It is not surprising therefore that in 1036 the leaders of a democratic movement
that had just emerged in Italy appealed to the German emperor against the
arbitrariness of a member of the high nobility - an ally of his.
"In Lombardy more than in other parts of Italy, the lower nobility were
tyrannized over by the high aristocracy, at the head of which was Heribert or
Aribert, archbishop of Milan. This was the result of the situation in which the
emperor Conrad II. had found himself at his first expedition into Italy, and of
the policy which this dangerous situation had dictated.
Archbishop Aribert, who had presented to the emperor the homage of Italy, and
who was the leader of the German party in Upper Italy, had obtained rich rewards
for the services he had rendered to Conrad. The submission he exhibited towards
the head of the empire, and the zeal with which he supported him in arms, had
deceived Conrad respecting this prelate. The emperor had believed that he had
found in him a devoted follower of his person and the empire, and had granted to
him quite unusual powers over bishops and citizens ; he had invested him not
merely with the power which an imperial chancellor of Italy possessed, but a
kind of governorship over Lombardy. Not merely everything referred to the
emperor in Germany went through his hands, but in most ecclesiastical and
temporal causes in Lombardy he had the deciding voice.
But Aribert was as ambitious as he was crafty, as tyrannical in his own circle
as he was hypocritical in his submissiveness towards the emperor ; he was by no
means a man of German sympathies ; he loved the Germans as little as any Italian
of the national party. He only wished to use the Germans as means to bring all
Lombardy under his own hands. He had in Milan, the capital of his archdiocese, a
princely court formed on the model of the Papal court at Rome. In this century,
in more than one point of Europe, it was the case that an ecclesiastical prince
had the idea of founding an ecclesiastical principality independent of Rome, of
being Pope in his own territories. Aribert had in view the foundation of such an
independent principality in North Italy, a Papacy of Lombardy, just as a
generation later Archbishop Adalbert of Bremen wished to found a Papacy of the
North ruling over a German Church independent of Rome. Aribert called the
members of his chapter cardinals. This
college of cardinals he made the nursery for the bishops of his grand
ecclesiastical principality. His court displayed the splendor and luxury of
royalty ; and this gained to his side the citizens of Milan, who grew rich by
the expenditure ; another portion of the citizens was won by his efforts to
promote trade and industry, to enlarge and beautify the city, and to make it not
merely splendid but strong to resist any attack from without." (58) " For years
the ambitious prince of the Church had used every means and all his powers to
reduce to vassalage the lower nobility and the freeholders, and to deprive them
of their rights as immediate tenants of the empire. The vavassors or small
vassals of Lombardy, formed a solemn league to protect in union their old
liberties and rights." (59)
Conrad II came to Milan to examine the state of affairs, had Aribert arrested
and imprisoned.
"But the clergy in Milan roused the people of the city in favor of their
imprisoned pastor. High and low, women and children in penitential garb, headed
by the clergy, marched in long procession through the streets, to entreat with
lamentations and prayers for the liberation of their spiritual lord… The clergy
knew how to stir up the always existing national hate of the Italians against
the Germans, and regarded the imprisoned Aribert not as the contumacious
insulter of the majesty of the emperor, but as the victim sacrificed by German
brutality, as a martyr for Italian nationality in its struggle against foreign
tyranny, a man in whose person the Italian nation was outraged and injured."
(60) The clergy simply knew how to use in its own interest the `people'.
Besides, its members were bound in an unbreakable solidarity : "Strengthened by
the accession of the lower nobles whom he had gained over by the above measures,
the emperor formally deposed Aribert from his archbishopric, and granted the see
to his chaplain Ambrosius. But the feudal constitution and the deposition of
Aribert so struck the high Italian clergy that they united with Aribert ; even
the bishop of Cremona, who had hitherto been his accuser, and other prelates
till now faithful to the emperor, rallied around him." (61) "This prince of the
Church, Archbishop Aribert, taught the court of Rome the important lesson that,
to oppose the power of the Germans over Italy, and to further the other aims of
the Roman priesthood, its best ally was the armed citizens of the
municipalities." (62) At the same time, the imperial ordinance promulgated by
Conrad II to check the arbitrary power of the grandees "formed a barrier between
the freeholders and lesser feudatories on the one side, and the spiritual and
temporal grandees on the other" (63), forever separating the interests of the
lower nobility and the high aristocracy in Italy.
"Agnes bore Henry III. two sons - Henry and Conrad. She urged him to adorn
himself with the Roman imperial crown. King Henry III. himself was possessed
with the idea that, although he was king of the Germans, king of Burgundy, and
king of Lombardy, he would be of more importance in the eyes of men on both
sides of the Alps if he were resplendent with the imperial crown of Rome, and
with the nimbus of sanctity derived from his consecration as Emperor and Patron
of Christendom by the hand of the Head of the Roman Catholic Church.
It cannot be denied that for most men of that time, as of all times, who believe
more than think, the splendor of such a consecration was potent and imposing.
But it was potent only to a certain extent. Henry, like his predecessors, had
bitterly to experience that it had been better for him to remain king of the
Germans, and to establish his throne on firm foundations in the interior of the
German realm - better for him to seek the interests of the empire and his house,
than splendor and appearance ; that it would have been better for him, his
house, and the German nation to have been a mere king of Germany like Henry I.
and Conrad I.
In addition to his desire of obtaining the crown of Rome, a second cause,
religious feeling, impelled Henry to Italy. His piety was not unmixed with
enthusiastic asceticism. Pie gave his back to the scourge of his confessor till
the blood flowed ; he never placed the crown on his head except when a public
ceremony bade him, and then only after confession and penance.
Rome at this time was a scandal to Christendom. There were no less than three
Popes in Rome, each calling himself the Pope, and his see the Holy See. One of
the three had sold the Papal See to the second for a thousand pounds of silver ;
he received the money, but continued to play the Pope, retaining the title and
revenues of the Pope. The highest spiritual dignity of Christendom had become an
article of trade, bought by one and sold by another, just as all other spiritual
dignities had become articles of trade, bought and sold. As so much temporal
power and so much wealth was connected with spiritual offices, there was a rush
for the position of bishop ; for the bishops were now temporal lords, princes
more magnificent than the lay princes. The bishop had before him not only a
free, unrestrained life like a temporal lord, but he had what the temporal lords
had not, an inexhaustible money supply in the treasure and the revenues of the
Church.
No account was taken of fitness in heart or mind ; the bishoprics were matters
of speculation ; nothing was regarded but the question of money, or at best of
politics. The bishops sold in turn every spiritual place which was worth
anything, down to the very meanest ; in many places each situation had a fixed
price, which fluctuated like prices of goods in the market, according to the
goodness or badness of the times. The kings and princes, by reason of their
rights of spiritual investitures, were the most to blame for this canker of the
Church, the sale of livings (simony). They were the wholesale dealers ; the
others only sold by retail what they had purchased from them. Even kings like
Henry I, Otto I., and Conrad II, had never hesitated to trade in ecclesiastical
offices ; because they saw how, in the States of the Church, the Popes
themselves sold all bishoprics, abbacies, and clerical offices, the kings and
emperors took the same liberty." (64)
In 1046, Henry III. "crossed the Alps, deposed the three rival pontiffs, exacted
an oath from the Roman clergy and people that they would not choose a pope
without the imperial leave, put in succession into the papal chair three or four
short-lived occupants personally pure and upright, and set up for the absolute
master as well as the cleanser of the Roman See. As wielded by Henry III., the
Holy Roman Empire put forth its utmost might and majesty, a might and majesty
that would have gladdened and satisfied Dante ; the purified papacy was its
humble handmaiden.
