Norman ecclesiastics, who certainly sur-
passed the clergy of England in education and know-
ledge. One of them, Robert, a monk of the abbey of
Jumieges, was created first bishop of London, and after-
wards archbishop of Canterbury ; but the powerful
party of earl Godwin drove from the country the arch-
bishop and the other Norman favourites of the king.
The ignorant and designing Stigand, who had been
bishop of Elmham, and was now bishop of Winchester,
obtained, in 1053, the metropolitan church of England,
whilst he retained possession of his former bishopric ;
he procured the pallium from the anti-pope John of
Velletri, and contrived to maintain himself in his see,
although the pope Alexander II had pronounced over
him sentence of suspension. Aldred, who, together with
the archiepiscopal church of York, possessed also the
see of Worcester, w^as deprived at Rome by pope Ni-
cholas, in 1060, on account of his simony; for simony
was in England, as it was elsewhere, the consequence
of investiture ; but after some time the pope mitigated
his sentence, and required Aldred to resign only his
bishopric of Worcester. Such at this time were the
two chief bishops of the English Church ; to them we
might add others, such as Leofwin of Litchfield, who,
although he had formerly been a monk, lived in a state



264 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

of public marriage. Amongst the clergy, ignorance was
now so universal and so gross, that the greater part of
them knew scarcely so much Latin as was necessary
for the administration of the sacraments : amongst the
religious, tepidity and luxury had insinuated them-
selves, they wore habits of fine cloth, and frequented
the court, that by corrupting the courtiers, they might
raise themselves to ecclesiastical preferments.

By the Norman conquest the condition of the English
Church was in many ways changed, in some for the
better, in others for the worse. According to the ac-
count of Norman historians, William duke of Normandy,
after the decease of Edward, who died without children,
submitted his claims to the crown of England to the
decision of the pope. It was not difficult for him to
demonstrate that his pretensions were better founded
than those by which Harold supported his usurpation.
Alexander therefore acknowledged his claim, and in
proof that he favoured his attempts against the usurper,
he sent him a consecrated banner. When he ascended
the English throne, \Villiam put on the semblance of
respecting the rights of the pope : the unworthy Stigand,
who had on three accounts merited deposition, and
his brother Agilmar, for whom he had procured the
bishopric of Elmham, were deprived of their sees by a
synod, held at Winchester, over which three papal
legates presided, in 10/0. Another bishop and several
abbots met with the same fate in a synod held at Wind-
sor by the same legates. It was the care of William
that the crimes and delinquencies of many bishops
should be brought to light, and be produced in judg-
ment against them ; the legates appear to have second-
ed in all things the views of the king, and sometimes to
have exercised their power in unjust depositions ; for by
degrees, the higher dignities of the Church were pos-
sessed almost exclusively by Norman ecclesiastics. The
learned abbot Lanfranc was created primate of all Eng-
land, — a dignity which he received, however, only in
obedience to the commands of the pope ; the archbish-
opric of York was given to Thomas canon of Bayeux ;



PERIOD THE THIRD. 265
Artur Rogóż
Administrator
Posty: 4635
Rejestracja: 24 maja 2010, 04:01
Kontakt:

Re: A history of the church - tekst po angielsku

Post autor: Artur Rogóż »

the see of Winchester to Walkelin, the king's chaplain.
Happily these men, and others who were exalted with
them, were men of worth, piety, and knowledge, who
infused a new spirit into the almost lifeless body of the
English Church, and who, by degrees, removed the great
abuses which reigned amongst the clergy. But the
independence and autonomy which William left to the
Church were confined within narrow limits ; his policy
rather required the entire subjection of the English
Church, the possessions and rights of which he respected
as little as he respected the rights and possessions of
his people. Lanfranc, who, as primate, was doomed to
behold, without being able to prevent, the frightful
tyranny of the king and of his barons, the misery of the
people, and the oppression of tlie Church, prayed for
death, and implored the pope with prayers the most
fervent, but in vain, to relieve him of the burden of the
episcopacy. With these drear prospects before it, the
English Church entered into the following period.

For the restoration of ecclesiastical studies, St. Dun-
stan and Ethelwald, his friend and scholar, had done
much ; but the storms of the eleventh century oblitera-
ted almost every trace of their zeal. The only literary
production of this age, worthy of notice, was the work
of ^Elfric, a disciple of bishop Ethelwald, who translated
a portion of the Scripture into Anglo-Saxon, and com-
piled a collection of homilies in the same language for
the use of the clergy.

The Irish Church had, in the commencement of this
period, attained to a high degree of perfection. Annu-
ally there went from its cloisters and its cloister-schools
numbers of learned and pious men, natives and foreign-
ers, and particularly Anglo-Saxons, who laboured with
great success and with the blessing of heaven, in England
and on the continent. From England there went, as
Aldhelm writes, each succeeding year, numbers of
young men to study in the abbey of Mayo, which was
destined exclusively for English, and in other schools
and cloisters. But from the year 793, Ireland shared
the fate of England. It became the arena of the Nor-



266 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

mans or Danes, who desolated the island with their
wonted barbarity and devastation, and destroyed many
of the most flonrishing schools of ecclesiastical learning.
The consequence was, that Irish bishops, priests and
monks, sought an asylum on the continent or in Eng-
land : their inclination to settle in foreign lands was
thus strengthened ; and Osbern, the biographer of St.
Dunstan, remarks that it had become a second nature
in the Irish clergy to forsake their native land, and to
wander into other countries. It was a favourable
circumstance for the Irish Church, that at this time,
about the year 800, the clergy was freed from the
obligation of following their kings in war. But during
the endless contests with the Danes, in which ecclesias-
tics were often necessitated to draw the sword in their
own defence, a martial spirit took possession of them ^
and in the course of the ninth century, many ab-
bots and priests took an active part in the domes-
tic feuds of their countrymen. In the commencement
of the ninth century, the metropolitan jurisdiction
of the see of Armagh, "the law of Si. Patrick" (by
which we are to understand certain ancient regulations
which had been introduced into the church of Armagh)
w^as extended to the whole of Ireland. A striking
phenomenon in the Irish Church at this period, is the
union of the episcopal with the regal dignity, of which
the bishop of Emly Olchobair Mac Kennedy, who, in
846, was made king of Cashel, is the first example.
Amongst these royal bishops, the warlike Cormac Mac
Culinan, bishop of Cashel and king of Munster, acquired
the greatest fame. In the year 908, he was slain in a
bloody battle : he was a devout and learned man, the
author of the Psalter of Cashel, a book famous in the
history of Ireland. The metropolitan church of Ireland,
Armagh, fell about the year 927 into the possession of
a powerful family, so that for two hundred years mem-
bers of this family, who held at the same time temporal
power, and were therefore called princes of Armagh,
succeeded each other as bishops. Hence sprang the
abuse, that married men of this family, who had never



PERIOD THE THIRD. 267

received consecration, assumed to themselves the
archiepiscopal title and rights. Durins: the eleventh
century there \vere eight temporal titular bishops of
Armagh, who gave to other bishops the exercise of their
spiritual functions. The Danes who had settled in
Ireland were by degrees converted to the Christian
faith ; and about the year 1040, Donatus was the first
bishop of the Danes at Dublin ; the second bishop of
Dublin, Patrick, an Irishman, was consecrated in Eng-
land, in 1074, by Lanfranc archbishop of Canterbury,
to whom and to his successors Im promised canonical
obedience. Hence the see of Dublin was made a suffra-
gan church of Canterbury, although no Irish church
had hitherto been in so close a relation with the Eng-
lish metropolitan ; it appears, therefore, that the Danes
in Ireland, subjected their church to the see of Canter-
bury, only from an inclination of relationship to the
Normans, who now ruled in England. Two years before,
indeed, at a synod held at Winchester, where the con-
test between Canterbury and York, for the primacy of
England, was decided in favour of the former church,
it was asserted in an appeal to the testimony of Bede,
that in his time Canterbury possessed by a papal grant
primatial jurisdiction over the entire of Britain and
Ireland, an error which could have sprung only from
the false interpretation of the word Britanmarum^
which occurs in the epistle of St. Gregory the Great, in
which he gives to St. Augustin legatine powers over all
the British bishops.

Irish monks not only lived in different cloisters on
the continent, they possessed also cloisters destined ex-
clusively for religious of their own nation in many
parts, particularly in Germany. These monasteries,
which were erected principally in gratitude for the
great part which the Irish had taken in the conversion
of Germany, served as excellent schools also for the
Germans, and as hostels for the many Irish pilgrims
who travelled to Rome.* A cloister of this kind had

* See Acta SS. Bolland, Febr. ii. 361, Scotorum in Germania
Monastcria.



2G8 HISTORY OF THE CPIURCH.

been erected, about the year 786, at Amarbaric, in the
neighbourhood of Virden, but it was soon destroyed.
Charles the Bald, in one of his capitularies of 845,
makes mention of the Hospitalia Scotorum, which
Irishmen had founded in France for their countrymen,
some of which, however, had fallen into the hands of
strangers, and had been plundered. The abbey of St.
Simphorian at Metz, which its restorer, bishop Adal-
berd, gave to the Irish abbot Fingen, was confirmed in
its possessions by Otho III, in 992, with the condition
that it should contain only Irish monks. The same
abbot, Fingen, placed Irish monks also in the famed
abbey of St. Vanne, at Verdun. In the diocese of Toul,
in the time of bishop Gerhard, there lived in the same
cloister Greek and Irish monks, who sang the divine
office together in the Greek language. At Cologne,
the abbey of St. Martin was inhabited from the year
975, by Irishmen, and a similar cloister was founded at
Erfurt, in 1036. About the same time many Irish
monks were found in the abbey of Fulda. Generally
w'c are to understand Irish monks to be designated by
the name of Scofi, which so often occurs during this
period, in France, Germany, and Italy, not natives of
Northern Britain or the present Scotland, for a greater
part of this country belonged at this time to the king-
dom of Northumbria, and was consequently under the
dominion of the Anglo-Saxons. The Scots, properly so
called, who inhabited Argyle and the neighbouring
country, formed but a small population, and were too
poor in schools of education to be able to send forth
the many heralds of the faith, and learned monks, who
distinguished themselves in foreign lands.

Many Irish scholars acquired great fame during this
period by their labours in ecclesiastical studies. We
may mention first, Virgilius (Feargil), vsho w^as bishop
of Salzburg, in 7^(^, and who had before been engaged
in controversy with St. Boniface. His system of the
existence of antipodes was condemned by pope Zacha-
ry, as he seemed to argue the existence of a second
earth, inhabited by another race of men ; Sidulius



PERIOD THE THIRD. 269

bishop of Kildare, about the year 818, was most proba-
bly the author of a comuientary upon the epistles of St.
Paul, which now bears his name. Contemporary with
him was Dun^al, a teacher at Pavia, the opponent of
Claudius of Turin. Sometime later lived in the court
of Charles the Bald, the profound philosopher and
translator of the writings of the Areopagite, John
Scotus Erigina,* and cotemporary with him in France
was the Irishman INIecarius, who, by maintaining that
all men had but one soul, called forth a work in o])po-
sition to his doctrine from Ratramnus. Marianus
Scotus, who passed from the cloister of Clonard, in
1056, to the abbey of his countrymen at Cologne, who
afterwards lived at Fulda, was ordained priest at Wurz-
burg, and was, in 1073, the founder of the Irish abbey
of St. Peter at Ratisbon, left behind him a chronicle,
rich in its accounts of the Irish, and of their settlements
on the continent.

The state of the Christian religion, and of the Church
in Scotland, as far as it is not connected with the
Anglo-Saxon Northumbria, is, through the want of
records, veiled in obscurity. The seminary for mission-
aries and priests, who preached in the British north,
was for a long time the cloister of Columbian monks,
who were principally Irish, on the island of Hy. Before
the union of the Picts and Scots in one kingdom, in
the year 843, there was not any fixed bishopric; for
neither the see of Abercorn, which was founded in
681, nor the see of Whithern {Candida Casa), which
was restored in 723, could be long preserved. A few
cloisters or cells, founded by the Columbian monks,
were the only resting-places of Christianity; and were
the more necessary, as the cloister on the isle of Hy
was often desolated by the Norman sea-robbers, in the
ninth and tenth centuries. King Kenneth, the conqueror
of the Picts, founded in 849, a church at Dunkeld,
dedicated to St. Columba, and a house for ecclesiastics,
in which a bishop placed his see. The bishop of Dun-

* See page 73.



270 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

keld appears to have possessed a primacy over the
Scottish Church, until it passed to the see of St,
Andrew, where the bishop resided at the close of the
ninth century. In an assembly at Scone, in the year
909, the king Constantine, and Kellach bishop of St.
Andrew's, swore to preserve entire the faith and disci-
pline of the Scottish Church.* At Brechin, Dumblane,
Abernethy, Murtlac, and Aberdeen, religious houses
were founded in this, and in the following century. In
these houses bishops resided for the performance of the
episcopal functions among the people ; but during this
period, there were no bishoprics with defined dioceses.f
The condition of this Church resembled that of the
Irish in this respect, that the bishops resided rather in
cloisters, or in other religious establishments, than in
cities or in towns : in some places the succession of
bishops was frequently interrupted. Not unfrequently
the abbot or prior of the Culdee communities was also
bishop : of secular priests it appears that there were but
few in Scotland, as mention of them seldom occurs.
The clergy consisted chiefly of monks and of Culdees.
The latter (Keledei, in Irish Ceile-Dae) that is, "ser-
vants of God," or according to another translation,
" men living in community," who in modern times have
been the object of fanciful misrepresentations, and of
groundless hypotheses,:}: w^ere no other than canons,
and are first mentioned as existing in Scotland, after
the middle of the ninth century. The Culdees of an
episcopal see had the right of electing the bishop from
their own body ; and from the commencement of
the twelfth century, when St. Andrew's became the
metropolitan church of Scotland, the Culdees of this
church enjoyed a precedence before all other Scottish
communities, and asserted their right, that no bishop
could be appointed in the country without their con-



* See the Chronicon in Pinkerton's Enquiry, i, 493.
f Chalmer's Caledonia, London, 1807, i, 431.

\ See, for example, the work of Jamieson, replete witli errors, an
Historical Account of the Ancient Culdees.



PERIOD THE THIRD. 271

•sent.* Towards the end of this period, there were in
Scotland thirteen communities of Culdees, some in
episcopal sees, others in various places ; the members
of all of them are named in records Canonic}, and this
word is sometimes united with the name Kclidei ; at
other times either word is used alone.f Their rule,
which was probably the ancient one, which was com-
piled before the time of Chrodegang, obliged them to
live in community under a prior or abbot. But by
degrees the houses of the Culdees fell away ; the in-
mates separated and lived in separate dwellings, and
many of them took wives. Hence from the twelfth cen-
tury, the bishops endeavoured to reform them : but more
frequently the kings and bishops invited regular canons,
principally from England, whom they placed in posses-
sion of the houses and churches of the Culdees. In the
Culdee cloister of Dunfermline king David I placed
thirteen English monks from Canterbury. A controversy
betw^een the Culdees of Monymusk and the bishop of St.
Andrew's was decided in 1212 by pope Innocent III in
favour of the former ; and there existed at St. Andrew's
a community of Culdees, the members of which ob-
tained their places by inheritance from their relatives,
and, at the same time, a house of regular canons. The
Culdees appealed in 1297 to Pope Boniface VIII against
the asserted right of the canons to elect the bishop, but
they lost their process. In Ireland, Culdees are first
mentioned as existing at Armagh in 921 : but they
were not numerous, as, according to ancient custom,
the clergy at the cathedrals were almost always a com-
munity of monks. In England, the cathedral of York
had, about the year 936, and for some time after, a
community of Culdees.



* See a fragment of a chronicle of Durham in Usserii, Brit. Eccl.
Antiq. p. 1032.

t Jamieson, Appendix, No. 12-17.



PERIOD THE FOURTH.

FROM POPE GREGORY VII TO THE COMMENCEMENT

OF THE PROTESTANT SEPARATION FROM THE

CHURCH (from 1073 to 1517).*



CHAPTER THE FIRST.



EXTENSION OF THE CHURCH.



Section I. — conversion of the pomeranians. —

TRIUMPH of CHRISTIANITY AMONGST THE SCLA-
VONIANS IN GERMANY AND IN THE ISLE OF RU-
GEN : CHRISTIANITY IN FINLAND AND IN LIVONIA. f

During this period tlie Christian religion was intro-
duced amongst the still pagan Sclavonian, Finnish, and

* General Sources : — Lambert of Aschaifenberg ; Berthold's and
Bernold's Continuation of the Chronicle of Hermann (to 1079 and
1100) in Ussermann, Monum. Aleman. torn. ii. ; Marianus Scotus,
continued by Dodechin (to 1 200), in Pistorius, tom. i. ; The Chroni-
con Urspergense (the first part to 1126, the second to 1229), Argen-
torat., 1609, fol.; Sigeberti Gemblacensis, Chronicon (to 1112, with
a continuation to 1200), in Pistorius, tom. i. ; Annalista Saxo (to
1139), in Eccardi Corpus Histor. tom. i.; Oderici Vitalis, Hist. Eccl.
(to 1142), in Du Chesne, Script. Normann. ; Ottonis, Episc. Frisin-
gens. Chronicon (to 1152), in Urstisius, — the Continuation, by Otto
de S. Blasio (1146-1209), in Ussermann, tom. ii.; Ottonis, Prising.
De Gestis Frcderici I, Imp. Hist, libri viii. (to 1156), with a Con-
tinuation by Radevicus (to 1160), in Muratori, tom. vi. ; Alberti
Stadensis, Chronicon (to 1256), in Schilteri, Scriptores Rer. Germ.;
Chronica Regia S. Pantaleonis (to 1162), in Eccard. tom. i. — the Con-
tinuation by Godefridus Mon. Pantaleonis (to 1237), in P^reheri
Scriptt. torn, i.; Alberici Chronicon (to 1241), in Leibnitii Access.
Histor. tom. ii.; Matthan Paris. Historia Major (to 1259, continued
to 1276), ed. Watts, Londini, 1640, fol. ; Martini Poloni, Chronicon
(to 1276), in Schilteri Scriptt. — the Continuation to 1345, in Eccardi
Corp. Hist. tom. i. ; Vincentii Bellovaccnsis, Speculinn Historiale,



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 2/3

Lettish tribes in the north of Europe. The Pomeranians,
a Sclavonian nation, who inhabited Pomerania Proper as
far as the Vistula, and Wartha and Lusatia on this side
of the Oder, were the first converted. Th(; SeLivonian
deities, as they were honoured on the isUind Rugen, par-
ticuharly Geravit, the god of war, and the triple-headed
Triglaw, were worsliipped also by the Pomeranians.
In "further Pomerania, which from the year 49/ had
been tributary to Poland, the Polish duke Boleslaus
Chrobri founded the l)ishopric of Colberg, and placed
in it a German bishop, named Reinbern. Reinbern
was murdered in 1015, on a journey into Russia: the
bishopric of Colberg became extinct, and further Pome-
rania was united with the diocese of Gnesen. But th(^
Pomeranians constantly endeavoured to throw off the
Polish power : when conquered, they purchased their
safety by receiving baptism, but as soon as they were
able again to take up arms they renounced the Christian

Duaoi, 1624, fol.; Ptolomaii dc Fiadonibus, Hist. Eccl. (to 1316), in
Murat'ori, torn. xi. ; Guil. de Nangis, Chronicon (from 1113 to 1300,
with the Continuation to 1368), in d'Achciy, Spicilog. torn, in.;
Alb Mussati, Hist. Augusta Hcnrici VII, de Gestis ItaHcorum, post
Henricum VII, Ludovicus Bavarus ad filium ( 1308-1329), in Mura-
tori, torn. x. ; Giov. Villani, Historic Fiorentine, with a Continuation
by Matteo and Filippo ViUani (to 1364), in Muratori, torn, xvi.; The
Bio^rraphies of the Popes, by Pandulfus Pisanus, Bern. Guido, Nicol
Ros1eUius(to 1356), by Amalricus Augerii (to 1321), in Muratori,
torn, iii, p. i. iii. ; Joh. Vitodurani, Chronicon (1198-1348), in P.c-
card. ; Albcrti Argentinensis, Chronicon (1273-1378), in Urstisius ;
Gobelini PersoniE Cosmodromium (to 1418), in Moibomius, tom.^i. ;
S Antonini, Archepiscopi Florentini, Sumina Historialis (to 1459),
Opp Florent. 1741. torn. i. fol.; Pii II Comnientarii Kerum Memora-
bilium, a Joh. Gobelino compositi (1405-1465), Fref. 1614, fol.— the
Continuation by Jac. Piccolomini (to 1469) ; Joh. Trithemu, Annales
Hirsauginenses (to 1514), Monast. 8. Galli, 1690, 2 vols. fol.

t Vi'ta Ottonis ep. in Canisii Lectiones Ant. torn. iii. p. ii. ; An-
dre^e, Abbatis Bal)eberg in Ludewig, SS. Rer. Bamberg, torn, i.;
Helmoldi, Chronica Slavorum, ed. Bangert, Lubec, 1659, 4to. ; Vita
Metrica Vicelini, Episc. Aldenburg, in Leibnitii Scrip. Rer. Brunsvic.
torn, i ; Ilenrici Letti (al)out 1226) Origines Livoniiii Sacra^ et Civilis,
edid. Gruber Fref. et Lips. 1740, fol.; Kangiesscr, Bekehrungsge-
schichte desPommernzumChristenthumc, 1824.

