CROSS VERSUS CROWN
The church was the dominant institution in medieval
life. Its control over people went much beyond purely religious
or spiritual and moral matters. Like today the church also tried
to exert political influence. But there was another institution
also sought to exercise universal dominion over man's lives--namely
the monarchy. The medieval monarchy was increasing its influence
at the expense of the local nobility and increasingly also coming
into conflict with the church.
The immediate issue was joined in the context of church reform.
Over the years the church had acquired a lot of practices which
certainly needed reform. Reform of the church began as a movement
for monastic reform and it began in a hunting lodge transformed
into a monastery. Duke William of Acquitaine, a pious man, granted
the foundation charter of the Cluny order in 910. The site lay
near one of the pilgrim routes to Rome and the waterways of the
Saone and Rhone, in a land where the Northmen had not plundered.
In one respect William's charter was unique, for he permitted
the monks to elect their abbot free from any interference by himself
or his heirs in perpetuity. In return for a small tribute, Cluny
was placed directly under papal protection and guardianship and
exempted from the jurisdiction of the local bishop.
The Benedictine Rule was to be observed to the letter. The fame
of Cluny's strictness soon spread, and there came into existence
a vast network of daughter houses. These were met independent
abbeys, but priories whose priors were all under the discipline
of the abbot of Cluny. It was, in a sense, a monarchical system
bordering on the absolute.
The influence of the Cluniacs extended beyond the regular clergy.
Their insistence on free election of their abbot and priors was
bound, in time, to have an effect on the election of bishops;
and this insistence was coupled with a vigorous denunciation of
simony (the buying of church offices). Many Cluniac monks themselves
became bishops and ruled dioceses. Cluniac abbots and priors attended
diocesan and provincial synods, where they could be counted on
to speak out for reform and particularly to speak against concubinage
of the clergy. The abbot of Cluny took the lead in a movement
to mitigate the horrors of private warfare.
This resulted in the Peace of God, whereby the Church protected
clerics, pilgrims, women and children, laborers and the instruments
of their work, monasteries and cemeteries. They were not to be
disturbed, but were to remain in perpetual peace. A later extension
of this was the Truce of God, whereby princes and nobles swore
to refrain from private warfare from noon on Saturday until Monday
morning, and this was enforced by the automatic excommunication
of those who violated it. The movement for peace naturally facilitated
the movement for reform.
The reform movement was vigorously supported by Emperor Henry
III. His motives were both pious and practical. His civil servants
were still drawn from the ranks of the clergy, particularly the
bishops. The practice of simony could obviously affect the caliber
of an abbot or bishop and consequently that of a civil servant.
Concubinage carried the risk of creating heritable offices and
the authority that went with them, What was true of the state
of the German clergy was also true of that of the papacy, so that
a reform party came into existence in Rome. The counts of Tusculum
and the Crescentii, a Roman family, looked on the papacy as a
family prize and fought to possess it. In 1044 Benedict IX held
the papacy. He was a young, scandalous, and vicious member of
the Tusculan house.
The Romans in disgust drove him from the city and set up an anti-
pope, Sylvester III. Restored by his supporters, Benedict, fearing
for his life, sold the office to a third claimant, who took the
title Gregory VI . Three rivals for the throne of St. Peter made
scandal enough, but what was worse was the fact that the simoniac
among them was himself a member of the reform party: Henry III
intervened. At the Synod of Sutri in 1046 Henry obtained the resignation
or deposition of the three rivals and named the first of a series
of German pontiffs, who represented strong cluniac influences.
Peter Damiani, the saintliest of the champions of reform, compared
Henry to David and the Roman nobles to Goliath.
Henry's cleaninsing of tbe papacy was too successful. One of his
nominees, Leo IX (1048-1054), crossed the Alps to France and Germany
three times and held synod after synod, in all of which he legislated
against abuse. At Rheims in 1049 he insisted that the holders
of ecclesiastical offices be canonically elected. Bishops did
him homage on all his journeys despite the opposition of metropolitans,
who though that the bishop of Rome had no right to meddle in the
affairs of their provinces. He raised non-Italians to the cardinalate,
thus underscoring the ecumenical claims of the Roman curia. He
dispatched papal legates as his personal inspectors-general to
hasten re- form, and he encouraged bishops to make personal visits
to Rome. The foundations of papal monarchy were being laid.
The death of Henry III was followed by a long minority that lasted
from 1056 to 1065. This enabled the papacy to consolidate its
claim . Only thirteen years after Sutri, Nicholas II issued the
Lateran Decree of 1059, which reserved the election of the pope
to the cardinal bishops, with the cardinal priests and deacons
acceding to their choice. Imperial rights were glossed over in
a vague '.saving due honor and reverence for our beloved son Henry
IV.'' When the decree was reissued in 1060, this clause was omitted.