But this position of the papacy in nowise delighted its best friends. Henry III.
had two parties in the Church against him ; the reformer was unwelcome to the
loose and pleasure-loving clergy, strong and numerous under so long a succession
of profligate pontiffs ; while the master was no less unwelcome to the stricter
and more aspiring members of the priesthood. These last abhorred the scandals of
the time, the simony which pervaded the Church, and the profligacy which
polluted the papal throne, not only as spiritual abominations, but as
ecclesiastical disadvantages, not only as sins against God, but as hindrances to
the greatness of the Church, as obstacles to the establishment of the papal
monarchy. They held the bestowal of an ecclesiastical office to be the
unforgivable transgression in a layman, and the purchase or even the acceptance
of the same to be the sin unto death in a priest. A married priest, however, was
not less abominable than a simoniacal priest ; and they recoiled with no less
horror from matrimony among the clergy than from portentous profligacy in the
vicar of Christ. They welcomed the imperial cleanser, but chafed beneath the
imperial master. They wanted the papacy purified that it might become not a
handmaiden but a mistress. They used the empire to cleanse the popedom, and then
wielded the purified popedom for the subjugation of the empire. They took the
rigid and unstained popes of Henry's appointing, and sought to mould them into
ambitious and enterprising sovereigns of the Church. They set about converting
imperial nominees into papal monarchs." (65)
It is worth dwelling on the underlying objectives of this congregation : "This
society sprang from the Benedictine abbey of Clugny, in the modern French
department of the Saone-et-Loire. Wherever this reformation reached a convent,
there was a transformation effected. Yet this congregation of Clugny had, as its
most secret thought and object, hierarchical and political ends - the supremacy
of the Roman See over the emperors, kings, and peoples of Christendom, the
conversion of the existing relation between Church and State, in which the
Emperor stood higher than the Pope, into its opposite, so that the Pope should
stand higher than the Emperor and all the world.
These predecessors of the Jesuits, who indeed worked in many ways far better
than their successors the Jesuits, but were equally full of danger for the
development of the German nation, had been brought to the knowledge of King
Henry III. by his wife Agnes of Aquitaine. For the abbey of Clugny had been
founded by her ancestor Duke William I. of Aquitaine.
A prince of religious sentiments like Henry III. could not, in view of the
strictly holy life of the members of this order, suspect or discover the
political and hierarchical principles which were the secret teachings of the
heads and leaders of the congregation that had already spread itself through
France, Spain, and Italy. King Henry came into contact only with the chief
leaders, men of wisdom and caution. How powerful by its spirit, by its
intelligence, by its wealth, this congregation was even in the time of Henry
III., how injurious and fatal it was doomed to become to the kingdom of Germany,
may be concluded from the fact that within a century after its establishment the
congregation of Clugny numbered two thousand convents dependent for guidance on
the abbot of Clugny, and that the whole society was immediately under the Pope.
The majority of these two thousand monasteries were in France and Germany, the
minority in Spain, Italy, and Poland. The successors of Henry III. found this
powerful and numerous society to be a Papal guard ever ready to take the field
against them, whether they belonged to the Salian house or to that of
Hohenstaufen ; and King Henry, without presentiment of evil, contributed to
raise the Roman Papacy and supply it with temporal weapons by means of these
precursors of the Jesuits. By the influence of his wife, who, though fond of
gayety was still a bigot, the wily lords of Clugny caught in their nets the
religious heart of King Henry. They convinced him that as king of Italy and
patron of the Holy See, it was his duty and his vocation to put a stop to the
scandals which were caused by the contemporaneous presence of three Popes in
Rome, by the traffic in clerical offices, and by the corruption of the Church ;
and as his coronation as emperor and this business could be dispatched at the
same time, King Henry undertook to cleanse Rome, centre of Chnstendom, and the
Christian world dependent on it ; he undertook this the more readily the less
his religious sentiments were in harmony with what his eyes beheld in all parts
of Christendom." (66)
So Henry III crossed the Alps in September, 1046, "with such an army as no
German king had for a long time led into Italy. It has been repeatedly
represented by writers that Henry III. undertook this expedition of his own
proper motion, with the definite object of making the Papacy an organ of the
royal and imperial power, and thus
working on the nations of Christendom ; that as the bishops in Germany were
tools in the king's hands, he wished to be master of the highest bishop - the
Pope and Papacy of Rome. It is, however, doubtful whether he had such an idea ;
it is certain that by saving the almost ruined Papacy, and by following the lead
of the congregation of Clugny, he effected a result the very opposite of the
views attributed to him above. He raised the Papacy, then seized with decay,
till it began to overtop the crown of the emperors - a state of things which for
centuries produced long struggles between the empire and the Papacy, and
incalculable misery to the nations of Europe.
But this rescue of the Papacy was a natural impulse of this German king ; Henry,
an ecclesiastical enthusiast, could, with his disposition, do nothing else than
cleanse and save the Church." (67)
"Since the time of Otto I. it had been a right and custom that no Pope be
elected without the knowledge and consent of the king of Germany. HenryII.,
indeed, had not maintained, had even surrendered, this right ; that for forty
years the contending parties in Rome had filled the Holy See as they pleased,
was an assault of anarchy on the system of the German empire. The assembly took
the oath demanded, and while the litanies were still echoing through the Church,
Henry took the German bishop Suidger of Bamberg, a noble Saxon, conducted him to
the Papal throne, and bade him mount it.
Whether the king, in presenting Suidger to the assembly, wished only to exhibit
the man who could again sanctify unsanctified Rome, or whether he wished by his
own authority to appoint a Pope, who can tell ? The ecclesiastical dignitaries
who had come with the king saluted Suidger, when he was on the throne, as Pope.
The Romans, surprised, joined with their assent. They found a kind of
consolation for themselves in the reflection that none of them could have done
for Pope according to the requisitions of the king, since there was no one of
them who was not married, or who had not bought his office and sold spiritual
charges. Yet they did not omit to add that `properly' only a clerk belonging to
a church in Rome could be elected Pope.
Thus Suidger, in the surprise, was made Pope by acclamation. King Henry had not
presided over the election of a Pope and confirmed him, but rather had selected
and nominated one. The man thus nominated called himself henceforth Clement II.
This took place on the 24th of December, 1046, and on Christmas-day, this new
Pope placed the imperial crown on the brows of Henry and Agnes.