It will be observed that two periods, the Fourth and tlie Fifth of the
larger work, are compressed into one in the present work.

VOL. III. '^



274 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

faith, considered by them as a burthen, which was in-
creased by the payment of tithes, and as an oppressive
yoke, which was imposed upon them as a chastisement
by their enemies. By the subjugation of the Pomera-
nians in 1 107 and 1 120, further Pomerania, which had
hitherto been independent, was entirely subdued : the
inhabitants of West Pomerania were made tributary,
and were obliged to promise on oath that they would
become Christians. A Spanish priest, named Bernard,
who had been consecrated by the pope bishop of Pome-
rania in 1122, began to preach Christianity amongst
them, but was derided by them on account of his
poverty, as the Lord of the world could not have chosen,
they said, a poor mendicant like him for his ambas-
sador : he was therefore compelled to abandon the
country. He entered into a cloister at Bamberg, where
adding his entreaties to the invitations of the duke of
Poland, he persuaded Otho, bishop of Bamberg, to
devote himself to the conversion of the Pomeranians.
Otho was named papal legate by the pontiif Callistus,
and in 1124 entered West Pomerania, accompanied,
according to the advice of Bernard, with a numerous
retinue, and with several cars laden with presents, and
with the furniture of churches. The Pomeranian duke,
Wratislaus, who was already a Christian, received him
with joy. The prudent and mild demeanour of the
bishop, his princely retinue, and his disinterestedness,
made a favourable impression upon the minds of the
pagans, who had by their last defeat been made to doubt
of the power of their gods. At Pyriz, seven thousand
Pomeranians were baptized, after an instruction of seven
days. At Camin, Otho found the entire pagan popula-
lation already prepared by the Christian duchess, and
all desirous of baptism : many who had been before
baptized and who had fallen from the faith were recon-
ciled to the Church. The greatest opposition was
encountered by the bishop in the rich commercial cities
Julin and Stetin ; but finally the people of Stetin pro-
mised to forsake their idolatry, when the Polish duke,
at the request of Otho, engaged to grant them a lasting



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 275

peace and the remission of the tribute. When they
saw that the destruction of their temples and idols
brought down no judgment upon the bishop and his
companions, they assisted themselves in the work of
destruction. The citizens of Julin followed the example
which had been given them by Stetin, and within two
months twenty-two thousand pagans were baptized in
Julin. To remove polygamy, the duke set the first ex-
ample, by the dismissal of his twenty-four wives ; the
murder and the exposure of their children and the burn-
ing of the dead, with many other pagan practices, were
prohibited. When Otho returned in 1125 to Bamberg,
twelve churches had been built ; one of his chaplains,
Adalbert, w^as left in Julin as its first bishop. During
a second journey into Pomerania in 1 128, Otho induced
the Lusatians (who had looked upon the missionaries
that had hitherto visited them as poor mendicant im-
postors, whose only search was for gold) to receive the
faith. At Walgast and Guzkow the inhabitants de-
stroyed their own pagan temples ; at Stetin and Julin
many had fallen from the faith ; others, in their erro-
neous ideas that Christ could be worshipped together
with their ancient gods, had erected to him an altar at
the side of an altar of pagan sacrifice. This Otho
caused to be broken, he reconsecrated the church, and
notwithstanding the opposition of the pagan priests,
he extirpated the last remains of paganism. In 1128
Otho returned to his own country, but continued to the
time of his death, in 1139, in relations of beneficence
with the Pomeranians. The see of Julin (which in
11/0 was transferred to Camin) Avas placed in imme-
diate subjection to the papal see by Innocent II in 1 140.
The country was continually more and more German-
ized by clergy, who followed each other from Germany,
and by German, and particularly Saxon, colonists.

After the third great defection of the Obotrites and
Leutizians, in 1066, idolatry again triumphed in the
provinces on the Lower Elbe. Henry, the son of Got-
tescalc, again subjected to himself the Wendish tribes,
but did little for Christianity : he erected only one

T 2



276 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

church, at Lubec, which was destroyed after his death.
The Wendish king Knut Laward supported the mis-
sionary labours of the excellent Vicelin of Hameln,
who had already announced the faith to the Dithmarsi,
had destroyed their sacred groves and idols, and had
founded Newmunster, as a point for the support of
Christianity, on the borders of Sclavonia. But after the
murder of Knut in 1131, the two Sclavonian princes
Pribislau and Niclot opposed themselves to the propa-
gation of the faith, and many Christians were cruelly
put to death. Vicelin, however, found protection in
the emperor Lothaire ; but after his death, Lubec and
the new church at Sigeberg were destroyed. The de-
populatedWagria had in the meantime become Christian,
by means of colonists who had been called thither
from Germany and from Flanders ; and although a
crusade of the Saxon princes, undertaken to subject
the Trans-Albingian Wendish provinces, produced no
permanent results, Hartwich archbishop of Bremen
undertook, in 1 1 50, to restore the Sclavonian sees of
Aldenburg and Mecklenburg. Vicelin, who in the
meantime laboured with the greatest success in Ilolstein
and in other places unceasingly for thirty years, gene-
rally amidst the greatest opposition and difficulties, was
made bishop of Aldenburg, and Emmehard, bishop of
Mecklenburg. The duke Henry the Lion, who had
done nothing for the restoration of the bishopric, com-
pelled the new bishop Vicelin to receive investiture
from him ; a right, to which in Germany only the kings
had laid claim. The holy man could with difficulty
live amongst a people, of which the greater part was
still pagan, and died in 1154. Ceroid his successor
could at first effect but little ; the endless oppressions
of the German princes embittered the people, and took
from him the means of building and endowing churches.
Duke Henry, to whom the king Frederic I transferred the
right of the investiture of the Trans-Albingian bishop-
rics, benefited religion by founding, in 1 154, the bishop-
ric of Rasseburg among the Polabi, which he conferred
upon the provost of Evermod. Soon after this time



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 277

the bishopric of Aldenburg was transferred to Lubec,
and the bishopric of Mecklenburg, which city was now
destroyed, to Schwerin. Christianity now triumphed
in these parts the more easily, as German colonists in
great numbers settled in them, so that, about the year
1204, in the bishopric of Rasseburg only a few villages
were entirely Sclavonian. The still pagan Wilzen and
Heveller were compelled by Albert, the first marquis
of Brandenburg, to embrace Christianity, about the year
1157, and the bishoprics of Havelburg and Branden-
burg were now restored after an interval of one hundred
and fifty years from their destruction. Eleven years
later the Sclavonian idolatry was subdued in its last
asylum and chief fortress, the island of Rugen. In 1 168
the Danish king Waldemar appeared with his fleet before
the strong citadel of Arcona, where w as the principal
Sclavonian sanctuary, the temple of the god Swantewit,
and, seconded by the prudent Absalom bishop of Ros-
child, obHged the Rugians to surrender : the statue of
Swantewit was broken in pieces, the temple was burned,
and a church built upon its site. The idolaters received
baptism the more willingly, as they became convinced
of the impotence of their gods, who had left unavenged
the cruelties and afflictions to which they had been
subjected. Rugen was united to the see of Roschild :
the church was endowed with the riches of the temple,
whence Absalom took upon himself the maintenance
of the clergy. The Rugians were thus left free of all
ecclesiastical tributes, a circumstance which accelerated
their adoption of Christianity.

The Finlanders, who, as late as the middle of the
twelfth century, honoured Kawe, their God of Nature,
his two sons, and the spirits of the elements, by the
sacrifice of human victims, were subdued by Eric the
Holy in 1156. Many were compelled to receive bap-
tism ; and Henry bishop of Upsal, an Englishman, was
their first apostle, and received for his labours the crown
of martyrdom. Ignorance of the Finnish language,
which was poor in words expressive of Christian ideas,
impeded their conversion. In 1240, the greater part



278 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

of Finland was either pagan or had by apostacy re-
nounced the faith. The Tawasti in Finland cruelly
persecuted the Christians who dwelt amongst them :
the Swedish Jarl, Birger, led a crusade against them in
1249, and obliged them to embrace Christianity, and
placed Christian colonists in the country. When, some
years later, the Carelers, who inhabited the lands beyond
the Tawasti, raged with implacable barbarity against
their Christian prisoners, the Swedish sovereign Thor-
kel headed a holy war against them, and compelled
them again to adopt the faith which had before been
preached to them by the Russians.

The countries on the Baltic, as far as the gulf of Fin-
land, Prussia, Courland, Livonia, Esthland, and Lithu-
ania, which were inhabited by Lettic (Sclavonian) tribes,
or, as was Prussia, by a population composed of Scla-
vonian mingled with Lettic and German families, con-
tinued pagan down to the thirteenth century. The
Lettic tribes adored a god in the form of a bird ; they
had their sacred trees and groves, oifered human
sacrifices, and were, like the Finlanders, skilled in the
arts of magic and sorcery. In company with some
merchants of Bremen, who traded with Livonia, Mein-
hard, an aged Augustinian monk, came into this country
in 1 186. He baptized many, and founded at Ykeskola
(Yxkul), on the Duna, under the protection of a town
built by the German merchants, his first church. At
the head of his little band of converts he repelled the
attack of a troop of pagans, and in 1191 was conse-
crated bishop of the new church in Livonia, at the
command of the pope, by Hartwig archbishop of Bremen.
But at his return from that city he found many of his
converts relapsed into idolatry : his companion Dietric
was saved from death as a sacrifice to the idols, only
because the prophesying horse, when consulted, raised
the foot of life. Meinhard could do little more down
to the time of his death, in 1196, than to preserve in
the faith the few who continued true to their religion.
His successor, the Saxon Cistercian abbot Berthold,
escaped death only by flight: he returned, in 1198,



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 279

with an army of crusaders, who had been called together
by the voice of the pope ; but he fell in the conflict.
The conquered Livonians surrendered; but immediately
after the Avithdrawal of the crusading army they en-
deavoured to wash away their baptism in the Duna :
they persecuted the Christians who remained in their
country, and by the threat of death compelled the
priests to seek for safety in Germany. The new bishop,
Albert of Apeldern, came amongst them at the head of
an army of pilgrims, and founded on the Duna the city
of Riga and several cloisters. For the protection of
the Christians, and of the churches in the conquered
countries, he formed a new order of knights in 1201,
with the approbation of the pope, on the model of the
Templars, who were named the Brothers of the Knight-
hood of Christ, or Sword Brothers. For the mainte-
nance of this order, which was bound in obedience to
the bishop, Albert destined a third part of the lands
which had been granted to him by king Philip, and
afterwards by the emperor Otho IV, according to the
then prevailing idea, that the emperor could dispose of
the lands of pagans. Contests respecting rights and
possessions, which soon arose between the order and
the bishop, w ere decided by the pope in favour of the
knights. Amidst the continued conflicts of the order
with the hostile Russians of Polozk and the surrounding
pagan tribes, Christianity made rapid advances. It was
in vain that the unconverted Livonians united them-
selves with the Esthians, Courlanders, Semgalli, and
Russians, to extirpate the Germans, and to destroy
Christianity. The persevering courage and the spirit
of the new order w^ere triumphant ; and under the pro-
tection of its castles German colonists began to settle
in the land.



280 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.



SECTION II.

IXTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY INTO PRUSSIA.

THE GERMAN ORDERS IN PRUSSIA. ATTEMPT OF

THE LITHUANIANS TO CONVERT THE MOGULS.*

In Prussia, which was then divided into eleven inde-
pendent states, paganism, through the power and vene-
ration which were enjoyed by the Grive, as priests,
legislators, and judges, was more deeply rooted than in
the other lands. The three gods, Percunos the Thun-
derer, Potrimpos the god of corn and fruit, Picullos the
Destroyer, were adored with a multitude of inferior
deities, and the ancient chief of the tribe Widewud,
with his brother Bruteno, the first of the Grive. The
sanctuary of the entire nation, and the residence of the
principal Grive were at Romove, where were the sacred
oaks and the veiled statues of the gods. The numerous
priests were required to live in celibacy : of the people
each one could take three wives, who were treated as
his slaves. All the daughters, except one in each family,
were put to death : deformed sons also and sick per-
sons whose recovery was doubted, servants and hand-
maids, were all burnt with the corpse of their master.
Human sacrifices were offered in numbers to the gods.
The first missionaries who preached the faith in
Prussia, all suffered the death of martyrs. St. Adalbert



* Petri dc Dusburg (about 1326), Cbronicon PrussitE, S. Historia
Orclinis Teuton. (1196-1326), ed. Hartknock, Jena3, 1679, 4to.; Lucas
David (obiit 1583), Preussische Chronik, herausg. von Ilennig, Koc-
nigsberg, 1812-17. For the Moguls, Narration of Travels, by John
von Carpin and W. Rubruquis, in Bergeron, Voyages en Asie, La
Ilaye, 1735, 4to. torn. i. ; Letters of J. Montecorvino, in Wadding,
Annales FF. Minor, ad annum 1205.

Hartknock, Diss, xiv, De originibus Relig. Christ, in Prussia, Ap-
pendix to Pet. de Dusburg ; Voigt's Gcscluchte Preussens, Kaniigs-
Ijerg, 1827, torn. i. ii. iii.; Kojalowicz, Historia Litliuauia^ — ]>. i.
Dantisci, 1659, p. ii. Antwerp, 1669 f Mosheim, Historia Tartarorum
Ecclesiastica, Helmstadt. 1741, 4to.



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 281

bishop of Prague, was, soon after his arrival, in 7^-)?,
murdered by a priest, because he had unconsciously
trodden upon sacred ground; and in 1008, Bruno,
who had been consecrated at Magdeburg bishop of the
pagans, was beheaded with his eighteen companions.
The long wars with Poland embittered the hatred of the
people against Christianity ; Poland, weakened by its
division into four dukedoms, and by its internal wars,
could offer only a faint resistance, and it was only from
the conversion of these implacable and indomitable
enemies that the Poles could expect peace and security.
A Cistercian monk from Pomerania, named Christian,
who had been educated in the abbey of Oliva, was the
first apostle of the Prussians. Supported by his cloister-
brethren in Oliva, he had converted many in the terri-
tory of Lobau, and on the confines of Pomerania. The
pope received his converts under his immediate pro-
tection, to guard them from the oppresions of the tluke
of Pomerania, and of the Poles, In 1214, he went for
the second time to Rome, in company with two con-
verted chieftains, when the pope consecrated him bishop
of the Prussians, and gave him for his diocese the lands
which were conferred upon him by the two princes.
But after his return the pagans commenced a war of
extermination against Christianity ; they burnt or des-
troyed in Culmerland and Masovia three hundred
churches and chapels ; they compelled many to renounce
their faith, and inflicted on the Christian priests tortures
which ended in death. An army of crusaders, the
guidance of which was entrusted by the pope to the
bishop Christian, marched in 1219 to the assistance of
the faithful. Under the protection of this army, and
by a grant of Conrad duke of Poland, the bishopric of
Culme, the see of which was in the strong city of the
same name, was founded. The sanguinary warfare
which the infidels renewed after the departure of the
army, by which they laid waste Culmerland and Masso-
via, determined Christian to form in Prussia, as had
been done in Livonia, an order of knights for the pro-
tection of the infant Church. A papal legate, who was



282 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

then in Prussia, and the duke of Massovia, gave him
their assistance, and thus the order of knight-brothers
of Prussia Dobrin was instituted after the model of the
Templars. But in an unsuccessful battle the greater
part of the knights of this new order were slain. The
infidel Prussians now laid waste the abbey of Oliva, and
put to a cruel death the monks who had fled to Dantzic.
In this situation of distress, Christian and the duke of
Massovia turned themselves to the grand master of the
German or Teutonic order. The pope and emperor
confirmed the commission by which the order under-
took the subjugation of the pagans, for which it received
in return Culmerland, which belonged to the duke of
Massovia, and all the territory which should be con-
quered, with the rights, secured by the emperor, of a
prince of the Roman empire. Supported by a new
army of crusaders, and being united with the remnant
of the Dobrinian order, the knights penetrated by
degrees into the interior of the country, and secured
their conquests by the erection of castles, under the
protection of which arose the cities of Culme, Thorn,
Marienwerder, and Elbing, which were peopled by
German colonists. The lands which w^ere conquered by
the order, were divided by the pope, in 1243, into the
three bishoprics, Culme, Pomerania, and Ermeland.
Each bishopric was again divided into three parts, of
which one was subject to the bishop, who possessed
over it feudal power, the other two to the order. In
the year 1255, after the subjugation of the northern
province of Samland, by a crusade which was headed
by Ottocar king of Bohemia, the bishopric of Samland
was added to the other three.