Nicholas II did other things. He made a formal alliance with the
Normans, who had secured their hold on southern Italy and who
might have become as dangerous as the Lombards had once been.
To the north, he was allied with the powerful Godfrey, duke of
Lorraine, and his wife, the heiress of Tuscany. He won a signal
victory over Milan, the most independent see in Italy, thus detaching
it from imperial control. The archbishop of Milan, as a true follower
of St. Ambrose, stoutly defended concubinage. By allying himself
with a group of ascetic reformers called Patarini (''rag-pickers")
, Nicholas forced the submission of the archbishop and the condemnation
of concubinage.
In Germany, despite the remarkable achievements of the Salian
emperors, problems remained that became accentuated during Henry
IV's minority. There was trouble in Lorraine, owing to its proximity
to France and to the papal alliance. There was unrest in Saxony,
where the Saxon freemen saw in the Salian attempt to erect a strong
monarchy a threat to their privileges; so also did the aristocracy,
which profited by the opening up of new lands that was part of
the economic revival. Being non-feudal, in contrast to the French
aristocracy, it was jealous of its liberties and began openly
to oppose Salian policy. When Henry IV attained his majority,
he set about vigorously to restore and extend the Salian program.
In 1070 he seized an opportunity to exert imperial control in
Italy, but now he found himself confronted by a new opponent who
was able to rally the various elements of German opposition.
Ildebrando Aldobrandeschi, otherwise known as Hildebrandt, was
the son of a Tuscan peasant who was sent to Rome to be educated.
He entered the papal curia when his teacher became Gregory VI,
serving the Holy See for twenty-eight years before he himself
was elevated to the papacy in 1073. It was a straw in the wind
that he chose to call himself Gregory VII, taking the same name
as his master, whom he had followed into exile after Sutri until
summoned back to Rome by Leo IX. He was the leader of the political
wing of the reform party, and his ideas went far beyond anything
ever advocated by Cluny. They are found in a remarkable document
that belongs to the year 1075 called the Dictatus Papae. The crucial
statements are these:
That the Roman Pontiff alone is rightly to be called universal.
That he alone can depose or reinstate bishops. That the pope is
the only one whose feet are to be kissed by all princes. That
he may depose emperors. That he may transfer bishops, if necessary,
from one See to another. That he has the power to ordain a cleric
of any Church he may wish. That he himself may be judged by no
one. That to this See the more important cases of every Church
should be submitted. That he should not be considered as Catholic
who is not in conformity with the Roman church. That the pope
may absolve subjects of unjust men from their fealty.
These were certainly fighting words. With regard to the clergy,
secular and regular, it meant absolute papal monarchy: with regard
to the laity, including kings and princes, it meant papal theocracy'
No longer could kings claim a quasi-sacerdotal position conferred
by the holy oil of anointment. Suitability became the acid test
of kingship, and suitability meant conformity to the canons of
righteousness. Who was to sit in judgment and determine suitability?
lt must be the pope alone. The Hildebrandine claims were revolutionary.
They led logic- ally to the advocacy of elective kingship, which
proved to be a depth charge dropped in the stream of German history.
The contest between Gregory and Henry broke out over Milan' The
key to imperial control in Italy was the bishops, and the against
imperial interests that the archbishop should be subject to the
pope, or that the government of the city should be in the hands
of a commune. This had happened during Henry's minority' In 1071,
just after Henry had put down the first Saxon revolt, the archbishopric
fell vacant. The clergy and nobles promptly elected a candidate,
Godfrey, who was as promptly invested by Henry and consecrated.
But the popular party also elected a candidate, Atto, who was
consecrated by Pope Alexander II, When Henry refused to renounce
his candidate, five of his councillors were excommunicated.
That was the situation when Hildebrand became pope. The Saxon
revolt of 1073 so endangered Henry's position that he was forced
to make peace by recognizing Atto. Then in 1075 the clergy and
nobles recovered power in Milan and elected Tedald. Disregarding
his solemn promise to Gregory, Henry recognized Tedald as arch-
bishop and invested him by deputy. His deputies were also instructed
to appoint and invest two other bishops and to seek an alliance
with the Norman Robert Guiscard. The pope was to be hemmed in.
In 1076 Gregory excommunicated and deposed Henry and allied himself
with the south German and Saxon opposition, who saw in the papal
attack a golden opportunity to reassert aristocratic privileges
against the crown. Faced with united clerical and aristocratic
opposition at the Diet of Tribur in October of the same year,
Henry was forced to capitulate. In the winter of 1077, in order
to divide his enemies, Henry fled across the Alps and humbled
himself in the snow before Gregory at Canossa.