The population of the city of Rome and of the vicinity were well pleased with
this coming of the German king. Their old hatred of the Germans gave way on this
occasion to their love of money. The fierce party strife in Rome, the shameless
debauchery of the Popes, who squandered the offerings of the faithful from
without Rome, the robberies and murders on the thresholds of the churches, and
the bloody fights at the tombs of the apostles, had for a long time put almost
entirely a stop to pilgrimages to the desecrated metropolis of Christendom. The
cessation of gifts to the churches of Rome, and of the pilgrimages which in
other days had brought such profit to the Roman people, was keenly felt by the
population of the city. With the return of order, pilgrimages and profits
recommenced.
The new Pope (Clement II) and the emperor went hand in hand to purify the Church
and reform the Christian world." (68), as, with the return of order, pilgrimages
and profits recommenced, and Hildebrand was biding his time behind the scenes.
Hildebrand began his work ; "… with his far-seeing thoughts for the liberty and
supremacy of the Church, and with his democratic hate of temporal absolutism and
the aristocracy, with broad views that did not criticise too closely the means
to gain a great end, (he) found it necessary to remove from the peninsula the
emperor who was acting so despotically before he could accomplish his designs in
Italy" (69) : "In 1059, he got from Stephen II. a solemn declaration of the
incompatibility of marriage with the priesthood, got the papal election
regulated to the disadvantage of the empire, and at last, in 1061, got Alexander
II. chosen pope without any imperial intervention." (70) "Under Henry III, the
popes were the creatures and tools of the royal will ; under his son the Pope
spoke commandingly as a judge" (71), as showed by the well-known conflict of the
former with Hildebrand in 1069. Henry IV acknowledged Hildebrand as the lawful
pope in 1073, a few years after the latter had opposed his accession to the
imperial throne.
To realise how strong Hildebrand's position was when he assumed the papal chair
as Gregory VII, it must be kept in mind that this power which then laid claim to
a European supremacy contained within it a very important ecclesiastical
element : "The Germans conquered while they made converts. Their marches
advanced in conjunction with the Church over the Elbe, to the Oder on the one
side, to the Danube on the other : monks and priests were the forerunners of
German influence in Bohemia and Hungary. By this means a great accession of
strength everywhere accrued to the spiritual power. In Germany bishops and
abbots of the empire enjoyed, not only in their own possessions, but beyond
them, the rights of counts, nay, sometimes of dukes; and ecclesiastical estates
were no longer described as situated in such or such a county, but the counties
as in such and such bishoprics. In Upper Italy almost all the towns became
subject to the viscounts of their bishops. It would be an error to infer from
this that the spiritual powers had already acquired a special independence. As
the disposal of ecclesiastical appointments rested with the kings, (the chapters
used to send back the ring and crosier of their deceased superior to the court,
whence it was again bestowed on his successor,) it was in general advantageous
for the princes to eke out the temporal privileges of the men of their choice,
on whose devotedness they could rely. In defiance of the most refractory
nobility, Henry III. placed a plebeian, one of his creatures, in the chair of
St. Ambrose in Milan : to this line of conduct he was mainly indebted for the
obedience he subsequently met with in Upper Italy. That Henry II. proved himself
of all these emperors the most munificent to the Church, and that he was the
most strenuous in insisting on his right to the nomination of the bishops, are
facts that carry with them their mutual explanation. Care was also taken that
the collation should be without prejudice to the rights of the state. The
property of the Church was exempted neither from civil burdens, nor even from
feudal service : we frequently find bishops taking the field at the head of
their vassals. On the other hand, what an advantage it was to have the right of
nominating bishops, who, like the Archbishop of Bremen, exercised the highest
spiritual authority in the Scandinavian dominions and over many Wendish tribes !
If, then, the ecclesiastical element was of such eminent importance in the
institutions of the empire, it is self-evident how much this must have been
enhanced by the relation in which the emperors stood to the supreme head of the
entire clergy, the Pope of Rome.
The popedom was bound to the German emperors by the strictest ties, as it had
before been to the Roman emperors and to the successors of Charlemagne. True,
indeed, the popes had exercised acts of sovereign authority over the imperial
sceptre before it passed definitely to the Germans, and while it was yet in weak
and wavering hands. But when the vigorous princes of Germany had achieved the
conquest of that dignity, they became, if not admittedly, at least, in fact,
what the Carlovingian race had been, the liege lords of the popedom. Otto the
Great shielded with a powerful hand the pope whom he had seated in the
pontifical chair : his sons followed his example : the fact, that the Roman
factions did once more make head, and seize on and resign that dignity as their
family interests fluctuated, purchase and traffic it away, did but more clearly
indicate the necessity of some higher intervention. It was well known how
vigorously this was exercised by Henry III. His synod at Sutri deposed, the
intruders upon the popedom. No sooner had he put the patrician ring on his
finger, and received the imperial crown, than he declared of his own good
pleasure the individual who was to mount the papal chair. Four successive German
popes were nominated by him : upon the occasion of a vacancy in the highest
station in the Church the delegates from Rome presented themselves at the
imperial court exactly as the envoys from other bishoprics, to receive the
announcement of a successor to the dignity.
In this position of things it was a matter of personal interest to the emperor
that the papacy should wear an imposing aspect in the eyes of the world. Henry
III. promoted the reformation, which was undertaken by the popes appointed by
himself; the augmentation of their power in nowise moved him to jealousy. That
Leo IX held a synod at Rheims in defiance of the King of France, instituted and
deposed French bishops, and received the solemn admission of the principle, that
the pope is the sole primate of the universal church, might perfectly suit the
emperor's purposes, so long as he himself had the disposal of the popedom. All
this contributed to uphold that paramount majesty which he claimed over all
Europe. What the Archbishop of Bremen effected for him in the north, the pope
obtained for him among the other powers of Christendom.
But there was a great danger too involved in this condition of things.
The ecclesiastical order had become in the German and the germanized empire a
totally different institution from what it had been in the Roman. A large share
of political influence had been transferred to it ; it was possessed of princely
power... it still depended on the emperor, the highest secular authority. But
what if this authority should again fall into weak hands, and if at the same
time the supreme head of the church, thrice powerful through his universally
venerated rank, the obedience of his subordinates, and his influence over other
states, should seize the favourable moment, and set himself in opposition to the
imperial authority ?" (72)
Gregory VII, who always asked himself the right questions, proceeded to carry
out his plan to make the Church independent from the Empire through two
ecclesiastical regulations. "He renewed at a synod in Rome in 1074 the old laws
of the Church which bound all the clergy, superior and inferior, to celibacy. By
this means the clergy would be detached from dependence on temporal chiefs, to
which a care for their families compelled them, and brought into more immediate
connection with the head of the Church of Rome." (73) "At a second synod at Rome
in 1075 Gregory took the second step preparatory for the independence of the
Church. The resolution of this synod was, that the punishment of excommunication
be inflicted on every clergyman who bought an office from any temporal prince,
or received from any temporal power investiture, that is, enfeoffment as bishop
or abbot with spiritual and temporal power." (74) As was seen above, "Hitherto
Church property and priests had been embraced in the Feudal system, and temporal
lords had delivered to their feoffees, archbishops, bishops, or abbots, a staff'
and ring as emblems of the temporal authority over them.