In Livonia, the indefatigable Albert, bishop of Riga,
aided by the crusaders whom he had brought with him
from Germany, had completed the subjugation of the
Esthians ; but the order of Sword-brothers, who had
been enfeebled by a defeat, suffered in 1236 from the
Lithuanians, appears to have yielded to their more
numerous enemies. The bishop of Riga therefore
obtained from the pope the absolution of the knights



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 283

from the oath and rule of their order, and their incor-
poration with the Teutonic knights. Herman Balk,
who was now prince of Prussia and Livonia, entered
into this country, in 123"; but the reinforced order
had now to protect a more widely-extending territory
against more numerous enemies; against Swantepolk
duke of Pomerania (who was jealous of the vicinity of
the order), against the Russians, tlie Lithuanians, and
the still pagan inhabitants of the country. Swantepolk,
together with the newly converted Prussians, laid before
the papal throne serious complaints of the oppression
which the latter were compelled to endure; finally,
however, the papal legate, James of Troyes, who was
afterwards pope with the title of Urban IV, brought
about a reconciliation, and effected a peace. The Prus-
sians bound themselves to discontinue polygamy, sacri-
fices to their idols, infanticide, the sale of their daughters,
to bury the dead, to observe the precepts of the Church,
to pay tithes to the Order, to take part in its expe-
ditions, to build churches, which the Order should pro-
vide with the necessary clergy. On the other hand,
full personal liberty, and, at their desire, the Polish
form of administration of justice, were guaranteed to
them. The popes, with the most beneficent solicitude,
took the infant Prussian Church under their protection ;
they provided for the institution of parishes, they con-
tinually required priests and monks to devote themselves
in Prussia to the instruction of the people ; they de-
fended the new converts, and forbad the chiefs of the
Order to invade their personal liberties. No Christian,
they maintained, should be placed in a station inferior
to that which he held whilst in infidehty. These strong
measures of the popes, which were accompanied with
severe threats against theOrder,and that ever-increasing
mildness and Christian love, which distinguished this
spiritual confraternity, even after the most sanguinary
conflicts, gave to conquered Prussia a destiny more
happy than that which had fallen to the lot of the Scla-
vonians, after their subjugation by the Saxons. The



284 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

knights attended the poor and the infirm in their hos-
pitals, they sent Prussian youths and maidens into Ger-
many, particularly to Magdeburg, to be instructed. From
the year 1251, schools were founded in Prussia. No one
could be compelled to receive baptism by the command
of his lord ; friars (particularly the Dominicans, to
whom the pope assigned this duty) laboured in the
work of conversion. By the great number of German
settlers, by the rights that w^ere ceded to them, by the
flourishing state of the cities, which was promoted by
the order, the Germans soon acquired the preponderance
over the Prussian population, and Christian morality
and education over pagan corruption and vice.

Once again, did Prussian paganism, encouraged by
a defeat of the knights by the Lithuanians, in 1260,
endeavour to raise its head. Eight knights, who had
been taken prisoners by the Lithuanians, were burnt
alive in honour of the gods : the Prussians destroyed, as
far as their arms could reach, all that was Christian ;
they murdered the clergy amidst the most cruel tor-
tures, and were not subdued until 1283, after a most
obstinate contest of twenty-two years, which the Order
could not have maintained without the assistance of
armies of crusaders, which were sent to them by the
popes. The convention of 1249, which was so favour-
able to the Prussians, was now annulled, and the fate
of the conquered lay in the will of the victors. But
although many of the nobility were deprived of their
freedom or of the independence of their possessions, and
were reduced to the condition of serfs, still, in general,
their lot was more mild than that of the Sclavonians in
the neighbouring countries. The bishops in Prussia
were, to a certain extent, dependent on the Order ; they
would pronounce no censure against the brothers, their
subjects, or their churches. The episcopal sees and
chapters (Ermeland excepted) were filled generally
with members of the order, or the canons of the chapters
frequently entered the order and elected the bishops
only from their own body. The order acquired, more-



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 285

over, the right of visitation of the chapters, and thus
obtained tlie most decided influence in the government
of the Church.

The Lettic bisho])rics in Esthland, Liveland, and
Curland, were founded in part earUer than those in
Prussia. Albrecht bishop of Riga had, in 1210, with
the consent of the pope, consecrated Dietric bishop of
the Esthians, and in 121/ the abbot Bernard bishop
of the Semgalli. In consequence of the devastation of
Esthland by the Danish king Waldemer II, there arose
a Danish-Esthian bishopric at Reval, together with the
German-Esthian bishopric at Leal (removed in 1224 to
Dorpat), both of which were confirmed by the pope in
1219. The bishopric of Osel was added to these in
1227, after the subjugation of this island of pirates.
The papal legate William, who, in 1225, found the
Christian country between the Duna and the Narba,
notwithstanding the sanguinary wars, still populous
and flourishing, held at Riga the first synod of the
Livonian-Esthian Church. The Kuri readily embraced
Christianity in 1230, and by an embassy sent to Rome
they honoured the pope as their lord. The ecclesiastical
division of the country was formed by the legate William,
who gave to Riga a third part, another to the diocese
of Semgalli, and of the remaining part formed a new
diocese of Curland. But the bishopric of Semgalli w as
destroyed, in 1246, by the general defection of the
people from the faith. The church of Riga was, in
12G5, made the metropolitan of Prussia and Liveland:
but the independent station of the archbishop, the
conflict between the interests of his city and the Order,
produced at the end of the thirteenth century a long
and oftentimes renewed contest, in which both parties
had recourse to arms, and in which the archbishop did
not hesitate to call in the assistance of pagan allies.

The Lithuanians, who were a tribe related to the
Prussians, w^ho were addicted to the worship of animals,
in addition to the honours paid by them to Perkun the
god of thunder, were converted at a later period, and
not without foreign power. Mindove, the son of one



28G HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

of their chief princes, had indeed embraced the faith
in 1252, and had obtained from the pope the title of
kinir. The Dominican named Vitus was consecrated first
bishop of the Lithuanians, but Mindove found it more
conformable to his interests to return to paganism, and
destroyed, as far as he was able, all the professors and
establishments of the Christian faith. Lithuania con-
tinued pagan until 1386, when the chief prince Jagal,
who had hitherto been the enemy of the Poles, proposed
to the nobles of the latter nation to unite the two
countries by his marriage with their young queen
Hedwiges, and to introduce the faith into Lithuania.
The Poles consented : Jagal, with many of the Lithu-
anian chieftains, was baptized at Cracow, and received
the name of Ladislaus. Thence he went with his queen,
accompanied by many Poles, seculars and ecclesiastics,
to Wilna : a diet of the nation made the Christian
religion the law of the land. The first bishop of the
new see of Wilna, which was subjected to the pope,
was Andrew Vasillo, a Polish Franciscan, who was
confessor to the queen. The conversion of the people
w-as rapidly effected, and in a manner extraordinary,
when we consider that the Polish ecclesiastics were un-
acquainted with the language of the country. The
sacred fires were extinguished, the groves were cut
down, the sacred serpents and lizards w^re hilled, the
idols were broken in pieces ; and when the Lithuanians
saw that all this passed unrevenged, they the more
easily became worshippers of the God of the strangers.
The new converts, allured by the present of a white
woollen garment, were conducted in troops to the banks
of rivers, and there baptized, frequently without pre-
vious instruction. Jagal, indeed, endeavoured, by his
instructions during his journeys of conversion through
the land, to supply in some degree the inability of the
Polish priests. It was natural that many pagan prac-
tices, at least in private, should be preserved in Lithu-
ania.

The conversion of the Samaites, a tribe connected
with the Lithuanians, followed some years later. Many



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 287

of them had been baptized by Prussian priests in 1401,
whilst the power of the Teutonic order still prevailed,
but Christianity was first introduced into the country
generally in 1113, by king Jagal and the Lithuanian
priest Withold. The impotence of the idols, which
calmly submitted to their own destruction, convinced
the Samaites that the God of the Christians was the
more powerful, and induced them to give their attention
to the preachers. Withold founded an episcopal see at
Miedmichi, the principal city of the country, which also
owed its origin to him. Amongst the Laplanders, who
had subjected themselves to the government of the
Swedes in the year 1 2/9, Christianity had made a com-
mencement at an earlier period, about the year 1335,
when Hemming archbishop of Upsala built a church in
Tornea, and baptized a number of the natives.

In the distant east, in the interior of Asia, the Nes-
torians made considerable progress as late as the
eleventh century, and spread the report in the west of
a powerful Christian king and priest named John, who
reigned in that distant country, a report which appears
to have arisen from the conversion of a king of the
Neraites, a shepherd tribe of interior Asia, who bore
the title of Wang-Khan, that is, chief khan, translated
probably into Joannes Rex. From a successor of this
pretended priest-king, pope Alexander III received an
ambassador in 11/7, whom he consecrated bishop, and
sent back with letters. By the ^loguls under Iscliin-
gis-Khan his entire tribe was destroyed in 1 202 ; but
the union of Ischingis-Khan with the Christian daughter
of Wang-Khan appears to have been the cause why the
princes of the Moguls treated the Christians w itli kind-
ness and leniency ; and, according to the account of
Marco Polo, the eldest son of Ischingis-Khan, named
Dochagati, embraced Christianity at Samarkand. The
widow of his brother Octai was also of the family of
Wang-Khan, and a Christian : her son Gajuk, although
not himself a Christian, had, in 1246, Christian priests
around him, and a chapel before his pavilion, in which
the divine worship was celebrated.



288 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

The popes and king Louis the Holy sent Franciscans
and Dominicans to carry the faith into Asia to the
Moguls, who, since the time of Ischingis-Khan, ruled
over Persia, China, and over the greater part of central
and eastern Asia. The khans of the Tartars received
these ambassadors, and evinced a partial inclination for
Christianity, partly because they had not yet decided
on a state religion, as they did later, by the adoption
of Buddaism or Islamism, and partly because those who
ruled in the west of Asia sought an union with the
Christian princes against the Mohammedans, their com-
mon foe. But the barbarism of the Moguls, the indif-
ference of the Chinese, the jealous zeal of the influential
and numerous Nestorians, the obstinate attachment of
the idolaters to their own worship, all this, connected
with the ignorance of the Western missionaries of the
language and manners of the nation, placed such impe-
diments in the way of their exertions, that the Francis-
can John of Montecorvino, whom pope Nicholas IV
sent to the Moguls in 1288, had almost to begin the
work of conversion in the north of China, where he
resided. He, too, had much to suffer from the perse-
cutions of the Nestorians, who wished not to allow even
an oratory to the catholics. Eleven years he laboured
alone, when he received an assistant in the person of
Arnold of Cologne, a brother of his order. In Khan-
Balikh (the royal city), or Cambalu, now called Pekin,
he built a church, baptized six thousand men, and
educated one hundred and fifty children, whom he had
purchased as slaves : he translated the New Testament
and the Psalms into the Mogul language, he converted
a Mogul prince of the family of the Keraites, the de-
scendant of the above-mentioned Wang-Khan, and
persuaded many of his subjects to exchange Nestorian-
ism for the Catholic faith : but many of the latter being
at a distance from their instructor, who was obliged to
live at Cambalu, fell back into Nestorianism, after the
death of their prince George. About the year 1306,
the chief khan permitted John of Montecorvino to erect
another church in Cambalu, in the vicinity of his palace.



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 289

which is, however, no proof of his predilection for
Christianity, as the Mogul princes were anxious to pro-
pitiate the priests of every religion. Clement V, in
1303, raised the church of Canibalu to the rank of an
archiepiscopal see, of which John was appointed first
metropolitan, with extensive powers. The pontiff sent
him also several assistants, whom he consecrated his
suffragans. John died in 1330. Nicholas, a Franciscan,
was named his successor, but was prevented, either by
death or by captivity, from exercising his functions ;
for in 1338 the Christians of Tartary complained that
for eight years they had been without a pastor. Thirty
years later, when the Moguls were driven from China,
Christianity also was expelled.



VOL. III. u



290 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.
Artur Rogóż
Administrator
Posty: 4635
Rejestracja: 24 maja 2010, 04:01
Kontakt:

Re: A history of the church - tekst po angielsku

Post autor: Artur Rogóż »

CHAPTER THE SECOND.



HISTORY OF THE POPES, FROM GREGORY YU 'JX)
THE DEATH OF CALIXTUS II.



Section I. — Gregory vii. — the contest concern-
ing INVESTITURES.*

After the death of Alexander II, in April, 1073, Hil-
debrand, chancellor of the Roman Church, was chosen
as his successor, by the unanimous voice of the people
and clergy. The cardinals also, to conform to the ordi-
nance of Nicholas II, declared that their choice fell
upon him, and he was, therefore, notwithstanding his
own opposition, enthroned in the church of St. Peter.
Hildebrand was the son of a citizen of Siena. He had
unwillingly followed his preceptor, pope Gregory VI,
after his abdication, into Germany ; he afterwards lived
as a monk at Cluny, and having accompanied pope Leo
IX to Rome, in 1049, he was, with St. Peter Damian,
the principal counsellor, coadjutor, and agent of the
Roman pontiffs. From the many journeys and legations
which he had performed, he had learned, perhaps bet-
ter than any one of his contemporaries, the political and

* Gregorii VII, Rcgistri S. epistolarum, lil)ri xi. (the tenth is
wantinji"), in Mansi, torn. xx. ; Panli Bernriedensis, de Vita Gregorii
VII, in Muratori, torn. iii. p. i.; Bruno de Bello Saxonico, in Freher,
torn. i. ; Lambert of Aschaifenburg, Berthold of Constance, Bonizo ;
Hugonis Flaviniacensis, Chronicon Virdunense, in Labbe, Bibliothec.
Manuscr. torn. i. ; Donithonis, Vita INIathiklis, in JMuratori, torn. v. ;
Udah'ici Babenbergensis, Codex Epistohiris (collected about 1125), in
Eccardi Corp. Hist. torn, ii.; Vita S. Ansehni, in Mabillon Acta SS.
soic. vi. p. ii.

Enrico Noris, Istoria delle Investiture delle Dignita Ecclesiastiche,
Mantova, 1741, fol. ; Voigt, Hildebrand als Papst Gregorius VII und
sein Zeitalter (Hildebrand, as pope Gregory VII, and his Times),
Weimar, 1815.



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 291

ecclesiastical state of Europe, and he therefore saw,
from the very commencement of his pontificate, the en-
tire difficulty with which he was surrounded ; he knew
now, when the papal see had, by the restoration of the
freedom of election, and by the succession of excellent
pontiffs who had filled it, acquired its dignity and inde-
pendence, that all well-disposed persons looked to him
for the fulfilment of his promised designs of the purifi-
cation and exaltation of the Church ; but he knew at
the same time that he had to commence a contest of
life and death, with the complicated interests of worldly
power and of a degenerate clergy, with the numbers of
those who would attempt all for the preservation of the
then existing order of things, — a contest, of which,
even should it terminate favourably, he could not hope
to see the end, and in which, according to all human
foresight, defeat was more probable than victory. The
solicitudes of the first days of his pontificate threw him
on a bed of sickness. In this state he wrote to Lan-
franc archbishop of Canterbury, imploring the prayers
of him and of his people ; " for," said he, " to avert the
judgments of God from myself, I must encounter kings
and princes, bishops and priests." He had before
declared openly and clearly in his letters the ideas
which guided him, and which he entertained in common
with a great majority of his contemporaries : — the
Church must be drawn at any price from its present
state of slavery and corruption ; it must be freed from
the yoke of the temporal power which employed eccle-
siastical persons and things only as means to their own,
oftentimes wicked and iniquitous, ends. The great evil
of the Church was, that bishops and priests who had
been appointed by the civil power, frequently for gold,
generally with self-interested views, and without refer-
ence to the wants of the Church, were in all things sub-
servient to the will of kings and of nobles, and adminis-
tered their offices in the spirit of pride, of avarice, and
of worldly-mindedness, with which they had acquired
them. In the pope, the organ of the highest spiritual
power, as he was subject to the greatest responsibility,

u 2



292 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

there reposed the most extensive authority ; kings and
princes were subject like other Christians to the judi^--
ment of the Church for the violation of the divine pre-
cepts ; if their offences were pul)lic, and particularly if
they menaced danger to the Church, then, not the
bishops, who were subject to the offenders, and under
their power, but the pope, who was the chief adminis-
trator of the power of binding and of looshig, was to
judge these crowned violators of order, to oblige them
to undergo penance and to give satisfaction, and, in ex-
treme cases, to punish them with excommunication.

Against king Henry of Germany, Gregory proceeded
openly, but in a spirit of friendship and mildness.
Until the confirmation, which the decree of Nicholas II
had reserved to the king, had arrived, Gregory would
not be consecrated, and named himself only " 1)ishop of
Rome elect." He himself warned the king not to
imagine that by receiving from him the confirmation of
his election, he in any wise sanctioned his wicked life.
The courtier-bishops of Henry endeavoured to persuade
him to withhold his consent, but his ambassadors, upon
their arrival at Rome, found that all had been done
according to order, and Gregory was consecrated. This
was the last confirmation of a papal election by the
temporal power. Henry, who was then pressed by the
Saxons, wrote to the pope an humble letter, in which
he confessed that, having been led astray by youthful
impetuosity and by the flattery of his counsellors, he
had grievously offended ; that he had plundered the
possessions of the Church, and had bestowed its digni-
ties upon unworthy simonists ; he implored pardon and
assistance from the pope ; he promised obedience to
him, and gave to him the entire regulation of the con-
stitution of the Milanese church. He formally laid his
complaints against the Saxons, after they destroyed
Hartzburg, and its cloister, before the pope ; Gregory
endeavoured, but in vain, to act as mediator between
the two parties.

The pontiff found himself called, before all things,
to attend to the relations, important for Rome and for



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 203

the Church, \vith the Lombards and witli the Norman
princes in Lower Italy. Landulf, duke of Beneventum,
and Richard, duke of Capua, were, by their oaths of
feudalty, his vassals ; some time later, the powerful
Robert Guiscard was compelled by a sentence of ex-
communication to renew his oath of fidelity. In 10/4,
at a great synod held at Rome, at which the Lombard
bishops and many Italian princes were present, former
decrees against simony and against the incontinency of
ecclesiastics were renewed and strengthened. The pur-
chasers and the sellers of ecclesiastical benefices were
punished with excommunication : only those were to
be ordained, who bound themselves to a life of conti-
nency ; married priests were to separate from their
wives, or to be deprived of their offices : should they
despise this command, the laity were not to be present
in their churches when they celebrated mass, nor to
receive the sacraments from them. This last decree
raised a violent storm, and in many places was met
with the most obstinate opposition. Siegfried, arch-
bishop of Mentz, Altmann, bishop of Passau, and the
archbishop of Rouen, ran the risk of their lives, when
they endeavoured to enforce its execution : at a synod
at Paris, Walter abbot of Pontisare was treated with
cruelty for the same cause, and hardly escaped w ith his
life. But this very conduct of the married clergy and
of their patrons, proves clearly that the po})e had every
reason to expel so corrupt and licentious a race from
the service of the Church, into which they had entered
only by simony ; and the willingness with which the
people obeyed the command to withdraw themselves
from the ecclesiastical communion of these men, tells
us how weary they had become of their yoke, and how
much all religiously-minded men desired a more pure, a
less rude and less worldly priesthood. In fact, so closely
were these two sources of all ecclesiastical abuses, si-
mony and incontinency, united together, that the one
could not be destroyed as long as the other was per-
mitted to remain ; for so scon as it was permitted to
married men to obtain possession of ecclesiastical dig-



294 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

nities, no power on earth could prevent churches
from being degraded to mere family provisions, and
ecclesiastical benefices from being bestowed by fathers
on their daughters as dow ers, or transmitted as inhe-
ritances to their sons. All the higher and lower ecclesi-
astical dignities, such at least as w^ere lucrative, came by
degrees into the hands of the rude, ignorant sons and re-
latives of rich and powerful families, to the exclusion of
all who were in the lower ranks of society : the pious and
the conscientious, who possessed not such connexions,
or who would not employ them, were held back ; and
the care of souls, the administration of the sacred mys-
teries, was an inheritance, which men sought to make
the most profitable : the spirit of mortification, of self-
devotion, and of disinterested exertion, disappeared, or
was to be found only in cloisters. All these conse-
quences followed in many places, as in Normandy ; and
hence all that the Church possessed of learning, of edu-
cation, and of piety, was arrayed, with a few exceptions,
in this great combat (as it was later also in the con-
troversy on investitures) on the side of the pope. Still,
however, the married clergy had their defenders, such
as Siegbert of Gemblours, and the anonymous author
of a work on this subject."* These writers paint in
dark colours the commotion excited amongst the laity,
by the decree of the pope against the clergy. They
relate that many laymen baptized their own children,
that others, in their hatred against these ecclesiastics,
had proceeded to acts of sacrilege, and that some priests
had been wounded and others murdered. Acts of this
kind may indeed have occurred, where married and
simonaical priests sought to maintain themselves in
their benefices by force of arms. Without the inter-
vention of the pope a bloody war might have been the
consequence of this opposition. But without founda-
tion is the accusation of Seigbert and of the anony-
mous w^riter, that Gregory declared the sacraments ad-
ministered by married priests to be invalid.