On March 13, 1077 at Forchheim the German princes elected a new
king, Rudolf of Swabia. The war that followed did not end with
the capture and death of Rudolf in 1080. Neither did it end with
the death in exile of Gregory VII, a virtual captive in the hands
of his Norman allies, who, in the process of saving him, subjected
Rome to one of the most atrocious sackings it ever suffered. It
ended only with Henry's death in 1106, after the revolt of his
son, the future Henry V, who had been encouraged by Gregory's
successors to turn against his father.
The war that broke out in 1076 is called, in most textbooks, the
investiture conflict, but this is a misnomer and ought to be abandoned.
At the outset the issue was simply this: the abolition or continuation
of lay control over ecclesiastical appointments. How was this
control exercised? According to canon law, the election of a bishop
was a matter for clergy and people. The clergy, usually the cathedral
chapter, elected, while the laity, often represented by knights
holding episcopal fiefs, assented to the clergy's choice.
What actually happened when a vacancy occurred was as follows:
(l) the chapter had to obtain from the king permission to elect,
and the king often designated the person to be chosen. If the
chapter elected another, the king might refuse to ratify the election
and to turn over the temporalities, which were in royal hands
during a vacancy. This was straining the law, but it was still
within canonical limits, since the formality of an election was
usually observed.
(2) The king invested the bishop with the spiritualities by handing
him the episcopal ring and crosier and by saying the words ''Receive
the Church''.
(3) The bishop knelt before the king, did homage, swore fealty,
and was then invested with be temporalities.
(4) The bishop was consecrated by the archbishop and other bishops
of the province.
One provision of canon law, however, was consistently ignored-the
pro- vision that a candidate for office, whether priest or bishop,
must be examined for this fitness by his ecclesiastical superiors.
It was the king who was determining suitability, and his criterion
of judgment was usually the acceptability of the candidate as
a royal administrator.
In 1075 Gregory issued a decree against investiture, but it prohibited
only the procedure described under (2) above. In short, the decree
was a means to an end, not an end in itself. He twice reissued
it, in 1078 and 1080, adding decrees requiring free canonical
elections and examination of the candidate by his ecclesiastical
superiors' Only in France could they be effectively enforced.
The conflict between pope and emperor had gone beyond the mere
matter of lay investiture. Gregory's successors took a different
tack. They issued decrees prohibiting what has been described
under (2) and (3). The king was to be deprived of all control
over bishops when elected. They made the decree an end in itself
and thereby gave Henry V (1106-1125) a bargaining point.
In 1122, when the issue was settled by the Concordat of Worms--it
was essentially the same settlement as that reached in England
by the Concordat of Bec in 1107--Henry gave up investiture with
the spiritualities. He gave up the shadow and kept the substance,
retaining those parts of the customary procedure that ensured
his choice of the bishop and his control over him once elected.
''The controversy over Investitures,'' Arnold Toynbee writes,
''might molder in its grave after the Concordat of 1122, but the
hostility that it had engendered went marching on, finding ever
fresh issues in the hardness of men's hearts and the perversity
of their ambitions''. The events of the years 1076-1152 had far-reaching
consequences for German history. The emergence of elective monarchy
made impossible any orderly development of government and any
continuing policy. Lothar II (1125-1137) and Conrad III (1138-1152)
were both elected in opposition to the hereditary claimant.
Both were forced to make concessions to the aristocracy in order
to be elected. Henry V had made a remark at the beginning of his
reign that his father would never have dreamed of making: ''The
removal of a single person, even if he is the supreme head of
the state, is a repairable injury to the realm, but the destruction
of the princes is the destruction of the very kingdom.'' The civil
war during the last thirty years of Henry IV's reign ruined the
free peasantry and raised new demands for protection. The result
was the rapid spread of feudalism, hitherto a negligible factor
in Germany, and this is turn strengthened the power of the prices.
Castles were built throughout the land, and the castellany became
the unit of administration. The church became feudalized; and
after 1122 the bishops began to join the princes in their quest
for territorial power.
The basis of the Salian monarchy was destroyed. This'', concludes
Professor Barraclough, ''was the outstanding contribution of the
period to Germany's future: in the civil wars loosed by Pope Gregory
VII we have to seek the beginnings of the territorial disunity,
of the fantastic map of German particularism and of the unlimited
sovereignty of the princes, which dominated German history from
the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries."
Send comments and questions to Professor
Gerhard Rempel, Western New England College.