Hitherto, also, the temporal lords had, quite of themselves, nominated the
ministers of God's Word and the Church dignitaries ; had, independently, filled
up vacancies in bishoprics and abbacies." (75)
"The authority of a count was connected with the bishoprics and abbacies. These
rights, and in most part the great estates of the prelates, had been given by
kings and emperors as fiefs of the crown, not as private property. Each new
bishop or abbot had to ask from the king investiture in these rights, and to
take the feudal oath to the head of the state, just like every lay feudal tenant
of the crown, and like the latter, he was bound to serve and obey the king. At
every appointment of a bishop or abbot the king could either grant or refuse, as
pleased him, the investiture of these temporal rights and jurisdiction. Without
such investiture a bishop or abbot could not enjoy his estates or his
jurisdiction. This was an old right of the king, and embraced an important part
of the king's prerogative.
Now that the spiritual princes were forbidden to accept investiture from the
king, the great temporal possessions, domains, and countships of the spiritual
princes must, if the prohibition were carried out, cease to be fiefs of the
crown, and become the property of the Church ; the king's crown would lose
one-half of its feudal power, since the spiritual princes formed a great portion
of it, and the Holy See would gain in proportion. Gregory thus hoped to make the
Church free from all temporal dependence, free in its elections and possessions,
in its members and estates. The Pope would thus be raised above king and
emperor, the Church above the State, and the Pope, as the Vicar of Christ on
earth, would rule the world." (76)
"To gain room for the execution of his project, the liberation of the Church
from every temporal power, the Pope wished to send into the far East the kings
of Germany, France, and England, from whom he had to fear opposition to his
plans ; he wished a crusade of Christian Europe for the liberation of the
Eastern Christians from the Seljookian Turks, who, in 1073, had conquered Syria
and the Holy Land. Even if the Pope said he would in person accompany the
crusade to the East, yet he could never have intended to do so really." (77) One
thousand years later, analogously, no opportunity is missed by those who are
behind the sham politicians in office in occupied Europe to have these send
European and western `armies' into the East, for purposes which cannot all be
reduced to ideological, geopolitical, economic and tangible motives. Modern
crusades are part of the Machiavellian strategy whereby European natives are
lured into thinking that the enemy is outside, while the enemy within is busy
importing a growing number of extra-Europeans into occupied European States.
This can be accomplished all the more easily as the escapist tendencies of the
contemporary native European are exacerbated by the media. Each time the enemy
within decides to send troops to the East, a flock of mesmerised native
Europeans follows them there in thought, and still in thought remains stationed
there, as more and more immigrants from there enter most physically their
countries with the benevolent complicity of the enemy within. If such escapism
can be expected from uprooted peoples that have been brainwashed democratically
for decades, it is remarkable that this centrifugal attitude is taken up and
even fostered by most of those - we are not even referring to the profusion of
thinkers with a Marxist or a liberal background who are portrayed as `Fascist'
by the mass media - who claim to speak for the `people' and to enlighten the
`people' from a patriotic, nationalist, National-Socialist, Fascist or simply
anti-internationalist perspective. In 1074, the kings of Germany, France, and
England turned down the call of Gregory VII for a crusade, "because each of them
saw that Gregory wanted him away in order to build up the Church's power during
his absence." (78)
"The composite character of Catholicism, J. Evola points out, should not be
forgotten… wherever this character manifested itself as a force promoting order
and hierarchy, thus providing a support for European society, this was mainly
thanks to the influences of the Germanic-Roman world. Conversely, whenever the
specifically Christian component triumphed, Catholicism acted in the West in an
antitraditional, rather than traditional way." (79) The composite character of
Catholicism appeared in full light in the `Middle Ages' whenever the papacy was
in a position of strength. It shone as a full moon in the dark night that the
reign of Gregory VII represented for what little left there was of traditional
Europe. "Under the protection of the Papacy, republican forms and republican
freedom of thought were rendered possible in Upper Italy, even if we allow that
the Papacy had regard only to its own interests and the weakening of the power
of the king, and that freedom of thought which arose in the republics was
against the will of the Papacy.
A day had dawned in which every rank, every city, every corporation was
struggling towards freedom. Did Gregory VIL, like other Popes after him, merely
make use of these struggles, merely employ them for the predominance of the
Church ? Or, did he indeed, at least at the commencement of his reign, did he
wish to train the people to political freedom ? No man can give a complete proof
of either one or the other supposition. But in the extant confidential letters
of this great statesman on the Papal chair, as well as in his public writings,
the deepest hatred of despotism, and a democratic spirit shone forth." (80)
"He attempted the conquest of Christendom, and sought to fashion all the
monarchs of Europe into vassals of Rome. He was ever threatening and rebuking
Philip I. of France. He forced upon Alphonso VI. of Castile, a warrior and a
statesman, the Roman church-service to which he was not accustomed, and a wife
for whom he did not care. He laid Bohemia under tribute, while he withheld from
her, in spite of her earnest entreaty, worship and the Word in the Bohemian
tongue. He assumed airs of sovereignty towards the greatest heroes and rulers of
the age…" (81) "Hildebrand has the fullest right to be reputed the hero of the
papacy and the architect of the papal power. He found the popedom weak and
contemptible ; he left it strong and terrible. He found it the creature of the
empire, and he left it on the high-road to mastery not only over the empire but
over Christendom. He developed its ultimate tendencies and fixed its final
character. He unfolded in all the height and depth, in all the length and
breadth of its pretensions, aspirations and endeavours, the kingdom of this
world which called itself not of this world, and he arrogated for it secular
lordship over princes by virtue of the spiritual lordship which he arrogated for
it over souls. He strove to make the papacy absolute in the Church and to make
the Church absolute over the State ; he sought to bring the whole of life -
social, political, and spiritual - beneath the papal power…" (82)
"Congenial successors pursued the work of Gregory and fiercely maintained the
conflict with the empire." (83)
As many revolutionary spirits' in the history of the world, the career of
Gregory VII came to an abrupt end, since he died in exile in 1085, a few months
after having being declared deposed by the very king he had previously decreed
be deposed and excommunicated, who was in turn made emperor by the antipope he
had just created ; even his victory at Canossa had been only apparent, as was
Henry's in Rome later. The spirit by which Gregory was possessed "took
possession of public opinion. Under the emperor's hands and eyes this opinion
became more catholic, more Papal, and gained and armed not only princes and
people, but the emperor's own family, the sons of his body, his second wife,
against him, till he broke under their influence." (84) What the episode of
Canossa showed to public opinion, beyond the unexampled penitential humiliation
of Henry, was that the pope had the right to depose a king and heir of the
empire, and to absolve his subjects from their oath of allegiance. And that the
head of the State acknowledged the temporal supremacy of the Church.