* In Martene, Thesaurus Anecdot. i. 230.



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 295

Gregory had not yet opposed himself to investitures :
he permitted Anselm, the nephew of the late poj)e, to
receive investiture from the king, before his consecra-
tion as bishop of Lucca. To Henry he sent in 10/4 an
embassy of four bishops, to whom, at his request, the
empress Agnes, the mother of the king, joined herself.
This princess, who had been formerly hostile to Gre
gory, as the chief promoter of a papal election,* which
was disagreeable to her, had now entered into friend-
ship with him. He possessed a stronger support in the
powerful margravine Matilda, who ruled Tuscany and
the greater part of Upper Italy ; a woman of extraor-
dinary talents, who in political wisdom, indefatigable
activity, in education and in strength of mind, has
scarcely an equal in history. The empress and the
embassadors persuaded Henry to remove those five
counsellors, the bishops of llatisbon, of Constance, and
of Lausanne, and two counts, who had been excommu-
nicated by Alexander H : they induced him also to free
himself from the censures w^iich he incurred by the
sale of ecclesiastical benefices, by subjecting himself
to the penance which had been imposed upon him. The
legates, to proceed legally against the prelates who
were accused or suspected of simony, desired to hold
a German council, but Liemar of Bremen and other
bishops opposed this design with all their power, and
thus drew down upon themselves a sentence of suspen-
sion from the pope, and a citation to Rome.

The pontiff had now convinced himself that the end
of all his desires, the restoration of free canonical elec-
tions, could never be obtained, nor simony be extirpated,
as long as the root of these evils, investiture, was not
cut off. Investiture, particularly in Germany and Italy,
had now produced this evil consequence, that the court
disposed of bishoprics and abbeys according to its own
caprice, without even the appearance of an election.
In the episcopal sees and in abbeys there were to be
seen the creatures of the court, who were strangers to

* See page 152.



296 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

their subjects, and had been forced upon them ; who
had attained their rank only by rich presents to the
king or to his attendants, by their servihty, and by
their readiness to serve in all things the king and his
favourites. The principal seminary from which bishops
were taken to fill the German and Italian sees, was the
collegiate chapter of Goslar, where Henry then resided
with his court, w hicli was famed for its immorality ; the
canons of this chapter had every opportunity of prac-
tising the arts of base flattery and disgraceful servility,
w^hich were the surest path to ecclesiastical honours ;
and of all the bishops who had been taken from this
school, only Benno, bishop of Meitzen, took the part of
the Church in the subsequent controversy. At this
period it had been of little avail if the Church had en-
deavoured to re-establish the freedom of election, and
had allowed the practice of investiture to remain ; for,
so long as investiture was an act that necessarily pre-
ceded consecration, it was always in the power of the
court to annul an election, and to intrude a stranger
into a bishopric. This was clearly proved by Henry,
when, after the death of Anno, in 10/6, he appointed,
notwithstanding the opposition which arose on every
side, the unworthy Hiclulf, a canon of Goslar, in w'hom
he knew he should possess a worthy instrument for all
his designs, to the archbishopric of Cologne, and pro-
mised to the bishop of Utrecht, if he could obtain con-
secration for his cousin, to bestow upon him the see of
Paderborn. In France the election preceded the act
of investiture ; but here also the king, by the law^ of
investiture, could prevent the bishop from taking pos-
session, and, if he pleased, investiture was made to
precede the election, or by investiture the election was
directed to another person. Thus, when Philip con-
templated his adulterous marriage with Bertrade, he
appointed a certain Walter to be bishop of Meaux, upon
whose servility he could safely depend.

Hence, in the third synod which Gregory convened,
in 10/5, twenty months after his exaltation, it was
decreed, that any one who should thereafter accept a



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 297

bishopric or an abbacy, or any inferior ecclesiastical
benefice, from the hands of a layman, should be deposed ;
and that any temporal prince \vho should assume to
himself the investiture of a bishopric, or of any ecclesi-
astical dignity, should be deprived of the communion
of the Church. The motive \vliich, known or unknown,
gave impulse to this last endeavour, w^as not expressed :
it w as, however, intended by it to free the Church from
the oppressive chains of the feudal system, and to libe-
rate the bishops from the condition of vassals. Gregory
w^ell knew that his new decree forcibly attacked the
existing rights of the king, and he therefore wrote to
Henry, stating that his resolutions were necessary for
the salvation of the Church, which was threatened with
ruin : that they contained nothing new, but only
restored the primitive constitutions of the Church : he
was willing to act with moderation, if the king would
send to him prudent and pious men, who would prove
to him that he could with a safe conscience lessen the
severity of his decrees. But Henry would not listen ;
and Gregory continued, contrary perhaps to the rules
of ordinary prudence, as he had first commenced the
contest with the married clergy, and with all who were
connected with them, now^ to attack kings and the
most powerful laity, who were in their interest. He
appeared to have brought into array against himself the
whole power of Europe, whilst in Rome itself the ground
trembled beneath him. For here also he had increased
the number of his enemies by his zeal for the restoration
of the purity of the Church. With great labour, he had
driven from the church of St. Peter those married lay-
men, who acted as clerics, who let out the altars to hire,
and took money from the deluded people : he had thus
injured the interest of many, and more was feared from
him. Thus the ancient adherents of Cadalous, prelates
whom he had suspended, men of the factions of the
Roman nobles, who w ere irritated at the independence
of the Roman see, which had been wrung from them,
cciiifiding in the (promised or expected) approbation
and support of the king, joined in conspiracy against



298 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

him. At the head of this party were Wibert arch-
bishop of Ravenna, whom Alexander II had been
induced to consecrate only at the prayer of Gregory,
the artful cardinal Hugo, and the fierce Cenci, who had
made himself infamous by his murders. The pope was
attacked in the church on Christmas eve, was wounded,
and cast into a tower ; but he was soon liberated by
the Romans.

Henry, after he had subdued the Saxons, v^'hom his
tyrannical cruelties had driven to insurrection, in his
pride and haughtiness set aside all respect for the
pope, for the rights and for the demands of the Church.
Into the chief church of northern Italy, the church of
Milan, he intruded the perjured Thedald as archbishop,
whilst Godfrey and Atto w-ere still living, and thus
violated at once the promise which he had given to the
pope and the oath which his plenipotentiary had sworn
to the Lombard bishops at Novara. He soon after
placed strangers in the sees of Fermo and Spoleto : he
profited of the deprivation by the pope of Hermann
bishop of Bamberg, to place in that see his confidential
favourite Rupert, the iniquitous provost of the Goslar ;
he now recalled his dismissed counsellors, who had been
again excommunicated by Gregory for their acts of
simony. Whilst the murderer Cenci and his companion
cardinal Hugo sought and obtained an asylum in Ger-
many, there came legates from the pope, the bearers of
letters, in which Gregory declared to the king, that by
his actions he proved himself to be an obstinate enemy
of canonical and apostolical ordinances. To the demand
of Henry, that Gregory should depose the Saxon bishops
on account of the part which they had taken in the late
insurrection, the pontiff answered, that they should be
first restored to their churches, and that he would then
judge them in a German synod. Henry treated this
letter with contempt : and the legates, in virtue of the
commission which they had received, cited him, under
pain of excommunication, to appear at Rome. He dis-
missed them with contumely from his court, and sum-
moned an assembly of German bishops and abbots to



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 299

meet at Worms. They came. Only Beiiiio of Meitzen,
who had gone to Rome to attend the synod of the i)ope,
Gerhard of Salzburg, Altman, and some of the Saxons,
remained away. And now it was evident to the world
what spirit animated the men to whom the destiny of
the German Church had in the few last years been
confided. Here they sat, the nurslings of the Goslar
court, the creatures of royal favour, of avarice and
caprice. Otho of Constance, Pil^o of Toul, Rupert of
Bamberg, Hozmann of Spire, William of Verona (who
w^as also of the school of Goslar), the ferocious and
passionate William of Utrecht, the avaricious and infa-
mous Siegfred of Mentz, Otho of Ratisbon, and Burchard
of Lausanne (both of whom were no more than rude
soldiers, and had been excommunicated by the pope,
and the latter of whom lived in a state of public mar-
riage), Verner of Strasburg, who had been twice accused
at Rome of serious offences, all ready to obey servilely
the wishes of the king, and eager to take revenge of
the pope, whose inflexible justice they had experienced,
or to disarm him for the future. Hugo, whom Gregory
had deprived of his rank of cardinal for his forgery of
false briefs, and for the favour shown by him to simony,
pretending to be the delegate of the cardinals and of
the senate and people of Rome, presented to the assem-
bly a letter filled with complaints against the person of
the pope, the falsity of which must have been evident
to all. They seized with joy the proffered pretext, and
passed this decree, — that he could not be pope, nor
possess the power of binding and of loosing, whose life
was stained by such crimes. Each one was required
to present a written declaration that he withdrew his
obedience from Hildebrand : only Adalbert of Wurzburg
and Hermann of Metz resisted ; but they withdrew
their opposition when the bishop of Utrecht, the crea-
ture of Henry, required them, in virtue of the fidelity
which as vassals they had sworn to their liege lord the
king, to sign the decree. This oath was at that time
understood to have this meaning, — the bishops were the
feudal subjects of the king, and as such could acknow-



300 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

ledge as po])e no other than the person for whom the
king had decided. The same requisition was made by
WilHam king of England to his episcopal vassals ; and
hence it is evident how great reason the Church had
to exert all its force to break the chains of this dis-
graceful bondage. Such was the unexampled issue of
this synod of Worms ; from which, as the contemporary
writers Hugo of Flivagny and Gebhard of Salzburg
assert, all the misery of the Church and of the state
took its origin.

Insulting letters from the king and the bishops to
" Hildebrand the false monk" required him to descend
from the chair of St. Peter, and to give place to one
more worthy. A synod of the simonaical bishops of
Lombardy, whom the messengers of Henry had hastily
collected at Piacenza, followed the example of the synod
of Worms, and bound itself by oath no longer to obey
Gregory VII. The messenger who conveyed this de-
cree to the synod which was now opened at Rome, and
who summoned the cardinals to proceed to Germany to
receive a new pontiff from the king, was w ith difficulty
saved by the pope from the indignation of the people.
But on the following day letters came from the German
bishops, containing excuses for their conduct and re-
newed protestations of obedience. The pope, w ith the
consent of the one hundred and ten assembled bishops,
passed sentence of excommunication on the archbishop
of Mentz, and on the bishops of Utrecht and Bamberg :
he suspended the others who co-operated with them,
and gave to those who had acted against their wills
time wherein to repent. He proceeded, in the same
manner against the bishops of Lombardy. Then, being
requested, as he said, by the entire synod, and in pre-
sence of the empress Agnes, who remained faithful to
the Church even against her own son, he pronounced
sentence of excommunication against Henry, the chief
offender ; he excluded him from the government of the
German and Italian kingdoms, and released all Christ-
ians from their oaths of fidelity to him. This was not
an act of deposition but of suspension, the then neces-



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 301

sary consequence of excommunication ; for the faithful
could not in any manner associate with one excommuni-
cated, who, as long as his excommunication continued,
could perform no act of government.

An assembly of Lombard bishops and abbots of Pavia,
under the guidance of Guibert, undertook to throw
back upon the pope the sentence of excommunication
with which they had been struck. The same was done
by the bishop of Utrecht, with the approbation of the
king, who was residing with him. But immediately
after this act he died a death of misery and despair.
The duke Gozclo also, who had engaged to conduct the
new pope to Rome, died ; and now the union of Worms
lost all its strength. The adherents of Henry could
neither respect nor love him ; a youth stained w ith the
abominations of every vice, who was sunk so deep in
crime, that, like the Byzantine emperor Michael, he
desecrated, with the wicked mob of his court, the sacred
night of the Nativity by a shameful mimicry of the
holy mysteries.* Many of these adherents were
attached to him by self-interest, the better part by the
strong prevailing feeling of feudal fidelity : now when
the former had more to fear than to hope from their
adherence to him, and a higher duty commanded the
latter to separate themselves from him, he saw himself
almost abandoned. The Saxons, whom since their sub-
jugation he had most cruelly oppressed, armed them-
selves at the first news of the papal excommunication
for a more general insurrection. In a new assembly at
Worms, Henry w ished to nominate another pope ; but
when Udo archbishop of Triers, who had returned from
Rome absolved from his censures, refused to co-operate
with the excommunicated bishops, a deep impression

* Ilcnry is accused of these ci'imes and abominations not oidy by
the impassioned Saxon, Bruno ; other writers, wlio were not engaged
in the party strifes of the times, such as Gcroh of Reigersberg, repre-
sent him in the same odious colours. The last-named author assures
us that he had even seen at Ratisbon the chapel which had been dese-
crated by the above-mentioned act of sacrilege. Gerohi Reichers-
pei-gensis de Henrico IV and V Syntagma, Ingolstad. 161 1, p. 35.



302 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

was made upon the synod : princes and bishops left the
court ; the bishops of Mentz, Verdun, Liege, Constance,
and Munster, were absolved by the papal legate, Alt-
mann bishop of Passau, having first complied with the
conditions required by the pope.

After some preliminary deliberations of various
princes at Ulm, as the Saxons were now in arms, a
numerous diet was held at Tribur, at which the spiritual
and temporal princes of the nation met from all the
German districts. Here appeared the papal legates,
Sigard patriarch of Aquileia, and Altmann of Passau,
bearing a letter from the pope, in which Gregory
expressed in unequivocal terms his wish that Henry
should be retained upon the throne. If, he wrote,
Henry should continue to treat the Church as a hand-
maid, and should proudly assert his right of investiture,
only then should they proceed to elect another king.
It was doubtless the influence of this letter, and of
the legates who partook of the same feelings, that
prevented the princes from entering at once upon a
new election. The miseries of the times, the confu-
sion of the kingdom, the prevalence of vice, and the
degradation of the Church, were all laid to the fault of
Henry. He had offered to abdicate his government,
provided the title and the emblems of royalty were left
to him. After long consultation it was resolved to leave
the final decision to the pope, and to invite him for this
purpose to a diet of princes at Augsburg. Henry, should
he continue for the space of a year under excommuni-
cation, would lose his right to the kingdom, and be com-
pelled to live like other excommunicated persons, in
the retirement of private life. This was according to
the discipline of the times, by which a person excom-
municated, if he should pass a year without obtaining a
remission of his sentence, was cut off from the Church
as incorrigible and heretical.

Henry, helpless and abandoned, yielded in all things ;
but he well knew that his powerful and numerous enemies
would wish to prevent his reconciliation with the pope ;
that they would lay before him at Augsburg severe (and



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 303

his conscience told him they were unanswerable) com-
plaints, and would wish to induce the pope to renew
the sentence of excommunication against him, and thus
pronounce a definitive sentence of his deposition.
Gregory consented to go into Germany ; but Henry, to
anticipate him, hastened into Italy, where he found the
pope at Canossa, a castle of the margravine Matilda.
Many of the excommunicated German bishops, Liemar
of Bremen, Eppo of Zeitz, Benno of Osnabruck, Burch-
ard of Lausanne, Burchard of Basil, together with some
laymen, had arrived before the king, and after a short
penance had obtained absolution from their censures.
Through the mediation of Matilda, and of Hugo the
abbot of Cluny, and other princes, Henry was admitted,
although the pope was, at first, unwilling to hear the
the cause of an accused person in the absence of his
accusers. Three days he did penance in a woollen
garment, fasting, and imploring the pope to grant him
immediate absolution, for the anniversary of his excom-
munication was near, and he knew that the German
princes were determined formally to depose him, should
he not then be absolved. According to the usages of
the times, there was nothing dishonourable or disgrace-
ful in this form of public penance ; other princes of the
age, kings and emperors, had willingly submitted to
more severe conditions. On the morning of the fourth
day, Gregory, at the earnest request of the margravines
Matilda and Adelaide, closed the penance of Henry.
The king then promised on oath that he would answer
the accusations of the German princes in an assembly
to be holden in Germany, and over which the pope
should preside ; that in the interval he would abstain
from every act of government ; that with regard to his
kingdom, he would subject himself to the guidance of
the pope ; that he would dismiss his evil counsellors ;
and that he would repair all ecclesiastical abuses
according to the w ill of the pontiff ; should he neglect
these conditions, his absolution should be annulled, and
he should never again be heard. Gregory was necessi-
tated to admit the first condition, the assembly in Ger-



304 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

many, as he had ah'eady consented to the meeting of
the German princes and of his legates. He then
absolved Henry from his censures, celebrated the holy
sacrifice of the mass, and gave to the king, as the seal of
his reception into the bosom of the Church, the body of
the Lord.* Henry thus received again his rights and his

* According to the narration of Lambert, the pope received tlie
holy encliarist in the form of a God's judgment, or ordeal, as a proof
that he was innocent of the heavy crimes with which he was loaded by
the opposite party, and then he gave the saci*ament to the king upon
the same condition, — that he should clear himself of the many and
serious accusations that were raised against him in Germany. For
this transaction, the severest reproaches were cast upon the memory of
Gregory by many historians, as by Stenzel, in his Gesch. der Frank.
Kaiser, i. 411. On the other hand, Luden, d. G. ix. 580, has proved
from internal arguments the improbability of this narration ; and, in
fact, the pope could not have acted in this manner, as he had deferred
the enquiry into the accusations to the future synod that was to be
held in Germany ; but, according to the laws of the time, he would
have decided the cause by the ordeal. Not only the internal but the
external evidences against this narration are fully convincing. Of all
the contemporary wi'iters, Lambert is the only one that has given it.
Berthold says, indeed, that Henry did not wish to receive the com-
munion, but knows nothing of the ordeal : he considers the adminis-
tration of the communion by the pope as no more than what it really
was, the natural consequence of the absolution, and the sign, which
always followed, of the granting of ecclesiastical communion. Donizo,
who resided at Canossa, and who must have been acquainted with the
circumstances, and Waltram of Naumburg (apud Freher, i. 816), a
follower of Henry, say only that the pope gave the holy eucharist to
the king as a sign of his reception into the communion of the Chui'ch.
But from the more ample narration of Bonizo (apud Oefele, ii. 816),
who was well informed of what he relates, and who lived in the
neighbourhood, we can trace the origin of the fiction that was repeated
by Lambert. Gregory, as we there leai'n, warned the king not to
receive the body of the Lord unworthily, but only if he were sincere
in his penance, and in his protestation that he recognised him as lawful
pope, and that the excommunication laid upon him were binding, and
that he really believed that he received the absolution of his censures
by this sacrament. This narration bears internal and external evi-
dences of truth : Gregory absolved tlie king from his censures during
the mass, at the moment of the communion, and by administering the
same. He then called to the mind of the king the awful consequences
of an unworthy reception of the holy sacrament, should his repentance
and submission be only hypocritical. But did Henry in reality re-
ceive the communion ? Certainly ; this is asserted by Bonizo, by
Donizo, and by AValtram ; had he declined it, as we are told by Ber-



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 305

kingdom, and althon-li the pope could not restm-e to
him the exercise of government at a tmie when all Ger-
many had risen against him, and had loaded hnn with
the heaviest accusations, he gave to him the title ot
king, and treated with him as king until the year

1080. ,, ... ,. .

When he left Canossa, Henry found himselt m a
situation in which everything conspired to deprive ot
its eiFects his reconciliation with the pope. Ihe Italian
bishops, more powerful than the German with their
chiefs^ Thedald of Milan, Sigefrid of Bologna, and
Roland of Treviso, were indignant that they and their
cause were abandoned by the khig ; their principles,
which were as distant from those of the pope, as heaven
from earth, rendered impossible a union between them
and Gregory ; they must, unless they wished to yield,
remove Gregory, and place upon the papal throne one
of their own number, who would tolerate their simony
and their violation of all ecclesiastical law. 1 hey had
already attempted extremes against the pope and the
faithless Hugo failed not to fan the flame. The barons
also thought that they had a king who would make to
them rich concessions of wealth and privdeges ; but
Henry had renounced the administration of government.
He therefore found himself surrounded with reproaches
in Italy His adversaries threatened to depose him, and
to elect in his stead his infant son Conrad, to proceed
with him to Rome, and to nominate a new pope
Henry endeavoured to pacify these men, but could not

thold, the strongest suspicion, which he was anxious to avoid, woukl
ave been awakened against hin.. But his speedy relapse gave occa-
sfon to the report, which Berthokl has repeated, that by refusing to
re^^ive the holy communion at Canossa, he gave "a proo ot lu>
hnp^e conscien'ce and of the hypocrisy which was concea ed ..thn^
him." But in middle and northern Germany, where, through th.
prT^ailin'^ hostile feeling against him, his enemies were desirous ot ne^v
[ 00? ohhe truth of the horrible accusations that ^^^r^fS^
him, the report was spread, such as we read it in /:^7bert, namely
that by the\ion-roception of the holy sacrament, -^"^'^ 7^^ ff^^^^^^^^
him as a GocVs J>uhjmn,t, he betrayed the heavy gudt of his con-



science.

VOL. III.



306 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

publicly separate himself from the pope ; partly through
respect for his mother, who was then residing at Pia-
cenza, and partly through fear of the German princes.
But a papal legate was thrown into prison in Lombardy,
where he died, and an interview which was intended to
have taken place at Mantua was broken off, as Gregory
and Matilda, who had been warned of the treachery of
the king, or of the Lombards, interrupted their journey.
In March 1077, Gregory was invited by the Germans
to preside at an assembly which was to be held at
Forcheim, but he could not accept this invitation as
Henry refused to grant him a safe conduct. Notwith-
standing his exhortation, that the princes would not
proceed to the election of a new king, unless obliged by
extreme necessity, this was done at Forcheim. The
duke Rudolf of Swabia, who was doubly related to
Henry, was crowned at Mentz, by the archbishop Sieg-
fried, after he had promised to grant the free election
of bishops, and recognise Germany as an elective king-
dom, ceding by this act his son's right of succession.
The princes thus, in fact, gave that definitive decision
which they had a short time before solemnly reserved
to the pope.

But now the characterless changeling spirit of the
German princes, which in these times had been so often
proved, acted its part. Rudolf saw himself abandoned
without cause by the greater part of those by whom he
had been elected. Henry, who in the meantime had
come to an understanding with the Italians, returned
into Germany, and in a short time collected around him
his ancient followers ; he formed a powerful army ; the
bishops of Augsburg, Constance, Strasburg, and Lau-
sanne, again passed over to him, or even took arms in
his cause. In the south of Germany, only the bishops
of Wurzburg, Passau, Worms, and Salzburg, remained
faithful to Rudolf, who was obliged to retire into
Saxony.

Gregory, at first, maintained an independent station
between the two competitors : he wished to decide the
contest for the throne in conjunction with the spiritual



PKRIOD THE FOURTH. 30/

and civil priiires in Germany, and obtained from l)otli,
each of whom looked for his support, a safe conduct into
that country. To both his journey was equally ob-
jectionable. Henry, who possessed all the Alpine
passes, was able, and was resolved, to prevent the pro-
gress of the pope into his kingdom. He began imme-
diately to fill the episcopal sees with his own creatures.
In many churches there were now two bishops, one
l)elon,2:ing to the party of Henry, the other to that of
Rudolf; the next consequence of this contest was, that
the miseries of civil war, plunder, devastation, and
murder, were everywhere increased. Whilst the papal
legate, Bernard, in a synod at Goslar, in November
10/7, too precipitately excommunicated Henry, and
confirmed the possession of the kingdom to Rudolf,
Gregory convoked a synod in Rome, to meet in March
10/8, and to it both kings were invited to send their
delegates. Henry, who alone could do this, sent the
bishops of Osnabruck and Verdun ; the Saxons sent
letters bitterly complaining that the pope, instead of
adhering to the first excommunication, now spoke of
two kings, and was willing to commence again the
cause which had been already decided. Gregory was
placed in the midst, between the two contending par-
ties, both of which had violated their compacts with
him, and as he w'as without full information of the true
state of affairs, for the followers of Henry kept all the
passes closed, he could not well act otherwise, and his
endeavours to decide the contest in a synod, as arbitra-
ting judge, was the only means by which an appeal to
the sword, and all its consequent evils, could be pre-
vented. At the termination of the Roman synod,
another embassy from the pope was sent into Germany
to effect a peace and reconciliation ; but in vain, for the
war continued to rage with redoubled cruelty. Henry
received the legates with every demonstration of honour,
as their presence w^as a proof to the people that he was
not excommunicated, but he hastened from them to the
diet, which had been assembled at Fritzlar. After the
undecisive battle of Mellerichstadt both kings again

X 2



308 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

sent ambassPtdors to the pope, and in the synod which
the pope was then holding at Rome, each accused the
other of placing impediments in the way of the projected
diet of the kingdom ; each demanded against the other
sentence of excommunication. The ambassadors of
Rudolf made heavy accusations against the conduct of
Henry towards the Church ; he trod religion under his
feet ; he treated priests as abject slaves ; he had im-
prisoned or banished many bishops and archbishops.
The greater part of the fathers, on hearing this recital,
declared that at length the time was come, in which
the final stroke should be struck against him ; but
Gregory still believed in the possibility of a favourable
termination to this contest. A new legation, in which
was the celebrated Petrus Igneus, bishop of Albano,
w^as sent into Germany ; but the oft-intended diet, the
object of so many hopes, was again prevented, chiefly
through the fault of Henry and his adherents, although
those who would prevent it were by anticipation ex-
communicated by the legates, and although Henry
always pretended an unconditional obedience to the
commands of the pope.

In Italy, and even in Rome, the party of Henry was
at this period the more numerous ; only Matilda, who
had collected together a body of chieftains, wdio, guided
themselves only by self-interest, continued in a steady
adherence to the papal see. In Germany the miseries
of the Church and of the people. were without bounds.
Henry forced into the bishopri(,'s, the prelates of which
were either dead or exiled, his most zealous followers,
without any regard to their ecclesiastical qualifications.
Thus Treves was doomed to bear the yoke of Egilbert,
who had been before excommunicated by his own
bishop in Passau, but whom not one of the provincial
bishops would consecrate. Augsburg received Siegfried,
the friend of the king, but he was soon opposed by Wigold,
who had been sent by the pope : Salzburg was laid waste
by the prodigal Berchtold, who succeeded the exiled
Gebhard. Adalbert bishop of Worms was held prisoner
by Henry ; his bishops attacked the cloisters which



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 309

favoured the pope ; dukes and counts combated against
the bishops. The pope could now no longer continue
a spectator of these scenes. Henry's deceitful conduct
was now made evident : the cardinal Peter of Albano,
who had returned to Rome, made the most severe
complaints against him ; and although he had been
vanquished in the battle of Fladenheim, his ambassa-
dors in Rome, the bishops of Bremen and Bamberg,
required of the pope that he would excommunicate
Rudolf, menacing him that unless he complied, Henry
would choose another pope. On the other side, the
Saxons and the Thuringians complained loudly of Gre-
gory's procrastinating weakness. Matter was not want-
ing to the ambassadors of Rudolf wherewith to paint the
faithless and tyrannical conduct of Henry. The pope
therefore in a numerous synod which he held in Rome in
March 1080, renewed against Henry, — w4io had pre-
vented the assembly which was intended to effect a peace,
— who had, without necessity, reduced numbers of
Christians to the greatest of extremities, — who had laid
churches dssolate and had sunk his kingdom into the
deepest of miseries, — sentence of excommunication and
of deposition : he absolved his subjects from their oath
of fidelity, and declared Rudolf to be the only true
sovereign of the Germans. He had previously repeated
his prohibition of investitures, and pronounced sen-
tence of excommunication against all princes and kings
who should exercise them. Henry and his followers
endeavoured to repay the pope with similar acts. Nine-
teen bishops assembled for this purpose at Mentz : the
Lombard and German prelates and nobles met in greater
numbers at Brixen. Here the old perjurer Hugo again
acted his part ; and whereas Gregory had founded his
judgment against the king upon w^ell-known facts, here
thirty prelates, many of whom had been deposed and
excommunicated in former synods, blushed not to de-
clare the pope deprived of his high rank, founding
their sentence upon the accusations that he had seized
by violence the Roman see, that he had conspired
against the life of the king, that he was a sorcerer, a



310 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.
Artur Rogóż
Administrator
Posty: 4635
Rejestracja: 24 maja 2010, 04:01
Kontakt:

Re: A history of the church - tekst po angielsku

Post autor: Artur Rogóż »

follower of the heresy of Berengarius, and that he had
entered into an alliance with the devil. They then
elected the great friend and defender of the simonists,
the oftentimes-excommunicated Guibert, archbishop of
Ravenna, as anti-pope. Henry bent his knee before
his puppet, swore to place him on the throne of the
Vatican, and to receive from him the imperial crown.
Guibert — he now named himself Clement III — excom-
municated king Rudolf and the duke Guelf.

Whilst Gregory, who foresaw the coming events, had
provided himself with a support in Lower Italy, by his
reconciliation with the Norman duke Robert Guiscard,
whom he had before excommunicated for having plun-
dered the lands of the Church, but who now, by his
oath of fidelity, had become his vassal, Rudolf died in
Germany of the wounds which he had received in the
battle in which the Saxons defeated their enemy on
the banks of the Elster, It was not long before Henry
again appeared in Italy; and whilst Gregory, in a Roman
synod, repeated the sentence of excommunication
against him, he caused Guibert to be recognised as pope
in an assembly of Lombard bishops, in the year 1081,
although the whole Christian world was in communion
with Gregory. He in vain endeavoured to allure to his
party the duke Robert, by a promise of a portion of
the papal territory. In 1081, and again in 1082, he
marched, but without any result, against Rome ; he
left his pope at the head of the army, w hich was des-
tined to lay waste the Roman territory, an occupation
for which he was more suited than for his ecclesiastical
office. In his third invasion Henry gained a part of
the city, and Gregory shut himself up in the castle of
St. Angelo. Weary of the long siege and suffering from
want, the Romans assailed the pope, to force from him
a reconciliation with the king, who promised on his
part to recognise him as lawful pope, and to receive
from his hands the imperial crown. He would thus
surrender the unhappy Guibert, whom he had employed
only as an instrument in his contempt and oppression
of the Church. But the inflexible Gregory replied, that



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 311

only when Henry had offered satisfaction for his noto-
rious crimes to God and to his Church, would he ab-
solve him and place the crown upon his head. The
Romans at length agreed with Henry, that Gregory
should call a general council and leave to it the decision
of their contest. The pope called this assembly, and
in a public epistle declared to all the faithfid, that in
this council it would be clearly shown, who was the
real author of all the existing misery, and of the division
between the Church and the empire. But Henry, by
whom this synod was not at all desired, caused the
bishops and abbots, and even the papal legate Otho of
Ostia, although he had promised on oath to grant safe
conducts to all, to be attacked on the way, to be plun-
dered and imprisoned. The money which the Greek
emperor Alexius had sent him to carry on the war
against the duke Robert, he employed in corrupting the
Romans. Gregory therefore held a synod, to which,
besides the prelates of Lower Italy, only a few French
bishops came, but the pope could do no more than
exhort them to patience and perseverance. In 1084,
Henry returned for the fourth time, with Guibert, to
Rome, where his largesses of gold had opened a way
before him. In a so-called synod he procured the elec-
tion of his anti-pope, who was consecrated and en-
throned by two Lombard bishops. After this ceremony
Henry received from Guibert the crown of the empire.
But in the meanwhile the Saxons and Swabians had
elected Herrmann count of Salm to succeed the de-
ceased king Rudolf. He was crowned at Goslar, by
Siegfried archbishop of Mentz ; but his authority was
too confined and his power too weak to withstand the
great contest, which was now divided into particular
factions. To avoid the increasing miseries, many per-
sons fled into cloisters, and the abbeys were now filled
with warriors and noblemen, who, as lay-brothers, will-
ingly performed the lowest oftices of the community. No
better was the state of Italy, where, according to the
expression of a contemporary, the cardinal Ueusdedit,
Henry and his instrument Guibert renewed the persecu-



312 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

tion of Nero. All who would not embrace their party or
hold communion with them, were maltreated or plun-
dered: from the bishoprics, churches, and abbeys, the Ca-
tholic priests were expelled and replaced by vicious and
ignorant men, who were again exchanged for others,
through favour, policy, or bribery. During this and the
following year, no less than ninety thousand men were
reduced to the greatest extremities or put to death by
Henry and his coadjutors.*

A conference between the archbishops of Salzburg
and Magdeburg on the one side, and the archbishops of
Bremen, Mentz, Treves, Cologne, and the bishop of
Utrecht on the other, which w^as opened, in January
1085, at Berkach on the Werra, led to no results. The
schismatieal bishops, therefore, convened a synod at
Mentz, to which the CathoUcs opposed the synod of
Quedlinburg, where the papal legate Otho of Ostia,
Gebhard of Salzburg, Hartwig of Magdeburg, wdth
eight bishops and the delegates of the bishop of Wurz-
burg and Worms, Gebhard of Constance and Wigold
of Augsburg, declared with relation to the negotiations
of Berkach that the sentence of the papal see w^as so
decisive that other persons could not presume to judge
it ; they condemned, as erroneous, the assertion made
at Berkach by the archbishop of Mentz, that a temporal
prince could not be condemned by the Church, as long
as he was not in full possession of his dignities. The
archbishop had applied to the king the canon which
proscribed this restitution in the case of bishops.
Finally, Henry's bishops, with the anti-pope, his cardinals,
and those who had been ordained by excommunicated
prelates, Seguin of Cologne and Engelbert of Treves,
were excommunicated. These prelates, namely, the
three Rhenish archbishops and sixteen bishops, assem-
bled at Mentz, whither Guibert sent his legates, and
declared the bishops of Salzburg, Mentz, Worms and
Wurzburg deposed ; they elected others in their places,

* See the fragment of the cardinal Deusdedit, from a Roman ma-
nuscript, published by Saccarelli, xxii. 179.



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 313

and condemned king Herrmann as JL^uilty of hiiili-trea-
son, and as an enemy to the peace of the Church.

But in Rome, great changes had now taken place. A
few weeks after the coronation of Guibert, he and
Henry, alarmed by the intelligence of the march of
Robert Guiscard, fled from the city. The Norman
army entered and liberated the pope from the castle of
St. Angelo, but was guilty of excesses and of extreme
cruelties, and committed acts of desolation that sur-
passed even those of the early barbarians. At Salerno,
Gregory held his last synod, in which he renewed the
anathema against Henry. Oppressed by the weiglit of
his solicitude for the Church and of the misfortunes
that had fallen upon him— for he was doomed to sur-
vive the apostacy of two men, who had stood near him,
the bishop of Porto and his chancellor Peter — he pub-
lished his last appeal to Christendom, the testament
left by him to the Church. " All," he said, " all have
risen and conspired against us, only because we would
no longer be silent amidst the threatening dangers of
the Church ; only becaut^e we would no longer endure
the attempts to reduce the Church into a state of servi-
tude. Everywhere it is permitted to the poorest woman
to unite herself, according to the laws of her country
and according to her own will, with a man as her hus-
band ; but to the Church alone, the bride of God and
our mother, it is forbidden to remain united with her
bridegroom upon earth. Could we permit that heretics,
adulterers and intruders should subject to themselves the
sons of the Church, and should cast upon her the scan-
dals of their own conduct ?"

On his death-bed, he recommended the abbot Deside-
rius, the bishops, Otho of Ostia, Hugo of Lyons and
Anselm of Lucca, as the men most worthy to succeed
him. He then implored the cardinals and the bishops
who surrounded his couch, to remind him of all the
failings and errors which he had committed during his
pontificate, and made them i)romise that they would not
receive Henry and Guibert into the conmiunion of the



314 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

Church until they gave proofs of tlieir repentance, and
had performed penance for their offences. With the
exception of these and other chiefs of their faction, he
absolved all from censure. His last words were, " I
have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore do I die
in a foreign land."

Gregory VII has been often accused of the design of
establishing an universal monarchy over all Christian
kingdoms, and of reducing all Christian kings to the
condition of vassals of the papal see. We can indeed
imagine that an elevated spirit, as was that of Gregory,
confined within the circle of the then existing ideas,
should consider the relations which sprung from the
feudal system, as the only possible, or at that period the
only feasible, form of union of the Church with the
state, and should, therefore, have cast off the feudal
dependence of the Church upon the power of kings, as
an intolerable yoke ; but should at the same time have
considered subjection of kings to the throne of St. Pe-
ter to have been, particularly in the existing order of
things, according to nature and most desirable. It can-
not, however, be proved that Gregory did in fact enter-
tain these views, or advance these pretensions. He
appears to have proceeded to the greatest length, when
after the death of Rudolf he commissioned the bishop
of Passau to propose to the newly-elected king of the
Germans a form of oath by which he promised fidelity
and obedience to the Roman see, and pledged himself to
become the knight {miles) of the pope, by placing, at
their first interview, his hands within tlie hands of the
pope. This might be so interpreted as if the king had
become the vassal of the pope — this was generally sig-
nified by the word miles — and Gregory himself seems
to have thought that this interpretation might be given,
wherefore he empowered his legate to change or to
omit in the oath whatever might give offence. But, as
it is evident from the words preceding this part of the
oath, the pope understood by the militia (military
service) no more than the duty to protect the person of



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 315

the pope, tlie Roman Church, its rights and possessions.*
The king swore to him fidelity and protection as Otho I
had to pope John XII, and Henry II to Benedict VIII,
and vowed obedience to him as it became every Chris-
tian, to the successor of Peter. Had the pope intended
to form a feudal relation between Germany and its king
and the see of Rome, he must have required that the
king should receive the investiture of his kingdom
from his hands, as Robert Guiscard had been invested
by him with the possession of Apulia, Calabria and
Sicily. But of this Gregory had no idea.