"The second act of the papal drama may be said to have closed here ; the second
period of the popedom came to an end - a period of about three hundred years,
from the middle of the eighth to the latter portion of the eleventh century
(750-1073), from the close of its connection with the Greek empire to the
beginning of its conflict with the German empire - a period which found the pope
an influential personage and left him a temporal sovereign ; which found him
predominant and left him monarch in the Church ; which found his spiritual
sovereignty vigorously asserted, and left his infallibility all but
unquestioned…" (85)
The emperor and the pope "stand forth the two central and most conspicuous
figures of the Middle Ages. For some two or three centuries the Holy Roman
Empire and the Holy Roman Church were the chief powers of the world. The utterly
secularised Christian Church, and the nominally consecrated Roman Empire, that
strange pair brought together so strangely and in such complete defiance of the
birth and original nature of each, stood side by side at the head of
Christendom. The age approved their connection and admitted their joint
supremacy, assigning to the empire the chief place in the temporal region, and
to the papacy the chief place in the spiritual region. This seemed a simple and
symmetrical arrangement but it was spoiled by the double nature of the Roman
Church. The two powers, while fully recognising each other's legitimacy, could
not agree to reign together, but each sought to reign over the other ; or
rather, the empire held to the theory of joint sovereignty, while the popedom,
as became the kingdom of this world calling itself a kingdom not of this world,
sought to realise the theory of its own sole sovereignty." (86) The emperor
"allowed the spiritual and doctrinal supremacy of the pontiffs, were willing to
leave the souls and consciences of men under their dominion ; but they demanded
their obedience in matters temporal…", (87) claiming "them as subjects in all
affairs of this world, while acknowledging them as masters in affairs of faith."
(88)
"But this spiritual mastery in nowise satisfied the pontiffs. By very reason of
this supremacy over souls, they claimed supremacy over states. Recognising the
empire as the chief among merely temporal powers, the popedom pretended to be
above it even in matters of this world. If the early Church had rendered
absolute obedience to the Roman empire in all secular matters, the papacy had
made the empire over to the Germans, had sanctified it, and had the rights of a
new creator over its creature. The papal theory was altogether incompatible with
the imperial theory." (89) The emperor "required obedience in temporal matters
from his papal subject ; the pontiff demanded submission in all things from his
imperial creature. The two great powers of the Middle Ages, the two chiefs of
Christendom, so closely connected with each other, so curiously dependent on
each other, fell out, and fought to ascertain which of the two really and
practically was master of the other.
This conflict between the empire and the papacy was inevitable. It arose about
bishop-making ; it arose in consequence of the twofold character which the
Church had assumed as a spiritual and worldly kingdom. The bishops were at once
pastors and barons, pillars of the Church and pillars of the State ; advancement
to a bishopric was advancement to a barony. The emperor claimed the chief share
in promoting his subjects ; the pope claimed the chief share in promoting his.
The Christian people had long lost their original right of choosing their
pastors. A man once invested with the ring and the staff was deemed a proper
bishop; Caesar and pontiff fell out as to which of the two should confer this
investiture. But the quarrel did not stop here ; it broadened and deepened into
an all-pervading and mortal enmity. The question whether bishop-making was a
papal or imperial function grew into the question whether the civil or
ecclesiastical power should have the mastery in all things ; the contest between
pope and emperor for supremacy in the secularised Church was aggravated into a
struggle for supremacy in the world, for universal dominion." (90)
"This conflict covers almost exactly the whole period of papal greatness, from
the accession of Gregory VII. to the death of Boniface VIII. (1073-1303), and
stands out as its most signal and glaring fact, as the great business of the
Middle Ages. It lasted about two centuries, and had every characteristic of a
deadly struggle between two powers of this world, aggravated and embittered by
the spiritual pretensions of one of the combatants... The pope stirred up civil
war in the empire, and the emperor stirred up civil war in the Church. The
pontiff seduced the family as well as the subjects of the [emperor], wrung his
heart as well as shook his throne ; the son was set up against the sire, and the
bonds of nature were torn asunder, to secure the triumph of the Roman Church.
The pope bestowed the imperial crown upon a rebellious subject or son of the
emperor ; the emperor conferred the pontifical crown upon a discontented and
aspiring cardinal. So great were the interests at stake, and so strong the
passions in conflict, that a papal candidate for the empire, when once on the
imperial throne, became a strenuous upholder of its dignity; while an episcopal
partisan of the [emperors], when once seated on the pontifical throne, became a
vehement assertor of its claims. Yet this was through out a contest for
dominion, not a warfare of destruction. The [emperors] fully acknowledged that
papacy which they so steadfastly strove to resist ; the pontiffs amply
recognised that empire which they so mightily laboured to subdue, even when they
combined with this contest for the subjection of the imperial throne a war of
extermination against a particular imperial house." (91)
Henry IV died in 1106, deposed and imprisoned "by an unnatural son whom the
hatred of a relentless pontiff had raised in rebellion against him. But that
son, the Emperor Henry the Fifth, so far from conceding the points in dispute,
proved an antagonist more ruthless and not less able than his father. He claimed
for his crown all the rights over ecclesiastics that his predecessors had ever
enjoyed, and when at his coronation in Rome, A.D. 1111, Pope Paschal II refused
to complete the rite until he should have yielded, Henry seized both Pope and
cardinals and compelled them by a rigorous imprisonment to consent to a treaty
which he dictated. Once set free, the Pope, as was natural, disavowed his
extorted concessions, and the struggle was protracted for ten years longer,
until nearly half a century had elapsed from the first quarrel between Gregory
VII and Henry IV. The Concordat of Worms, concluded in A.D. 1122, was in form a
compromise, designed to spare either party the humiliation of defeat. Yet the
Papacy remained master of the field. The Emperor retained but one-half of those
rights of investiture which had formerly been his. He could never resume the
position of Henry III ; his wishes or intrigues might influence the proceedings
of a chapter, his oath bound him from open interference. He had entered the
strife in the fullness of dignity ; he came out of it with tarnished glory and
shattered power." (92)
Lothair III, elected with ecclesiastical support, was not slow to express his
gratitude to his benefactors by proceeding "to ask by his ambassadors for the
Papal confirmation of his election - that is, to acknowledge that the empire was
in tutelage to the Papal See.
"Such a thing had never yet occurred, that a king, acknowledged by the whole
empire, should, by his own embassy dispatched to Rome, beg the Pope to confirm
his election. Hitherto the Pope, when elected, had demanded confirmation of his
election from the German king -, even the great Gregory VII. had not omitted to
do so.
But now the German king degraded himself so far - it had been part of the price
to be paid for the imperial crown which he had chaffered for - as formally and
publicly to request from the Pope confirmation of his election !" (93)
Lothaire, once crowned and anointed, went further. "Innocent II. knew Lothaire
well enough to see that he had to deal with a man weak in all political or
ecclesiastical measures, a man who had lost all sense or feeling for his own
honor, and for the honor and dignity of the German crown and nation. Lothaire
renounced any division of the fiefs of the empire from the private dominions in
Matilda's heritage, restored to Innocent all the property confiscated to the
empire by Henry V., and received them back from the Pope as fiefs of the Papal
See, and with the condition that after his death this heritage of Matilda should
pass as a fief to his son-in-law the Guelph Henry, and after the death of the
latter, revert to the Roman See. To such folly and degradation, to such injury
towards the German empire, was the emperor Lothaire persuaded by Innocent. And
he, the German king, the Roman emperor, performed all the formalities of feudal
tenure ; he took the oath of vassalage to the Pope as his feudal lord, and
promised to pay a yearly rent of one hundred marks of silver for the private
domains of the great Countess.