Over France Gregory made no pretensions to feudal
sovereignty : he confined himself to the demand that a
penny should be paid by every house as a contribution
to the apostolic see, which then stood in the greatest
need of such assistance. In making this demand,
he asserted that Charlemagne had permitted a similar
contribution to be levied on three parts of his khigdom.
Gregory sought and obtained the same from William
the Conqueror in England, where the payment of the
Peter-pence had been for some time interrupted. The
other demand of the papal legate, that the king would
take an oath of fidelity to the pope, during the schism
and the obstinate contest against the laws of the
Church, was rejected by William, as an innovation. It
is probable that his suspicious mind saw in this demand
an intended limitation of the power with which he
despotically ruled the Church and the bishops of his
kingdom. The pope obtained from England, as from
Hungary, only an ecclesiastical submission, and if
he pretended to a particular right of the Roman
Church over Hungary, which was derived from the
grant of the regal dignity made to St. Stephen, there
was in this no encroachment upon the full sovereignty
of the Hungarian monarch. He rather insisted that
Hungary should be a self-existing independent mo-

* As a sign of this duty, the pope presented to the king or empe-
ror the military belt (cinguliun militare) and the 8\vord: this ceremony
is found in the Cervmonialc Rotna/nnn. — See Rnynaldum ad annum
1204, num. 72.



^^16 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

iiarchy, am] not a feudal province of Germany. He
expressed himself in the same manner with regard to
Spain. He asserted that this kingdom, before its sub-
jugation by the Saracens, had been tributary to St. Peter
and to the Roman Church, and had belonged pecu-
liarly to it. Before the exaltation of Gregory, a count
Ebulo of Recajo had obtained authority from the pope
to bear arms against the Saracens in Spain, on the con-
dition that he should subject, by the payment of a
yearly tribute, all his conquests to the authority of the
Roman Church. Ramiro king of Arragon and Navarre
placed himself under the superiority of the pope, and
paid to Gregory an annual tribute. But neither in the
demand of the pope nor in the acts of the king w^as
a vassalage instituted, as we may learn both from the
letters of Gregory to the Spanish monarchs, in which
he speaks only of the general obedience and fidelity
which w^as due to the see of Rome, and also from the
fact that other kings of the peninsula made their nation
tributary, through particular devotion to other churches
and to cloisters, such as Cluny and Clairvaux. Neither
this, nor that paid to Gregory, partook of the nature of
feudal tribute, but w^as a sign of an especial devotion,
veneration, and of entire submission to the ecclesiasti-
cal authority of the Roman see. Tlie annual tax which
Demetrius king of Croatia and Dalmatia vowed in 10/6
to pay to the Roman Church, was on the contrary
a real feudal tribute, for the pope had granted to this
duke the title of king, and in an assembly at Salona had
invested him by his legates with the standard, sceptre,
sword and crown.*

* Such are the acts that have obtained for this great pontiff, from
writers of our country — historians (?), reviewers, and phiy-writers —
the appeUations of haughty tyrant, proud hypocrite, amhitious priest,
and even murderer. He has, however, found defenders, not only
amongst Catholics, but also amongst Protestants. We will venture
to quote a passage from a work which every Catholic scholar ought
to have diligently studied : " The Catholic view ought to appear at
least as the grandest of all those that have ever illumined the human
race. In every order of things it has left a footstep, a giant trace, a
trace which the world adores, and which future generations will never



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 31



SECTION II.

CONTINUATION. — CONTROVERSY AMONGST WRITERS.
VICTOR III. — URBAN II. — PASCHAL II.*

Not only by the sword but by the pen also, in epistles
and in more extensive works, was fou,2:lit the uiiirhty
contest which now engaged the mind of ail, and which

oqual. Ill poesy it unulv, a Dante, the Homer oi" the soul and of the
world of spirits, as the other was for the world of bodies. In art it
made a ^Michael Anjrelo ; and we do not speak of that common herd
of jrreat men, that crowd of illustrious geniuses, mixed to<;ether like
the luminous souls in the glorious garlands of Dante, each of whom
would have graced a world. In the conduct of nations it produced
those two great names, wliicli still, in spite of the aberration of ages,
represent the poles on which Euro})ean society revolves, Charlemagne
and Gregory VII, and the third ideal, in which tlie fusion of that
double genius was realised — St. Louis. Gregory VII, Charlemagne,
and St. Louis, and by them the most beautii'ul social edifice that ever
existed ; the grandest, the most holy federation, that which comprised
the greatest number of nations, that which was of all others the most
fruitful in every kind of glory. The Greek federation lasted scarcely
two centuries, and they were stormy and uncertain. The union of
nations under the Roman despotism endured longer, but its end was
more dishonourable and more bloody. The Christian republic endured
at least for ten centuries ; and in spite of the decay of the principle
which gave it birth, nothing but a return to barbarism can wholly
overthrow it." — Mores Catholici ; or, Ages of Faith. By H. K.
Digby, Esq. Book viii. p. 353. (Transl.)

* Bernoldi Opuscula Varia, in L'ssermanni Monum. Alemann. torn.
ii. ; S. Gebhardi, Archiep. Salisburg. Epist. ad Hermannum, episc.
Metensem (of the year 1081), in Tengonagel, Vet. Monum, conti'a
Schismaticos, Ingolst. 1612 ; S. Anselmi Ep. Lucensis contra Gui-
bei-tum Antipapam, pro Greg. VII, libri ii. in Biblioth. Max. PP.,
tom. xviii. ; Manegoldi Opusculum contra T\^olfelmum (about 1099),
in ]\Iiu-atorii Anecd. iv. 167; Placidi Nonantulani Prioris, Liber de
Honore Ecclesia? (in the year 1111), in Pezii Thcsaur. Anecdot. tom.
ii. p. ii. ; Godofredi, Abb. Vindocinens (1093-1132), Opuscula in
Biblioth. Max. PP. tom. xxi.; Theodorici Ep. Virdunens (Wernerici
Ep. Vercellensis) Epistola ad Gregor. VII, in ^lartene, Thesaur. Anec-
dot. tom. i. p. 214 ; Waltrami Ep. Nurnburgenis, Liber de Unitate
Ecclesiag conservanda (of the year 1093) in Freheri Scriptt. Per.
Germ. tom. i. ; Fragments in the Codex Udalrici Ei)istolaris, in Ec-
card. tom. ii.; On Pope Victor III, Petri Diaconi, Chronicon Monas-
ter. Cassin. in Muratori, SS. Rerr. Ital. tom. iv.



318 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

agitated the half of Europe. Many were th^ defenders
of the power of the Church and of the rights of the
papal see ; but there were not wanting men who sup-
ported the pretensions of the king, or who undertook
the cause of the married clergy. Of the latter class,
many were pleading their own causes. Such were the
ecclesiastics of the dioceses of Cambray and Noyon,
who in two works, in the year 10/6, bitterly complained
of the usurpation of the Romans, who by the legate
Hugo endeavoured to interrupt their marriages and to
forbid them to possess more than one prebend, w^hilst
(as they had families to maintain and to provide for)
they could scarcely subsist upon two or three. In like
manner the clergy of Cambray complained of their
bishop, who would no longer ordain their sons priests,
and would no more, on account of their marriages,
employ them at the altar. The defenders of the mar-
riages of priests, besides some passages from the Old
Testament and the discipline of the ancient law, em-
ployed in their cause the history of Paphnutius bishop
of Nice, which, however, Bernold before had proved to
be apocryphal. An anonymous writer has painted in
strong colours the commotion of the people against
the married clergy, excited by the first ordinance of
Gregory.*

In the controversy on investitures, the principal ques-
tion was, whether the freedom of canonical elections
should be restored, or whether the king should continue
to nominate the bishops. Henry IV and his son prized
the practice of investitures only as it was a means of
placing in bishoprics and in abbeys, according to their
own caprice, men who would serve as instruments to
further their designs. Should the investiture be con-
fined to the mere grant of the feudal rights to the
elected and consecrated bishops, it would retain indeed
its signification, by according to the bishops or abbots
their feudal relations to the king ; but for kings such as
were the two Henries, it would have lost its real value:

* In Martene, Thesaurus Anccdot. i. 255.



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 319

the dependence and unconditional personal devotion of
the bishops and abbots, their immediate influence over
churches and cloisters, would to them be lost. Henry
IV refused therefore to co-operate in the labours of
Gregory, who wished to modify his laws against investi-
tures, according to the just pretensions of the king.
Gregory and the defenders of the Church founded their
objection to investitures chiefly on the canon of the
eighth general council ; which prohibited to all tempo-
ral powers interference in the election of bishops, and
placed an anathema on all who should prevent the
freedom of election. The pope, moreover, asserted
that he insisted upon nothing that was new, nothing of
his own invention, but wished only to restore the an-
cient doctrine and discipline of the Church. St. Anselm,
in his writings, speaks only of canonical elections, and
never once mentions investitures, which, as separate
from the vital question of the Church, he considered as
something accessory. But investitures were connected
not only with the question of free elections ; they were
united also as intimately with that of simony. Those
who thought with the Church were convinced that as
long as investitures continued, the extirpation of simony,
of the more gross as well as of the more refined, which
consisted of the grant of ecclesiastical benefices by
favour, for services performed or to be performed
{miinus ah ohsequio, a Ungtid, a manu\ could never be
effected. Placidus and Anselm describe the intrigues
of the aspirants to these benefices. They tell us how
they lived at the court at a great expense for ten or
more years, awaiting with impatience the death of a
bishop or abbot, and how afterwards they became the
timid and blind instruments of the great men by whose
favour they had obtained their dignities ; further, how
as bishops they repaid themselves the money which
they had expended in acquiring their bishoprics, by the
sale of ordinations ; and how the priests on their part,
to preserve their own fortune, bartered away the sacra-
ments. In many countries, it was the practice to sell
the smaller churches to clerics, to laymen, and even to



320 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

women ; and when tlie sellers were reproved, they an-
swered, that they sold not the churches, but the lands
and revenues which belonged to them.

Amongst the followers of the king there were many
who asserted that he was free to dispose at pleasure of
the churches in his kingdom ; that they were his ; that
he or his predecessors had made them what they were ;
that they must therefore serve him, and could have no
other superiors than those whom he appointed. These
were the representations which Adelbert of Bremen
and other court favourites made to the young Henry.
With confidence did they appeal to the anointing, by
which the king at his coronation received a kind of
spiritual character, and in virtue of which he could dis-
pose of bishoprics and abbeys. Those who were less
blinded by party spirit made frequent reference to the
pretended privilege granted by pope Adrian to king
Charles and his successors, to nominate to the bishop-
rics of his kingdom. They pleaded also that many holy
men had, without opposition, received investitures, or
they distinguished between the temporal ties of the
Church which the kings granted by investitures, and
the spiritual power of the consecration, Avhich could be
given only by the Church. But the defenders of the
Church opposed to this reasoning, that this distinction
w^as never in reality observed ; for at the time of in-
vestiture it was not said, " receive the lands of these
churches," but always, " receive these churches," a
remark that had before been made by St. Peter Damian.
This distinction, it was further argued, could not be
followed through ; for in the Church the spiritual and
the temporal were united, like body and soul, and could
not be separated and torn asunder -, as by this division,
instead of the one entrance into the ministry, spoken of
by Christ, two would be opened. Moreover, as invest-
iture was the determining act upon which consecration
depended, for the one necessarily followed the other,
and if, as it now generally happened, the king were
induced by the impure motives of favour or of interest
to grant investiture, he thereby profaned the consecra-



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 321

tion, ^^hicll was determined by investiture, and wliich
could not possibly impart the Holy Ghost, or produce
the true sacramental effects. Again, simony was de-
clared unlawful and to be rejected, as by this act (in-
vestiture) the king granted that which was thought to
belong to him, and which the receiver could possess
only through him, and consequently through a right of
property vested in him over the goods of the Church :
now^ the goods of the Church had been devoted irrevo-
cably and for ever, not to the bishop, who was only the
temporary administrator, but to God and to his saints,
and could not therefore be granted to each bishop and
to each abbot, as were revocable feudal rights, by a new
investiture. This reply was so far just; for investiture,
as it was then practised, was in fact an invasion, not
only of the freedom of election, but also of the rights
of the Church ; for the king could in reality grant in-
vestiture only of the feudal rights of the empire. The
peculiar patrimony of the Church, which consisted
principally of presents and of inheritances of allodial
goods, could become a subject of investiture only by
usurpation ; and for this reason also it was acknow-
ledged, according to the ideas of the times, that the
episcopacy itself was imparted by investiture, and that
it was only in later times, when men were driven to
defend investitures, that they had recourse to the above-
named distinction.

The symbols, by which investiture was given, the
ring and the crosier, served to confirm the idea of its
signification, It was manifest to every one that inves-
titure by the known symbols of spiritual ministry and
of pastoral authority, which must always precede conse-
cration, could not be a grant of the rights of the
empire, or of the temporalties of the see, and it was
believed, that when he, wlio had been nominated
bishop, had received his crosier and ring, through the
investiture of the monarch, the subsequent delivery of
these insignia by the metropolitan at the time of ordi-
nation, was no more than a ceremony. The king it
VOL. in. Y



322 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

was, therefore, who made the bishop and granted him
his powers. Would it not be intolerable, asked Placidus,
if any one should presume to invest a priest with his
prebend, by delivering to him his sacred vestments and
stole ? In the case of bishops and of abbots it was only
custom which had made men indifferent to the unnatu-
ral and perverse practice of royal investitures with the
ring and crosier. Hence the abbot Godfrey of Vendome
declared that to receive investiture from a laic was
simonaical and heretical, both because laymen had in
view only their own temporal interest and the subjection
to themselves of the bishops, and because the ring and
crosier were signs of power which laymen could not
impart. He admitted, however, that investiture which
the king granted to the elected and consecrated bishop,
to ensure him the enjoyment of his revenues, and of the
royal protection and assistance, might be permitted.
Ivo bishop of Chartres, who had been invested by the
king, wrote, at first, in favour of investitures, as they
were at that time practised in France, which was gene-
rally without the violation of freedom of election ;
but at a later period he expressed his conviction that
pope Paschal H must have withdrawn the approval
which was extorted from him, when in captivity, even
of this species of investiture. Waltram also^ bishop of
Naumburg, who was probably the author of the book,
On the Unity of the Church, and who defended with a
spirit of animosity against the papal see the practice of
investiture, and in general, the cause of Henry IV,
changed his sentiments, and became a declared adherent
of pope Paschal.

But, asked the defenders of the king, was the sove-
reign, who was the head of the people, to be entirely
excluded from the election of the bishops ? Were the
bishops to be totally independent of the king, and was
the Church to form a self-existing state within the
state ? He might, answered their opponents, take a
part in the election as the son of the Church, not as its
lord, to protect, not to annihilate, the freedom of



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 323

election. Tlie bishops were, moreover, to be sul)ject to
him in all civil duties as otliers were, who were not in
a state of immediate vassalage to him.

That the deposition of Henry TV was a natural con-
sequence of his entire exclusion from the communion of
the Church, — that a king who was no longer a member
of the Church, could no longer be the head of a Christ-
ian monarchy, and could no longer hold the government
over a Christian people, appears to have been acknow-
ledged by many of Henry's partisans. But whilst they
denied the justice of his deprivation, they denied the
justice also of his excommunication. They asserted, as
did the bishop Sigebert in the epistle which he ad-
dressed to pope Paschal U, in the name of the clergy of
Liege, that the excommunication was invalid, as kings
had no judge upon earth, and that judgment upon
them was reserved to Christ. To refute this by argu-
ments drawn from the sacred Scripture and from history
was not difficult to the writers who defended the
Church. They appealed principally to the acts of St.
Ambrose against the emperor Theodosius ; but for the
consequences which Gregory drew from the excommu
nication pronounced against Henry, precedents could
not be found in early history ; and here all, even Gre-
gory himself, found themselves in embarrassment. They
might have thought, but they could not prove, in their
want of historical references, that the Church in earlier
times was in a different position relatively to the state,
which was then pagan, and that a kingdom, such as was
the German, raised entirely upon the basis of the
Christian religion, had in a certain sense sprung from
the Church, and was united with the Church by the most
indissoluble bands, and could not be governed by a king
who wilfully lived in a state of excommunication, and
who conducted himself as a public enemy of the Church.

The contemners of the ecclesiastical laws knew well,
however, to distinguish, that every excommunication
which had been incurred by a public offence, did not
necessarily draw with it the forfeiture of the regal
dignity, nor dissolve the civil bond between the people

Y 2



324 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

and their sovereign ; and that only an excommunication,
which was pronounced in consequence of obstinate re-
bellion against the Church, of heresy, or of a schism in
the Church, rendered the king, who thus violated his
first and most holy pledge, which he had sworn at his
coronation, to preserve religion in all its purity, and to
protect the Church, incapable of ruling a Catholic
Christian people. It was thus that Stephen bishop of
Halberstadt expressed himself in his letter to Waltram.
But more vehemently than against the deposition of
their king, did the defenders of the royal cause declare
against one of its consequences, the absolution of the
people from their oath of fidehty to the sovereign.
Their ideas of the force and obligations of this oath were
not precise, and it appears to have been a kind of worldly
feudal respect, rather than a religious conscientious
feeling, which induced many bishops to sacrifice to this
oath all other things, even those which they should
have considered the most holy ; they viewed themselves
as the liege men of the king, and forgot that at the
same time they were servants of the Church. Many
hesitated not openly to declare that they had no other
pope than the emperor ; and Gebhard of Salzburg re-
proached them, that they would rather incur the guilt of
the greatest crimes, than violate their pledge of fidelity ;
and that they, who at their ordination, before the altar
and before an assembly of the Church, had vowed obe-
dience and subjection to the pope, broke this oath only
that they might observe another, which they had sworn
to the king in his palace ; and yet, he added, the bishops
had sworn, could sw^ear, nothing but that which they
could perform in accordance with the duties of their
state {salvo ordi?/e). Lastly, against the often-repeated
assertion of the Henry ists, that the Church had not the
power to absolve subjects from their oath of fidelity,
the defenders of the apostolic see could easily reply,
that as the judgment upon the duration of the obliga-
tion of an oath w-as not left to the arbitration of indi-
viduals, the Church, in virtue of its power of binding
and of loosing, possessed authority under certain circum-



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 325

Stances to declare, that the oath of obedience, by the ob-
servance of which the Christian would be brought into
conflict with higher Divine precepts, ceased to bind, and
that on account of its importance this decision was re-
served to the supreme head of the Church. St. Anselm ex-
cellently remarked, that the signification of the oath was,
that the fidelity which was sworn to man drew its obliga-
tory force from that fidelity which w^as due to God, for
nothing was })roclaimed by the oath more than this,
" In virtue of that fidelity which I owe to God, I will
be faithful to man." If, therefore, the obedience sworn
to man conflicted with that which was due to God, the
former must necessarily lose its force of obligation.

The deep feeling of vehemence, with wdiich the great
contest for the liberation and purification of the Church
was at this period carried on, caused the character of
Gregory VII to be loaded with outrage and calumny,
which by their violence refuted themselves. Thus
has his character been represented to us by Benzo
bishop of Alba, in his panegyric of Henry IV, and by
the cardinal Benno, in a work which he calls a biogra-
phy of Gregory VII. More temperate antagonists, such
as the author of the w^ork which bears the name of
Dietrich bishop of Verdun, have been more just to his
memory ; and the last-named writer testifies that
Gregory was so little influenced by ambition and the
love of power, that he sought to avoid by flight the dig-
nity of supreme pontiff". They also cannot have under-
stood his character, who pourtray him as a great politi-
cal statesman, who held in his hand the threads of
a finely spun web, and who studied with artful calcula-
tion to eff'ect his deeply meditated designs. He was,
even on the papal throne, a devout monk, severe to
himself as to others ; penetrated with the idea of his
high station, and of the duties which it imposed upon
him ; filled with horror at the corruption of his age ;
firm as a rock in his unconquerable conviction of the
necessity and justice of his undertakings, and in the
confidence that God would free his Church from its
then most hopeless condition, and that, sooner or later,



326 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

that which had been begun by the popes and by their
friends, would be brought to the desired end. Hence
he was heedless of the consequences which might fol-
low from his attempts.