The Romans comprehended better than Lothaire what he had given away : they
painted the scene," How the emperor became the Pope's vassal." In the picture
Lothaire, as the "Pope's vassal," lay with clasped hands at the Holy Father's
feet for investiture, not only with Matilda's heritage, but with the imperial
crown." (94)
Meanwhile, the strife between the Guelfs and the Ghibellines had begun in
Germany, and the religio-political movement led by Arnold of Brescia, in an
attempt to break the temporal power of the Church and to transform Italy into a
republic under the leadership of the emperor, was becoming a real threat for the
Papal See, especially since a pope supportive of the ideas of the reformer had
just mounted the chair of Peter. At that time, the people of Rome, following
Arnold's advice, sought to establish relations with the new king of Germany,
Conrad III, a Hohenstaufen who had unsuccessfully supported Frederick for the
kingship of Germany at the death of Henry V, "and invited him to Rome to take up
his permanent residence there, to reduce the Pope, who had only usurped the
government within the walls of Rome, to the purely spiritual functions of the
first popes, and to make the nomination of the Popes, as it had been a century
before, an exclusive privilege of the king and emperor. At any price Pope
Eugenius III., who had fled for safety to France, and his champion Saint Bernard
must keep the Hohenstaufen out of Rome. Bernard went to Germany, and by his
eloquence so worked on Conrad and his nephew Frederick that they both at last
resolved to join a second great Crusade - for which the popular saint had
already labored in France with great success - for the protection of the
oppressed Christians of the East"... (95)
"King Conrad's religious feelings overpowered his political sentiments." (96) It
was not the first time a king's piety had overpowered his political sentiments
and his duties towards his kingdom.
The chain reaction which can be seen at work in the historical events whose
causes, consequences and aftermath we have been trying to encapsulate continued.
"It was a remarkable time when Conrad quitted the scene. The artificially
awakened enthusiasm for the Holy Sepulchre and for crusades had cooled, and
through the greater part of Europe a struggle of an opposite tendency was seen,
a spirit of freedom, which exhibited itself as a struggle in the cities for
civic independence, for Republicanism ; as a struggle to get free from the
dominion of the Church, that is, of the Papal See ; as a struggle for freedom of
belief and conscience, for separation of Church and State. Not merely in a few,
but in many, the spirit of the time began to show itself as a thinking,
protesting spirit, and even the supreme head of temporal power, the king of the
Germans, was not untouched by it. A new struggle between the royal power and the
Papal power was imminent ; a storm, as it seemed, was preparing in the depths of
the people's life." (97) The huge responsibility the papal policy bears for the
revival and the development of this so-called "spirit of freedom' in consistence
with the Church fathers' fanatic and telluric support for the so-called "freedom
of human choice" and the assertion of the value and sanctity of the individual
in an internationalist context (99) cannot be stressed enough.
Meanwhile, "The North German subjects of the young duke of Saxony, nobles and
people, had freed themselves from the Crusade to the Holy Land by undertaking
one against the heathen Wends in their own neighborhood. For this crusade also
the Pope promised to all who engaged to extirpate these heathens of the North or
bring them to be baptized, a like remission of sins, and like benefits as had
been granted to the Crusaders to the Holy Sepulchre. The sagacious Duke Conrad
of Zahringen marked this. Like Conrad, he had vowed the Crusade to Jerusalem. He
fulfilled his vow by joining the Saxon crusade against the Wends. So did many
Swabian crusaders. The Saxons, however, were at this time so unfanatic, and on
such a footing with the Wends in their vicinity, that, at the very time when
Conrad was marching to the East, they marched indeed in two columns against
their heathen neighbors, but after receiving from the Wends a promise that they
would be baptized, returned home again. The Wends never thought any more about
being baptized; the Saxons never thought any more of compelling them. This
crusade was a mere show ; the Christian Saxons and the heathen Wends had a good
mutual understanding. They both wished for peace as the best thing for the
interests of both. These Christians and these heathens had by bitter experience
lost any longing for mutual slaughter to please the priests..." (99)
"Frederick was no friend of Arnold of Brescia, of the republican spirit, of the
proud self-assertion of the cities. In his early youth, and when duke, he had
thought and acted differently from his uncle Conrad, a man of simple character,
and dear to the citizens, especially to those of Rottweil, Ulm, and his beloved
Speyer. Barbarossa was of thoroughly aristocratic nature in his youth and early
manhood, proud beyond measure of his birth and blood... As king he was filled
with the `divine' plenitude of power appertaining to a German king. In his eyes
the king of Germany required no Papal sanction, but had in himself the full
right to be the head of Christendom, the emperor, the Caesar, lord of the
Christian world, the lord absolute.
He clung with all his soul to the old privileged feudal system, and the royal
power based thereon. True monarchy as befitted his time, and the spirit of his
time, had not yet entered into his thoughts ; the one was repulsive, the other
alien to his mind." (100)
"Such was the youth, such the king in the first fifteen years of his reign.
Grievous, bitter experience, too late for himself, too late for the good of the
German and Italian nations, tempered his imperious views and passions. When he
had learnt to know the free citizen-spirit in its grandeur on the battlefield, m
its noble worth on the domain of industry and art, he became its friend instead
of an enemy, its promoter, not its despiser ; he became the king of the people,
not the king of the knights.
With such views and sentiments King Frederick could only feel anger and contempt
for the letter of the `Senate and People of Rome,' and at their demand that he
should take the imperial crown from the hand of the Roman people, as the only
power that could legally bestow it. It was only with reluctance that Frederick
complied with the custom of receiving the imperial crown from the hand of the
chief priest of Christendom ; as king of the Germans he felt himself already to
be the head of all Christian princes and peoples, to be the emperor, a title to
which, in his eyes, the bearer of the German crown had a right, without
requiring its bestowal by another. More indignant still became the king when he
heard that the Romans had made their constitution, since he had declared for the
Pope, more democratic than it had been designed by Arnold of Brescia, and that
they were intending to make a Roman the national emperor of Italy, and quite
overlook the German king. Probably a fatal utterance of Frederick I. had been
reported to the Romans, the speech which escaped him in anger, `he would never
lower himself to swear an oath to the mob.'
He had no liking previously for the civic element, and now the democratic
proceedings and want of tact of the people of Rome became disgusting to him. He
hurried to commit the greatest folly which he, as king of Germany and as a
Hohenstaufen, could, in opposition to all the traditions of the policy of the
Salian emperors, commit, and which he and Germany had to suffer and to rue for
his whole life long… In March, 1153, he made an agreement with the Roman See at
Constance that he would not make peace with the Romans… without the consent of
the Pope, but would labor to reduce Rome under the rule of the Pope, and
establish his temporal power. The Pope engaged to crown the king as emperor
without delay, to treat him as his best-beloved son, and, if he desired it, to
excommunicate his enemies." (101) Frederick, as unaware that he was caught
between the rock and the hard place of the Roman republic and the papacy as he
was fearfully aware of what the pope had in store for him, had he decided to
divorce his wife without his consent, fell from Charybdis to Scylla. A threat
and, a fortiori, a bull of excommunication, was a potent coercive instrument in
the fight of the papacy for supremacy. The consequences of a mere interdict may
give the reader some idea of the coerciveness of such weapon : "Leo IX.'s
campaign against the Normans was not successful, but it led to an alliance
between the Papal See and these settlers in Southern Italy, which was an
incalculable gain for the power of the Popes, and fatal for centuries to the
kingdom and empire of Germany. The princes of Benevento, Pandulf III. and
Landulf VI, had insulted the mother-in-law of Henry III. as she returned from a
pilgrimage, and had been laid by Pope Clement II. under an interdict - that is,
under that form of ecclesiastical censure by which the Popes made the people
suffer for the prince for the purpose of rousing them to take arms against him.