At the death of Gregory, the papal see was throw^n
into a state of uncertainty. Henry and Guibert had
even in Rome a powerful party ; northern Italy was
entirely, central Italy was in part, devoted to their in-
terest ; the margravine Matilda w^as the only person
who was purely and inseparably devoted to the cause of
the Church. Robert Guiscard, who however died soon
after Gregory, went only so far as his own interest
would carry him. Nearly all voices were united to
elect as successor to Gregory, Desiderius abbot of
Monte Cassino, who for twenty-eight years, and in the
most difficult circumstances, had been papal legate,
who as abbot possessed cities and castles, and who by
this means and by the friendship of the princes of
Capua and Salerno and of the Norman duke Roger,
could bring with him to the Roman see that material
support and that protection of arms, of which it then
stood in extreme need. But Desiderius pleaded his
w eak health as his excuse, not to take npon himself the
heavy burden of the papacy : even after he had been
conducted to Rome and had been clothed with the
papal robes, he returned to his cloister and persevered
in his refusal of the unw^elcome dignity. But finally, in
a synod at Capua, in the year 1087, he yielded to the
earnest prayers of the assembled prelates and princes,
and returned with them to Rome, w here Guibert had in
the meantime established himself with his followers.
It was therefore necessary to employ the arms of the
Normans to obtain a church, in which the new pope,
who took the name of Victor III, might be consecrated.
In August 1087, he held a synod at Beneventum, in
which he renewed the condemnation of the antipope,
and excommunicated Hugo archbishop of Lyons, and
the cardinal Richard abbot of Marseilles. These tw^o
zealots would not recognize him as pope, because
he had promised the imperial crown to king Henry,



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 32/

and had declared blessed some of the deceased ad-
herents of Guibert. In the case of Hugo, who had at
first consented to the election of Victor, disappointed
ambition seems to have had a share.

Six months after the death of Victor, who died
in March 1088, the cardinals followed his recom-
mendation, and elected at Terracina Otho bishop of
Ostia, a Frenchman, who had been archdeacon of
Auxerre, then a monk and prior of Cluny, from which
place he had been called to Rome and created cardinal,
by Gregory VII. Urban II, immediately after his elec-
tion, announced in a circular letter that he intended to
tread in the footsteps of Gregory ; he exhorted by his
legates all princes and people to unite in the earnest
defence of the oppressed Church. He then proceeded
to Rome, but as the city was in the powder of the anti-
pope, he was necessitated to reside in a private house
on the island of the Tiber, and — so deprived of all re-
sources was then the papal see — to subsist upon the
alms of the faithful.

In Germany, the religious and civil war continued to
rage with all its ancient fury. King Herrmann retired
from Saxony, where he possessed but little authority,
into Lorraine, where he died in 1088. Henry strength-
ened his powder, although he was defeated in two battles
near Wurzburg and Gleichen, and obtained money and
devoted vassals, by the sale of bishoprics, to such an
extent that nearly all the Catholic prelates were obliged
to seek safety in flight from their churches. Great and
general as was the desire for a permanent peace, yet the
assemblies of princes at Oppenheim and Spire led to no
results, as Henry refused the conditions that were pro-
posed to him, — the surrender of the antipope, and his
reconciliation with the Church. For the men whom he
had forced upon the German Church, and upon whom
his chief support reposed, readily fought his battles at
the head of their troops, served him in all things, as
obedient instruments, as long as their own places were
not endangered, and violently opposed themselves to
any peace with the pope, from whom they could expect



328 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

nothiiii^ but immediate deprivation. Urban named Geb-
hard bishop of Constance, and tiie aged Altmann bishop
of Passau, as his legates, and marked out the three de-
grees of censure against Guibert and Henry, against the
counsellors of both, particularly against such ecclesias-
tics as should receive ecclesiastical dignities from them
or from their false bishops, and against all who by their
intrigues prevented those who would easily have returned
to the communion of the Church.

The party of the Church suffered during this year
serious losses, by the death of its chief supporters,
Gebhard bishop of Salzburg, Herrmann of Metz, Alt-
mann of Passau, and Adalbert of Wurzburg ; but they
were replaced by men who inherited their sentiments.
The citizens of Metz and of Constance drove from their
cities the venal mercenaries whom Henry wished to
intrude upon them as bishops, and the three sees of
Metz, Toul, and Verdun, separated themselves from
their schismatical metropolitan, Egilbert of Treves.

In like manner, the preponderance of the parties
varied in Italy. A marriage between Matilda and Guelf,
the son of the duke of Bavaria, which was promoted
by the pope, and which should have strengthened the
party of those that were favourable to the Church,
failed in its object ; for when Guelf discovered that the
extensive possessions of his consort, which Matilda had
already willed to the see of Rome, were not to fall to him,
he separated himself from her. For the third time Henry
descended with an army into Italy in 1090, and fought
with varying success against the power of Matilda, whilst
Guibert, who had been a short time before expelled by
the Romans, again obtained possession of the city. But
now Henry forfeited even the remnant of personal re-
spect which the world had retained for him. His own
son Conrad, who had been crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle,
in I087j an amiable, pious, and universally-respected
prince, abandoned the cause of his father, and was
crowned king of Italy at Monza, by Anselm archbishop
of Milan, who had recently passed over to the party of
the pope. At the same time, the cities of Milan,



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 329

Cremona, Piacenza, and Lodi, formed a confederation
for twenty years against Henry. Soon after this time he
was forsaken by his second wife Praxedes, a Russian
princess, who related before the synod of Piacenza the
iniquities of her husband, and the cruehies which he
had inflicted upon her : she then retired into a convent.
In 1095, Urban was able to hold a synod, at which
were assembled four thousand ecclesiastics and thirty
thousand laics, in the country where the party of Henry
and Guibert had hitherto ruled uncontrolled, and under
the eyes of their confederates, who were at Verona —
at Piacenza, where, in 1098, the bishop Bonizo had
been cruelly murdered by the Guibertists. In this sy-
nod, the lavvs of the Church against simony and the
marriage of clergy, and also the sentence against Gui-
bert and his followers were renew ed. Urban then made
the first movement to an undertaking, of which the
necessity had long been felt, and with the designs of
which Gregory VII had already engaged himself. Peter
the Hermit, by his impassioned sermons, and by his
descriptions of the sufferings of the Christians in the
Holy Land and of the degradation of the holy sepulchre,
had begun to arouse the people of Italy and France.
The pope then introduced the ambassadors of the Greek
emperor Alexius ; they implored assistance against the
power and cruelties of the Turks, who were then threat-
ening even the west : many princes there and then
vowed to carry protection to the Christians of Palestine.
Urban held another synod at Clermont in France, which
was attended by two hundred and eighteen bishops,
and abbots, together with a countless multitude of
seculars of high and low degree. The bishops Thiemo
of Salzburg, Ulrich of Passau, and Gebhard of Con-
stance, were present from Germany. Here the eloquent
appeal of the pope and the inflamed address of Peter
the Hermit awakened in the minds of the assembled
numbers that unparalleled excitement of soul, which
first burst forth in the unanimous exclamation, " It is
the will of God ! " which was continued by the number-
less crusade sermons throughout the countries of the



330 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

south-west of Europe, and which led the mighty armies
of the first crusade into Asia, to the conquest of Nice,
Antioch, and Jerusalem. The synod decreed, that to
every one who through pure devotion, not through a
love of glory or of gold, should proceed to Jerusalem,
for the liberation of the Church of God, this expedition
should take the place of all canonical penance.

Investitures were also prohibited at Clermont, and
with the new and severe addition, that no bishop or
priest should swear feudal fidelity in the hands of a king
or any other layman. Strong motives induced the
pope to publish this ordinance, which even in the most
favourable circumstances would have been difficult of
execution. To the homage or oath of feudal fidelity
which bishops and abbots swore to the king or feudal
lord, an interpretation was given, which, by progressive
but sure degrees, destroyed the authority of the Church,
broke the band between the supreme head of the
Church and the bishops, and left the bishops as instru-
ments only of the policy of their royal masters. The
clergy of Liege, therefore, declared that they could not
absolutely blame their bishop if he were entirely de-
pendant upon his feudal lord, to whom he had sworn
fealty. When the legate of Gregory VII, Hugo de Die,
entered France, with the commission to labour for the
amelioration of the state of the Church, king Philip
prevented the bishops from attending a synod that had
been convoked, as he declared that to be present at
such an assembly would be to violate the oath of fide-
lity which they had sworn to him. Hugo was therefore
compelled to hold his synods in provinces not subject
to Philip. When Ivo bishop of Chartres boldly repre-
hended the adulterous marriage of the king, he was
accused of perjury, of a violation, that is, of his homage.
In this same year. Urban was informed by his legates
who had returned from England, that William Rufus
had required of his bishops, in virtue of their oath of
fidelity to him, that they should not recognise Urban as
pope, or enter into any connexion with him, as he
deemed it more conducive to his political designs to



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 331

leave the affair undecided. Hence, at Clermont, it was
the wish of the prelate to dissolve an union that was in
every manner so prejudicial to the Church : between
the iDishops and their sovereigns, it was wished to in-
troduce, instead of the former close bond of vassalage,
the general obligation of subjection to feudal lords.

The army of French crusaders drove the antipope
from Rome, and thus opened the way to the city for
Urban, in 1096. Henry, after a seven years' fruitless
conflict with the power and resolution of Matilda,
abandoned Italy, never to return ; and Guibert, now con-
fined to Ravenna, lost the greater part of the exarchate,
which fell again to Urban, Still the party of Henry
and Guibert retained its power in Rome, and whilst
Urban resided in the south of Italy, a number of Gui-
bertists, amongst whom was the cardinal Benno, met
in synod, where they condemned " the heresies devised
by Hildebrand," and cast into the flames the decrees of
the last popes. These same decrees were renewed and
confirmed in a numerous synod which was held in
Rome, during the following year by Urban. A few
months later the pontiff" died, after he had invested
with legatine power over the Church of Sicily, Roger,
count of the island, with the promise, that as long as
he, or any of his heirs, zealous as he was for the welfare
of the Church, should live, no other legate should be
appointed in Sicily. The cardinal Rainer, who had been
a monk of Cluny, after earnest opposition from himself,
was elected to succeed, and took the name of Paschal II.
When Guibert, who had more than once repented of his
assumption of the papal title, died in 1100, his follow-
ers, in a brief space of time, elected three antipopes.
The first and second, Albert and Theodoric, fell into
the hands of the Catholics, and w^ere placed in monas-
teries ; the third, Reginulf, was, in 1105, while Paschal
was absent, conducted to Rome by Count Werner, who
ruled in the march of Ancona, and enthroned. But his
faction soon dissolved ; he was compelled to fly, and
died in exile. Paschal soon found himself sufficiently
supported to deprive by degrees the Guibertists of all



332 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.
Artur Rogóż
Administrator
Posty: 4635
Rejestracja: 24 maja 2010, 04:01
Kontakt:

Re: A history of the church - tekst po angielsku

Post autor: Artur Rogóż »

their towns and castles in the neighbourhood of Rome.
In a synod which was held in the Lateran, in 1101, the
prohibitions of investitures and of homage, and the cen-
sures against Henry, were renewed ; it was also ordained
that every bishop should, at his consecration, vow obe-
dience to the apostolic see, and condemn the error that
w^as then maintained by many defenders of the temporal
authority, that men need not heed the censures or bind-
ing power of the Church.

In Germany, the long continuance of the contest had
produced a degree of exhaustion, w^hich brought both
parties nearer together, and which, on the whole,
strengthened the power of the king, which had been
increased by the junction of the duke Guelf to his party.
In 1097, at a diet at Mentz, Henry procured the nomi-
nation of his younger son, named also Henry, as his
successor. By this act, his elder son Conrad was ex-
cluded from the succession : he died at Florence, in 1101.
The young Henry was crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle, in
1099. In this, and in the following years, Henry was
master of almost all the bishoprics of his kingdom,
although some individual conscientious men, such as
Otho of Bamburg, Bruno of Treves, submitted against
their will to investiture, and afterwards tendered their
resignation to the pope, should he not pardon them.
Henry himself gave appearances of a serious desire to
restore peace to the Church ; he gave signs of repent-
ance, and caused it to be published that it was his
intention to resign the government to his son, and to lead
a crusade to Palestine ; he accused himself in a letter to
Hugo abbot of Cluny, as the author of all the miseries of
the Church, and vowed to do all in his power to arrest the
schism ; but these were no more than empty promises.
The severest stroke now fell upon him, — the infidelity
of his only son, whom he had a short time before raised
to the throne. The young Henry, ambitious of power,
and encouraged by his companions, suddenly abandoned
his father in December 1 104, under the pretext that he
was excommunicated by the Church. The Bavarians



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 333

and the Saxons soon after joined him, and Paschal, to
whom he sent an embassy with promises of obedience,
commissioned Gebhard bishop of Constance to absolve
him from his censures, which he liad incurred by his
participation in the schism, and also to declare invalid
the oath by which he had sworn to abstain from every
act of £^overnment during the life of his father. In an
assembly of the Saxon and Thuringian clergy at Nord-
hausen, in 1105, at which Rothard archbishop of
Mentz presided, the bishops of Hildesheim, Ilalber-
stadt, and Paderborn, prayed for absolution from their
censures. The canons of the Church against simony
and clerogamy were renewed ; the schismatical bishops
who had been invested by Henry were declared intru-
ders, and the synod decreed that all those ecclesiastics,
who had been consecrated by the false bishops, should
be admitted to penance by the imposition of hands.
The young Henry, by his solemn and repeated assevera-
tions that he desired of his father nothing but the res-
toration of peace to the Church, and reconciliation with
the papal see, obtained many followers. Even the
princes, who still adhered to the aged king, manifested
an inclination to appeal to the decision of the sword,
and the son contrived by intrigue and hypocrisy to
bring his father into his power. Henry had, a short
time before, offered the last insult to the German
Church, by intruding into the see of Ratisbon, Ulric, an
inexperienced youth. At the diet of Tngelheim he ac-
knowledged himself guilty of the crimes imputed to him ;
he declared himself unw^orthy of the government which
he now ceded to his son. He at the same time promised to
submit to the ordinances of the pope and of the Church.
Henry V was crowned in January 1106. An honour-
able embassy, which consisted of the archbishops of
Treves and Magdeburg, of the bishops of Bamburg,
Eichstadt, of Constance, and of Chur, with many secular
nobles, proceeded to the pope to invite him into Ger-
many to regulate the affairs of the Church ; but the
greater part of the embassy was seized on the road by
the friends of Henry IV. This aged king had in the



334 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

meantime escaped from his son. On the Rhine and in
Belgium he found powerful adherents, and a new civil
war was about to burst forth, but was arrested by the
sudden death of Henry IV at Liege, in August 110(5.
Thus died, after a reign of fifty years, the unworthy
son of the great Henry III. His contemporaries and
posterity can bear no other testimony to him, than that
during this long period he employed the rich gifts with
which nature had endowed him, only to his own injury,
to the devastation of his kingdom, to the desolation of
the Church, and to the ruin of many thousands of his
fellow-creatures.



SECTION III.



RENEWAL OF THE CONTEST. HENRY V AGAINST

PASCHAL II. GELASIUS II. NEW SCHISM.

CALIXTUS II. CONCORDAT OF WORMS.*

Towards the end of the year 1106, Paschal II held a
great council at Guastalla, in northern Italy, at which
were present the ambassadors of Henry. In this as-
sembly the prohibition of lay-investitures was renewed ;
but, for the restoration of peace in the German Church,
it was granted, that all bishops who had been appointed
during the schism, provided that they had not been
intruded and the rightful pastors expelled from their
sees, that they were not simonists or stained with crime,
should retain their dignities : the same was conceded
with respect to other ecclesiastics, who were distin-
guished for their virtue and learning. The ambassadors
of the king declared to Paschal that their master would
honour him as a father, and repeated the invitation
that he would go in person into Germany ; but he de-

* Ivonis, Episcop. Carnotensis, Epistolas, ed. Juretus, Paris, 1610;
Petri Diaconi, Clironicon Cassinense, in Muratori SS. Kerr. Ital.
torn. iv. ; Hessonis Scholastici Commentariolus de Gestis a. 1119,
circa Investitm-as, in Tengnagel, vet. monum. p. 329 ; Sugerii, Vita
Ludovici VII, in the Recueil des Historiens des Gaules, torn. xii.



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 335

ferred the journey, as his friends represented to him
that the Germans woidd not easily abandon investitures,
and that the mind of the young king was uncertain.
He went therefore into Franee, where he was informed
that Henry had invested with the ring and crozier the
the two bishops Richard of Verdun and Ueinhard of
Halberstadt, and, contrary to his prohibition, had com-
manded the restoration of Udo bishop of Hikiesheim.
At St. Denis he implored Philip king of France and his
son to assist him against the enemies of the Church and
against king Henry. At Chalons he received the Ger-
man delegates, the bishops of Treves, Halberstadt, and
Munster, and the duke Guelf. They required from
him to restore the practice of investitures ; but through
the bishop of Piacenza the pope answered, " the Church,
which had been redeemed and made free by the blood
of Christ, should not be degraded as a handmaid ; but
if its bishops were to be elected only according to the
will of the king, if the king were to invest them with
the emblems of "their spiritual power, and if the prelates
were to place their consecrated hands between the
blood-stained hands of laymen (during the homage),
this would be indeed an unworthy slavery and degra-
dation." With the threat, that the sword should decide
the contest in Rome, the ambassadors departed. The
king was not content with investing the bishops, he
wislied also to nominate them, and he announced this
to the pope, who in a synod at Troyes, in 110/, had
formed new decrees for 'the freedom of ecclesiastical
elections, with reference to the pretended privilege
granted by pope Adrian to Charlemagne, and with the
requisition, that in a foreign land nothing should be
decided against the rights of the empire. Paschal then
invited him to appear within a year at Rome, where
the cause should be referred to a general council. But
whilst at Troyes he suspended Rothard archbishop of
Mentz, because he had consecrated Reinhard, who had
received investiture from the hands of a layman, and
because he had reinstated in his see Udo bishop of Hil-
desheim. Reinhard and Adelgot of Magdeburg after-



336 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

wards obtained a remission of their censures, as they
pleaded ignorance of the last papal prohibition.