An interdict forbade every holy rite of the Church ; no religious worship was
held, no child baptized, no communion celebrated, no Christian burial performed,
no pair made one by the Church's blessing, no church-going bell allowed to
sound. The rites of the Church then occupied the whole life of Christendom, and
therefore the population bore with impatience the closing and silencing of the
churches. Even the inhabitants of Benevento were soon weary of bearing the
Church's curse on account of their princes ; they drove them away, and offered
to Pope Leo the sovereignty of Benevento ; Hildebrand with joy seized this
opportunity to gain for the Papal See a strong temporal foundation, and Leo IX.
in person accepted the oath of homage from the people of Benevento on the 5th of
July, 1051." (102)
Frederick of Hohenstaufen's opposition and contempt for the `spirit of the time'
cannot be doubted : "The citizens of Milan were divided into three classes of
free burghers ; there were no slaves nor even serfs in the Milanese. The nobles
formed the first class of citizens
; from them, as a rule, were chosen the leaders and chiefs in time of war, and
also a great part of the members of the city council and courts of justice. The
guilds of merchants, bankers, capitalists, and artists formed the second class,
the ordinary trades, and industries, partly freeholders, partly previous serfs,
formed the third class. The lowest citizen had the right to carry arms, and knew
how to use them. No handicraft excluded from knighthood.
The king and his entourage "jeered at the eligibility for knighthood possessed
by handicraftsmen, at the law of Genoa and Milan, a law still more intolerable
for an old feudal German ear, by which a matrimonial alliance between a noble
and a non-noble citizen was no misalliance.
Such a constitution was as distasteful to the king, the first of German knights,
as to the lowest knight, the owner of the pettiest castle. Even the nobility,
high and low, of these city republics was in bad odor with the king and his
knights. They saw in the altered condition of Upper Italy not an historical
necessity, but only a temporary victory of the people over the nobles, the
conquest of contemptible industry over the proud chivalry ; they thought if this
spirit of civic freedom were to cross the Alps, the downfall of the feudal
system would follow, and with it the fall of the German empire, which in their
eyes was bound up with it. The king was determined to crush down or uproot this
spirit at the place of its birth." (103)
However, the city nobility showed its true colour, that of its blood, when,
seeing "that the king made a distinction between the aristocracy and democracy
in Milan, and was determined to annihilate the republican system, it united
still more closely with the other classes of the people, because its own
interests were threatened by the king as much as those of the rest of the
population. They stepped forward like one man for the common interests, for the
defence of their reformed polity, which, not only by its existence, but by royal
and imperial sanction, had become a legal polity. This latter point the king
quite overlooked." (104) Yet, this did not prevent him from speaking of the
Milanese citizens as "'slaves whose dwellings and forts must be destroyed.'
Bishop Otto of Freisingen, the Babenberger, who was the king's uncle and privy
councillor, spoke violently about the handicraftsmen in the Lombard cities
bearing arms and the dignity of knighthood..." True to his noble nature, he
called the industrial pursuits and the mercantile activity of the citizens,
"despicable huckstering," and the republican communities a "pest"." (105)
Frederick, now emperor, was determined to extirpate the `free spirit' and the
desire for national independence that had arisen in Italy. "The Crusades had
enormously increased the trade of the Italian cities with the East, and their
industries and wealth. They possessed means to resist, and the principles
Frederick wished to uproot became in the conflict with him conscious of its own
powers, and more developed." (106) The emperor saw in liberal national
development of Italy "the vilest treason, a disloyalty that cried to heaven
towards the honor of the German empire." (107) It is most interesting that this
liberal national development was contemporaneous with the Easternisation of
European manners, "imported from Palestine or learnt from commercial intercourse
in the Mediterranean," and the strengthening of the influence of the pope over
the `people', of the `vox populirisation'. (108)
"The emperor's relation to the Pope also urged him to Italy ; a friendship such
as had been formed between him and Hadrian IV., cemented with innocent and noble
blood, could not be of long continuance. Many things, not without faults of both
emperor and Pope, had strained this friendship. Hadrian's passionateness made
the tension a rupture by means of a letter which he addressed to the emperor at
Besancon. This Latin letter was a complaint against the emperor of disregard to
him, `which the Holy Father can the less explain as he had hitherto shown
Frederick nothing but kindness, had assured to him the imperial diadem, which he
even yet did not repent of, as he would not have repented had he conferred on
him even greater beneficia.' The official language of the Middle Ages used the
Latin word beneficium which, in classical Latin, means `a benefit,' to express
`a fief.' When the envoy, Cardinal Roland, came to read this part of the letter,
the emotion of the German princes was great. They all understood it as implying
that the imperial dignity was a Papal fief and the emperor a vassal of the Pope.
The cardinal strove to make head against the displeasure. `From whom, then, does
the emperor receive the empire but from the Pope, the lord ?' The Bavarian
Palgrave, Otto of Wittlesbach, would have stopped with his sword the mouth of
the arrogant priest, if the emperor himself had not held his arm and allayed the
storm.
Pope Hadrian IV. now declared that it was all a misunderstanding ; he had used
the term beneficium in the old Roman sense as `benefit,' not in the feudalistic
sense of `fief,' and he sent some cardinals to exculpate him ; they saluted the
emperor as `their lord,' `the ruler of Rome and the world,' and called
themselves `his clergy.' The emperor was content with this satisfaction." (108),
despite the fact that "In the baggage of the Papal envoys was found a mass of
papers which were intended to be distributed through the churches of the realm,
and to excite the people against the emperor." (109)
Frederick I marched for the third time into the peninsula in 1158, determined to
reassert his imperial sovereignty over upper Italy by stamping out the growing
independence of Lombard trading cities. He widened the rights of the Empire, not
only over ecclesiastical lands and corporations throughout Italy, but also over
papal territories, at the diet of Roncaglia the same year, occupied Milan two
years later, held again a diet at Roncaglia, at which the imperial tax (fodrum)
was re-established, much to the scandal of Hadrian IV, who died before he could
hurl the sentence of excommunication he had bound himself to pronounce against
him, was actually excommunicated by Alexander III, the successor of Hadrian IV,
had an antipope elected, put down an umpteenth revolt in Milan, forced Alexander
III to flee to France, confronted the league which the Lombard towns had formed
to resist his armies and which the papacy soon joined, was challenged and
defeated by the Lombard league, met with Alexander III at Venice, knelt at his
feet, kissed them and held his stirrup. "The defeat of Frederick was signal, but
not ignominious. Just a hundred years before (1077), his great grandfather,
Henry IV., grovelled before Gregory VII. The scene at Venice had not the
personal debasement of the scene at Canossa, but it expressed a greater papal
victory : in the one a craven crouched, in the other a hero yielded ; in the one
an emperor was put to shame, in the other the empire was brought low." (110) A
few centuries later, the consumer was king.