An embassy of the chiefs of the spiritual and temporal
princes arrived in Rome in 1110 to demand for Henry
the imperial crown. Paschal promised -it if he would
prove himself to the papal see to be a son and protector
of the Church and a friend of justice. St. Anselm had
previously warned the pope, that by his indulgence to
Henry, who continued to grant investitures, he had
given scandal to many, and Paschal had answered that
he waited only to see whether the wild pride of the
Germans would not yield. At the same time he had
excommunicated, in a synod at Rome, all who should
grant or receive investitures, and forbade all laymen to
dispose of the goods of the Church. Henry now ap-
peared at the head of a powerful army in Italy, and
broke down all opposition. Full of trouble, the pope
saw the tempest gathering around Rome, and knew of
no other means of averting it than to seek the assist-
ance of the uncertain Normans. Should he retire from
Rome before the king, the king would enter and name
an antipope, from whom he would receive the imperial
crown ; and the Church would then be thrown into a
new schism. When the ambassadors whom Henry
sent from Arezzo arrived in Rome, and required for
their master the consent of Paschal to investitures, the
straitened pontiff had recourse to an expedient, the
issue of which appeared to him more easy than he af-
terwards found it to be. Henry in appearance willingly
consented to it, and the following convention was agreed
to by the plenipotentiaries of the pope and the king, at
Sutri in 1 1 1 1 . The king on the day of his coronation
should renounce all assumed rights over the ecclesiasti-
cal state, should leave the churches in full possession of
all goods and oblations, which w^ere not feudal, and
should free his people from the oaths which he had
compelled them to take against the bishops. The pope
on his part should cede to the king all the ecclesiastical
fiefs which belonged to the empire, should command
the bishops to resign to the king all fiefs which had be-



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 337

longed to the empire at any time since the rei^cn of
Charles the Bald, and to forbid to them under pain of
excommunication the appropriation of the rights of the
empire, or the possession of cities, countships, duke-
doms, seignories and other regalia. The other articles
regard the patrimony of St. Peter and the personal se-
curity of the pope and of his legates.

Pasclial, who had been educated in the severe disci-
pline of the order of Cluny, hoped by this resignation
of the fiefs of the empire to establish the freedom of the
Church, to extirpate simony, and to lead into a more
spiritual and pastoral mode of life the prelates, who had
hitherto been too much distracted by worldly occupa-
tions and solicitudes. The priests, as he said in his
epistle to Henry, were, from servants of the court to be
made servants of the altar. But Henry, who knew bet-
ter than Paschal the German prelates whom he and his
father had instituted, foresaw that they would resist with
all their power their reduction into a state of at least
relative poverty and impotence. It is probable, also,
that he did not desire the fulfilment of the treaty ; for,
according to the constitution of the kingdom, he could
not well retain in his own hands the fiefs and regalia
which would fall to him, but would be obliged to invest
wdth them temporal lords, who w'ould employ this in-
crease of power only to arrive at greater independence,
and as arms against himself; whilst the same power in
the hands of bishops and abbots, who were more devo-
ted to the king, could be used more securely for his own
purposes, the fiefs would retain their feudal character,
and would not be exj)osed to the attempts of laymen to
make them hereditary in their families. The lay nobles
were unanimous with the prelates in rejecting the
treaty, as they did not wish to forfeit the fiefs which
they held from the bishops and abbots, nor the investi-
tures which they had usurped over abbeys, that were
not immediately subject to the empire. Henry, to at-
tach the bishops and abbots more closely to himself, and
to prove to them that the plan of purchasing the resig-
nation of investitures by the resignation of the regalia,

VOL. III. z



338 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

came not from him, but from the pope, presented to
them a document in which he solemnly conhrmed all the
grants and presents that had been made to the Church
by his predecessors.

When after a solemn entry into Rome, and before he
would proceed to the coronation, the pontiff exhorted
the king to execute the treaty by resigning the investi-
tures, the king caused the ratification to be read as an
evidence that it was not he who wished to deprive the
Church of its fiefs, and requested the pope to consign to
him the document which regarded the resignation of
the regalia. The German and Italian prelates raised,
as Henry had well foreseen, the most vehement opposi-
tion : this circumstance afforded him a welcome pre-
text to defer the renunciation of the right of investi-
ture, and to demand without further conditions, the
imperial crown. When Paschal hesitated, Henry, at
the suggestion of the archbishop elect of Mentz, and of
the bishop of Munster, caused him and the cardinals,
together with many other ecclesiastics and Roman citi-
zens, to be apprehended. A bloody contest between
the embittered Romans and the Germans was the con-
sequence. After three days Henry left the city with
his prisoners ; he placed guards over the pope in the
castle of Trevico, from w hich place he conveyed him to
his own camp, where he assailed him with incessant
promises and threats. For a long time Paschal resisted
every attack, but yielded, at length, through fear of a
new schism, and in compassion for the miseries of the
suffering Romans, and the hard lot of the many prison-
ers, whom Henry refused to liberate. By a treaty which
was concluded in the royal camp. Paschal surrendered
to the king the right of investing with their ring and
crosier before ordination, bishops and abbots, who had
been elected without simony, and promised never to
pronounce against him sentence of excommunication,
nor to revenge the injuries that had been inflicted upon
himself and the cardinals, but to crow n him as emperor.
By the addition that disputed elections should be deci-
ded by the emperor, and that no elected person whom



PERIOD THE FOURTH. ^^39

he should refuse to invest, should be ordained, the
government of the German Church was placed entirely
in the hands of the emperor, and the fruit of so many
conflicts, of the many sacrifices which had been offered
by the Church, and of the many persecutions which it
had endured, was lost.

As a sign of peace between himself and the pope,
and between the Church and the empire, Henry re-
ceived from Paschal the holy communion, and on the
following day the imperial crown. He then returned
into Germany, but furious contests continued to rage in
Rome. The cardinals and ecclesiastics who had not
been imprisoned, rejected the treaty as inadmissible and
scandalous ; of those who had signed it with the pope,
some endeavoured to defend it, others declared it, as
being compulsory, invahd. The cardinal of Tusculum,
and the bishops of Segni and Vercelli, reprehended the
pope in severe terms, and demanded that investitures,
upon which the brand-mark of heresy had been placed
by the Church, should be again condemned. Beyond
Italy, also, and particularly in France, many bishops
declared that the pope could not annul the decrees of
so many synods without assembling another, and threat-
ened to meet in synod to condemn the Pi'kileglum, as
the treaty with Henry was denominated. In his ex-
treme difficulties, Paschal resigned the papal dignity and
withdrew to the island of Ponza, near Terracina ; but
being recalled by the prayers of the cardinals and of
the Roman people, he resumed the administration of
the pontificate, declaring, however, that he w'ould sub-
mit to the decision of a council, which should be assem-
bled in Rome.

When the synod had met, he publicly laid down the
emblems of his high rank, and was induced to receive
them again only by the general invitation of all present.
He then related the cause of the late events, and de-
clared that, being bound by his oath, he could not
pronounce censures against the emperor, whom he ex-
horted however to resign the privilege which had been
extorted : he added, that he acknowledged his appro-

z 2



340 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

bation of investitures to have been illegal, and therefore
retracted it. To clear himself of the suspicion of heresy,
which had been raised against him, he read a profession
of faith, and declared before the synod that he adhered
in their full extent to the decrees of his predecessors,
Gregory and Urban. The council then condemned in-
vestitures, but in regard to the pope, abstained from
censures against the emperor. Not so temperate was
the synod of Burgundian and French bishops, which
was assembled at Vienne by the archbishop Guido, the
papal legate. Here investitures were condemned as a
heresy ; for at this period, not only an error against
faith, but an abuse which was drawn from a principle,
or which was formed into a law, was comprehended
under the word heresy. The emperor was excommu-
nicated on account of the violent outrages which he had
offered to the pope. Jotseran archbishop of Lyons
proposed to convoke a synod for the same purpose at
Ause, and requested the attendance of the bishops of
the province of Sens ; but they refused to come, and
Ivo of Chartres composed in their name a letter to jus-
tify their refusal. It was not proper, he said, continu-
ally to propose to synods, as a subject of deliberation,
that which the pope had done when under the greatest
violence and to avoid the greatest evils, as it was a
subject which would reflect public disgrace upon the
person of the pope.

Henry V entered upon the same path which had
been opened before him by his father, and similar
causes produced similar effects. His reckless endea-
vours to extend his power gained for him the hatred of
princes and of cities. He imposed an iron yoke upon
the German Church ; for he well knew how to avail
himself of his right of investiture with all its conse-
quences in its full extent. According to the picture of
the times, which the archbishop of Cologne has given
in a letter to St. Otho bishop of Bamburg, ecclesiastical
authority was in the hands of the courtiers, who em-
ployed it as a source of gain : ecclesiastical affairs were
discussed;, not in synods, but at the court, and the pos-



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 341

sessions of the bishoprics were diverted by the reg:tal
ministers and officers into the public treasury. But
Henry had now to learn that he could not fully depend
upon those prelates who had to thank only himself for
their dig:nities, and whom he thought he had bound to
himself by their act of homage : the worst amongst
them fell from him when their advantage or their safety
seemed to require it ; and the better part, when that
which they prized higher than their duties as vassals,
their duty to religion and to the Church, demanded it
of them. Even his confidential counsellor and chan-
cellor Adalbert had scarcely been raised by him to the
archbishopric of Mentz, before he turned against him ;
or at least he incurred the suspicion of hostile attempts
against Henry, by whom he was cast into prison. The
intelligence that the king had been excommunicated,
although not by the pope, was eagerly received and
circulated. The papal legate Cuno, bishop of Prsneste,
pronounced the sentence against him and his adherents ;
first in the synods of Beauvais and Rheims, and after-
wards in the German territory, at Cologne. In the
year 1115 Henry suffered a sanguinary defeat from the
troops of the confederate, principally Saxon, princes,
in the battle of Welfesholze. At the invitation of the
Saxons the papal legate Theodoric proceeded to Goslar,
and without being authorized by the pope, published
the exclusion of Henry from the Church. Many bishops,
by receiving the last decrees of the Church, obtained
their reconciliation with the see of Rome ; and in a
great synod at Cologne the excommunication of Henry
was confirmed. Only a few bishops still adhered to him.
In this posture of affairs Henry proceeded a second time
into Italy, accompanied by the bishops of Augsburg,
Munster, Constance, Brixen, and Trent, to assert his
claims to the extensive property of the deceased mar-
gravine Matilda, and also to induce the pope to enter
upon a new convention, and to oblige him to declare
that he had not been excommunicated. But he aban-
doned this design when the pope, in a Roman synod of
three hundred bishops, accused himself of culpable



342 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

compliance to the king, and condemned as invalid the
privilegium which had been extorted from him, although
he refused to sanction the sentence of the cardinal
Cuno and of the delegates of the archbishop of Vienne :
he however prohibited the king to exercise investitures.
In 101/ Henry proceeded to Rome, under the pretext
that he wished to visit the pope and to obtain from him
the free confirmation of his privilegium, and on Easter
Sunday he caused himself to be crowned with the im-
perial diadem, by Burdinus archbishop of Braga, who
had been two years absent from his church : none of
the cardinals would perform the act of coronation, and
for this invasion of his right. Paschal excommunicated
the archbishop.

After the departure of the emperor, Paschal returned
to Rome in 1118, and died after a few days. To avoid
foreign intrusion, the cardinals proceeded at once to an
election, and their choice fell upon John of Gaeta, the
chancellor of the Roman Church. Scarcely was the
election terminated, w-hen the powerful Cencio Frangi-
pani, w^ho was devoted to the party of the emperor, fell
upon the new pope, and amidst the grossest barbarities
cast him into prison. But the populace flew to arms
and liberated him. Henry, enraged that a pope should
have been elected without his consent, hastened back to
Rome, and Gelasius H was compelled to seek refuge
from the spears of the Germans, who followed him, in
Gaeta, where, in presence of many bishops, cardinals,
and princes of the South of Italy, he was solemnly
consecrated. The emperor then sent to him a threaten-
ing embassy requiring him to swear to a peace, that is,
to confirm to him the convention with Paschal ; if not,
he would proceed to extremities. Gelasius answered
that he was most desirous to terminate the contest be-
tween the Church and the empire, and that he would
submit his case to the decision of a synod, which should
be assembled at Milan or at Cremona. But to this the
emperor would not consent. He had seen that in the
last synod the bishops had showMi more zeal than even
the pope himself for the condemnation of investitures.



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 343

He, therefore, in conjunction with his partizans at
Rome, and under a futile pretext that his co-operation,
which was founded on the decree of Nicholas II, in the
election of the new pope, had not been admitted, re-
solved to raise up an antipope. Burdinus, who had
before been excommunicated and deposed, and who
had therefore nothing- to lose, undertook to act this
miserable part, and assumed the name of Gregory VIII.
The natural consequence of this was, that Gelasius
should pronounce from Capua sentence of excommuni-
cation upon the emperor and his creature : he failed in
his attempt to establish himself at Rome after the de-
parture of Henry. He went into France, where he died
at Cluny, in January 1119. He had recommended as
his successor the cardinal Cuno bishop of Palestina, but
the cardinal directed the election, which took place at
Cluny, from himself to Guido archbishop of Vienne.
Guido, who was descended from the royal bouse of
Burgundy, was related to the emperor, to the kings of
France, England and Denmark, and to him were there-
fore open in these connexions those sources of material
assistance which was at this period so necessary for the
preservation of the pontifical dignity. He named him-
self Calixtus II. He was universally acknowledged,
whilst Burdinus was supported only by the party of the
emperor.

In Germany the anathema was renew ed against Henry
in the synods wdiich were held by Cuno, the papal legate
at Cologne and Fritzlar, the opponents of the emperor,
amongst whom the majority of the German bishops now-
ranged themselves, and in the front of whom was Adal-
bert archbishop of IMentz, who had lately been freed
from imprisonment, thought of deposing him, when, re-
turning from Italy, he again lighted up the almost ex-
tinguished flames of civil war. He consented, however,
that a diet should assemble at Tribur, in which all the
bishops promised obedience to Calixtus. At Strasburg
the papal legates, the bishop of Chalons and Pontius the
abbot of Cluny, presented themselves before Henry, and
declared that the surrender of investitures was an essen-



344 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

tial condition of peace. The bishop asserted that this
surrender would not cause any diminution of the services
that were due to him and to the empire, and adduced
in proof the example of the emperor himself; for he,
without receiving investiture from the king of France,
was bound to him in all that related to imposts, military
service, tolls and other regalia. Henry, who appears to
have reconciled himself to the idea of resigning the in-
vestitures, concluded with the papal legates, who had
now been strengthened by the arrival of two cardinals,
a convention, which declared that from his love to God,
to the holy apostle Peter, and to pope Calixtus, he re-
signed all investiture, and that he gave true peace to all
who belonged to the party of the Church : the pope on
his side granted peace to him and to all his adherents,
and all plunder was to be restored to the rightful owner.
Following the papal legates, Henry, with many of his
princes and bishops, swore to this convention, and pro-
mised, in the presence of the pope at Mouson, fully to
observe it. Calixtus had in the meantime opened a
great synod at Rheims, at which were present four hun-
dred and twenty-seven bishops and abbots from all the
kingdoms of the west ; but he left the synod to proceed
to Mouson, that he might seal the peace with the empe-
ror on the strength that the convention had been con-
cluded. Henry, to prevent the German bishops from
attending the synod at Rheims, lay encamped with a
powerful army in the neighbourhood of Mouson. A
new embassy of cardinals and bishops came to him in
his camp and exhorted him to observe the conditions of
the convention ; but as the approach of the pontiff, who
came without attendants, seemed to have awakened
within him the design of acting towards him as he had
formerly acted towards Paschal, he endeavoured to
amuse the legates with every kind of subterfuge. Ca-
lixtus, therefore, avoided him, and hastened back to
Rheims, where, with the solemn consent of the four
hundred assembled bishops, he pronounced sentence of
excommunication against the faithless emperor, which
sentence was accompanied by an absolution of his sub-



PERIOD THE FOURTH.



345



jects from tlieir oath of fidelity, until the sentiments of
the emperor should change. He then returned into
Italy and entered Rome. The antipope, who from Su-
tri ruled over the Roman Campagna, exercising all
kinds of cruelty upon the defenceless pilgrims, fell into
his power. The soldiers conducted him to Rome in a
dis2;raceful procession, sitting with his face reversed on
a camel. After many years of solitude in the cloister
of Cava, he ended his days without having resigned his
usurped dignity.

Henry now began to evince a sincere desire of peace.
In a diet at Wurzburg, in September 1121, it was
agreed that each party should retain or receive back its
own property, that the excommunication of the empe-
ror should ])e submitted to the pleasure of the pope,
and that he should be invited to terminate in a synod
the controversy on investitures. With these proposals,
the bishop of Spire and the abbot of Fulda went as am-
bassadors to Rome. But even whilst the negotiation
with the pope was begun, Henry showed how he under-
stood his right of investiture, by granting to Gebhard, a
youth and a laic, the bishopric of Wurzburg, an event,
Avhich, without the interference of the papal legates,
would have been followed by another civil war. Calixtus
had in the meantime made known in a Roman synod,
in 1122, his terms of peace with the emperor, and
had devised a means, to which, it is probable, the
abbot Godfrey of Vendome, who had addressed to him
three letters on the subject, had directed his attention.
Lambert bishop of Ostia and the cardinals Saxo and
Gregory went as his legates into Germany, and in a
great synod at W^orms, the long-desired reconciliation
was effected in the form of the following concordat.
The emperor renounced the right of investiture with
the ring and crosier, and conceded that all bishoprics
of the empire should be filled by canonical election and
free consecration ; the election of the German bishops
(not of the Italian and Burgundian) should be held in
presence of the emperor ; the bishops elect should re-
ceive investiture, but only of their fiefs and regaha, by

VOL. III. '^^



346 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

the sceptre in Germany before, in Italy and in Bur-
gundy after, their consecration ; for these grants they
should promise fidelity to the emperor; contested
elections should be decided by the emperor in favour of
him who should be considered by the provincial synod
to possess the better right. Finally, he should restore
to the Roman Church all the possessions and regalia of
St. Peter.

This convention secured to the Church many things,
and above all, the freedom of ecclesiastical elections.
Hitherto, the different Churches had been compelled to
give their consent to elections that had been made by
the king, but now the king was pledged to consent to
the elections made by the Churches ; and although these
elections took place in his presence, he could not refuse
his consent and investiture without violating the treaty,
in which he had promised that for the future elections
should be according to the canons. This, and the
great difference, that the king, when he gave the ring
and crosier, invested the bishop elect with his chief
dignity, namely, his bishopric, but now granted him by
investiture with the sceptre, only the accessories, namely
the regalia, was felt by Lothaire, the successor of Henry,
when he required of pope Innocent 11 the restoration
of the right of investiture. Upon one important point,
the homage which was to be sworn to the king, the
concordat was silent. By not speaking of it, Calixtus
seemed to tolerate it, and the Roman see therefore
permitted it, although it had been prohibited by Urban
and Paschal. It is certain that Calixtus was as fully
convinced, as his predecessors, that the condition of
vassals, to which bishops and abbots were reduced by
their oath of homage, could hardly be reconciled with
the nature and dignity of the episcopacy, or with the
freedom of the Church, but he perhaps foresaw, that by
insisting too strongly upon its discontinuance, he might
awaken again the unholy war, and without any hopes of
benefit, inflict many evils upon the Church. Sometime
later Adrian endeavoured to free the Italian bishops
from the homage, instead of which, the emperor was to



PERIOD THE FOURTH. 347"

be content with an oath of fidehty : but Frederick I
would not renounce the homage unless they resigned
the regalia. The greatest concession made by the papal
see in this concordat, was, that by its silence it appeared
to have admitted the former pretensions of the emperors
to take a part in the election of the Roman pontiff.

The articles of the concordat were read on the plain
near Worms on the 23d of September 1122, before a
numerous and rejoicing multitude. The bishop of Ostia
celebrated a solemn high mass, and by giving the holy
eucharist and the kiss of peace to the emperor and his
followers, he received them into the communion of the
Church. In the following year the concordat was rati-
fied in the great council of three hundred bishops, the
ninth general council of the Church, which was convened
by Calixtus in Rome.



END OF VOLUME THE THIRD.



LONDON: C. RICHARUS, PRINTEK, ST. MARTINS LANK.
ODPOWIEDZ

Wróć do „Teksty źródłowe”