"In the midst of the conflict with Frederick Redbeard, another signal triumph
was won for the papal power. Six years before the mighty Caesar knelt at the
feet of the aged priest with whom he had been so long at war, Henry II. of
England, the potent and imperious Plantagenet, knelt in penitent prayer and
received bodily chastisement at the tomb of another priest with whom he had
lived in fierce conflict, and whom his courtiers had slain. The Roman Church
found more help in one dead." (111)
If it is during Frederick I's reign that the division between Guelphism, the
papal and popular party, and Ghibellinism, the aristocratic party supporting the
authority of the German emperors, became defined, it should be noted that the
terms `Church party' and `imperial party' were usually preferred to those of
Guelphs and Ghibelins until about 1250. The crisis of succession opened by the
death of Emperor Henry VI, heir of Frederick I, helps to explain why : in the
beginning unfavourable to the papacy, it "ended in its exaltation. Otho of
Brunswick, the papal candidate, was worsted by Philip of Suabia, the antipapal
candidate. The detested House of Hohenstaufen prevailed over the favoured House
of Guelf. The assassination of Philip (1208) made room for Otho, and Innocent
placed the imperial crown on the head of his nominee. But the possession of that
crown soon converted the pontifical nominee into an imperial champion." (112)
The pontiff and the emperor "erelong fell out about the respective rights of the
papacy and the empire. Innocent bitterly resented the independence of Otho, and
at once proceeded to uncrown the monarch of his choice, and undo the work of his
own hands. He transferred his favour from the cherished blood of Guelf to the
tainted blood of Hohenstaufen. The pontiff set up the head of the Ghibelins
against the chief of the Guelfs. He invited his ward and vassal, Frederick, king
of Sicily, the hereditary foe of the papacy, the hereditary champion of the
empire, the grandson of Frederick Redbeard, the descendant of Henry IV., the
heir of an excommunicated race, to avenge the wrongs and execute the sentence of
the popedom upon the representative of the papal cause, upon the heir of a race
devoted for generations to the Roman See. Frederick obeyed and triumphed ; Otho
lost his crown, and Innocent enjoyed the satisfaction of a 'setter-up and
puller-down of kings.'" (113)
The imperial House of Hohenstaufen was then hunted down and rooted out.
"Frederick II., king of Sicily and emperor of Germany, a prince of many realms
and rich endowments, voluptuous, heroic, intellectual, all-accomplished, and
magnanimous, holding some conspicuous frailties in union with some lofty
qualities, brought new splendour to the most illustrious throne of Christendom,
and filled as large a space in the mind of the thirteenth century as another
great German prince, another mighty Frederick II., occupied in the thoughts of
the eighteenth century. Born of an anti-papal race, the heir of the
Hohenstaufens, yet a ward and vassal of the papacy, helped to the throne of
Germany by Innocent III., and encircled with the imperial crown by Honorius
III., the vanquisher and dethroner of the Guelf emperor Otho, with the help of
the pontiff, Frederick seemed born to reconcile the two irreconcilable powers,
and bring the long strife between popedom and empire to an amicable end. But far
otherwise was it to be. The imperial crown which had changed the Guelf Otho into
a Ghibelin and the patronising pontiff into an adversary, was not likely to lose
its anti-papal virtue with the blood of Hohenstaufen and the hereditary champion
of imperial rights. The papacy dealt hardly and soon fell out with its imperial
nurseling, exacting everything and conceding nothing. Pope Honorius charged
Frederick with making bishops, oppressing the Church, and breaking his
crusader's vow. The latter, who had taken the cross, remembered that he was an
emperor as well as a crusader, and that he had duties at home as well as in
Palestine, and deferred his expedition under the pressure once of State affairs
and then of bodily illness. The pontiff imputed the growing peril of the Holy
Land to the delays of the emperor, and at last (in 1228) Gregory IX
excommunicated the tardy crusader. Frederick replied to the anathema by
fulfilling his vow and sailing to Palestine, and the pope, who had
excommunicated the emperor for not going, excommunicated him afresh for going.
This expedition, though attended by the papal curse, was the only crusade except
the first that met with any success. The excommunicated crusader recovered for
Christendom the Holy City and much of the Holy Land, and alone of crusading
chiefs, since Godfrey of Bouillon, entered Jerusalem in triumph. These
advantages over the Moslem sorely wounded and bitterly incensed the sovereign
pontiff, who invaded and ravaged the territories of the absent and victorious
champion of the cross, and wrung money from almost every nation in Christendom
to carry on this enormous warfare. These unnatural hostilities shortened
Frederick's stay in Syria, and brought him home (1229) to the defence of his
dominions against the pontifical invader, whom his vigorous preparations for war
and his importunate demands for peace forced and shamed into a treaty. But
Gregory, though apparently appeased, was in reality implacable. The emperor and
the republics of Lombardy, with Milan at their head, fell out. The pope, who
undertook to bring about a reconciliation, did everything in his power to
encourage the confederates and embarrass the Caesar ; and at length (in 1239)
openly declared against Frederick, excommunicated and deposed him. Again
imperial power was encountered by Italian patriotism in alliance with the
papacy." (114) "It was the Church, J. Evola wrote, that `blessed' the betrayal
of the fides by siding with the Italian communes and lending her moral and
material support to their revolt against the empire." (115)
"The age recognised as valid this dethronement of its most high-placed
personage; and the first monarch of the Christian world was in truth its
outcast. But Frederick did not forsake himself. He would fain have appeased the
pope and conciliated the age ; but finding both irreconcilable, he resisted and
defied them to the uttermost. He smote the papal league with the scimitar of his
Saracen vassals ; he arrested and imprisoned prelates on their way to the
council of Lyons. At the tidings that the synod had uncrowned him, he recrowned
himself with his own hand. He fought at greater disadvantage and with no greater
success than his ancestors, but he underwent no personal humiliation; he never
humbled himself before the papal foe, like Henry IV. at Canossa, and Frederick
I. at Venice ; to the last he strove stoutly and smote strongly. Frederick died
in 1250, while the fight was raging, a richly endowed, fiercely hated, much
erring and much enduring man. The splendour of his gifts and the greatness of
his fortune were only equalled by the sharpness of his trials and sorrows, while
the bitterness of his foes far exceeded the grievous ness of his sins. The
nurseling and ward of the papacy, he came in for its deadliest hatred - a hatred
such as it has borne to no other individual except perhaps his son Manfred. The
most high-placed and illustrious person of his time was in sore conflict with it
; the chief sovereign of Christendom passed for a heretic or an unbeliever. The
Roman Church made him a bed of thorns in this life and doomed him to a couch of
fire in the life to come. His own and the succeeding generation acquiesced in
the doom. But more distant ages have been more just and generous. The
extravagant hatred and unbounded slander of his papal foes have won him favour
with posterity; and history, while finding much to condemn, finds still more to
admire and compassionate in the emperor Frederick II."