DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

THE PAPAL
MONARCHY

THE STORY OF THE NATIONS

Borne. By Arthur Gilman, M.A.
The Jews. By Prof. J. K. Hosmer
Germany. By Rev. S. Baring
Gould, M.A.
Carthage. By Prof.
Church.
Alexander's Empire.
J. P. Mahaffy.
The Moors in Spain.
Lane-Poole.

Alfred J.
By Prof.
By Stanley
By Prof. George

Prof. Arminius
By Arthur Gil-
Hon. Emily

17.18.
19.
20.

23-
24-25-26.
27-
2N. 29. 30.
31-

Ancient Egypt,
Rawlinson.
Hungary. By
Vambery.
The Saracens.
MAN, M.A.
Ireland. By the
Lawless.
Chaldea. By Zenaide A. Ragozin.
The Goths. By Henry Bradley.
Assyria. By Zenatdk A. Kagozin.
Turkey. By Stanley Lane-Pogle.
Holland. By Prof. J. JE. THOROLD
Rooms.
Mediaeval France. By Gustave
Masson.
Persia. By S. G. W. Benjamin.
Phoenicia. By Prof. G. Rawlin-on.
Media. By Zenaide A. Raoozi.v.
The Hansa Towns. By Helen
ZlMMERN.
Early Britain. By Prof. Alfred
J. Chukcit.
The Barbary Corsairs. By Stanley
Lank-Pool*:.
BussK. By \v. R. Morfill, MA
The Jews under the Romans. By
\y. 1). Morrison.
Scotland. By John Mackintosh,
LL D.
Switzerland, By Mrs. Lina Hug
and R. Stead.
Mexico. By Susan Hale.
Portugal. By H. Morse Stephens.
The Hermans. By Sarah Orme
Jl'.WhTT.
The Byzantine Empire. By C. W.
C. Oman.
Sicily : Phoenician, Greek and
Eoman. By the Prof. E. A.
Fuf.eman.
The Tuscan Republics. By Bella
DC'FFY.
Poland. By W. R. Morfill. M.A.
Parthia. By Prof. George RAW
LINSON.
The Australian Commonwealth. By
GRI'.VILLE Tkeuarthen.

36. Spain. By H. E. Watts.
37- Japan. By David Murray, Ph.D.
38. South Africa. By George M.
Theal.
39. Venice. By Alethea Wiel.
40. The Crusades, By T. A. Archer
and C. L. Kingsford.
41. Vedic India. By Z. A. Ragozjn.
42. The West Indies and the Spanish
Main. By James Rodway.
43. Bohemia. By c. Edmund
Mauricic.
44. The Balkans. By W. Miller, M.A.
45. Canada. By Sir T. G. Bourinot,
LL.D.
46. British India, By R. W. Frazer,
LL.B.
47. Modern France. ByANDRF LeBon.
48. 1 ho Franks, By Lewis Sergeant.
49. Austria. By Sidney Whitman.
50. Modern England. Before the Re
form Bill. By Justin McCarthy.
Si. China, By Prof. R. K. DOUGLAS.
52. Modern England. From the Reform
Bill to the Present Time. By
Justin McCarthy.
53- Modern Spain. By Martin A. S.
Hume
54. Modern Italy, By Pietro Orsi.
55. Norway. By H. H. BOYESEN.
56. Wales. By O. M, EDWARDS.
57. Mediaeval Rome. By W. MILLER,
M.A.
58. The Papal Monarchy. By William
Barry, D.D.
59. Mediseval India under Mohamme
dan Rule. By Stanley Lane-
Poole.
60. Buddhist India. By Prof. T. W.
Rhys-Davids.
61. Parliamentary England, By Ed
ward JENKS, M.A.
62. Mediaeval England. By Mary
Bateson.
63. The Coming of Parliament. By L
Cecil Jane.
64. The Story of Greece. From the
Earliest Times to A.D. 14. By
E. S. Shuckburgh.
65. The Story of the Boman Empire.
(B.C. 29 to A.D. 476.) By H.
Stuart Jones.
66. Denmark and Sweden, with Ice
land and Finland. By Jon
Stefansson, Ph.D.
67. Belgium. From the Roman Inva
sion to the Present Day. By
Emile Cammaerts.

London : T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD., 1 Adelphi Terrace

ST. PETER IN CATHEDRA.
(Ancient bronze figure in the Vatican Basilica, uncertain date.)

THE PAPAL
MONARCHY
FROM ST. GREGORY THE GREAT
TO BONIFACE VIII . (590—1303)

WILLIAM BARRY, D.D.

' Roman, forget not thou to sway the world ;
These be thy arts ; — bring in. the reign of Peace ;
Spare subject nations; put the haughty down."
Mnid, vi. 851-4

T. FISHER UNWIN LTD
LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE

First Edition . , .1002
Second Edition. . t 1906
'Iliird Edition . . . 1922

Copyright by T. Fisher Unwin, 1902
(For Great Britain)
Copyright by G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1902
(For the United States of America)

PREFACE

In the first two chapters of this book I have
endeavoured to explain its drift and purpose. As
a contribution to the Story of the Nations it aims at
brevity, clearness, and accuracy in outline ; but it
makes no pretension to do more than open a large
subject and serve the purpose of a sketch-map or
general introduction to the volumes of Baronius,
Muratori, and other classic historians. The course
followed, it will be seen, is neither that of a
theologian writing on dogma, nor that of an apolo
gist who desires to exhibit conclusions in favour of
a religious system. I am concerned with the facts
of history, not with inferences and deductions from
them, which belong to another department and are
foreign to the present series. Not the Pope as a
teacher, but the Pope as a ruler of men, in affairs
which may be viewed under a secular as well as a
religious aspect, will furnish the matter of my volume.
To attempt a bibliography commensurate with the

X PREFACE
subject would be no less difficult than superfluous, on
occasion of a sketch like the following. Students will
know what sources to consult better than I can tell
them. But the general reader may be put in mind
of some late or early works, accessible to him without
much effort. Milman's " Latin Christianity" has long
enjoyed popular favour ; it is in some sort a
comment upon Gibbon, to be supplemented or
corrected by more recent publications. Gregorovius,
in his voluminous " History of the City of Rome
during the Middle Ages," is learned, eloquent,
picturesque, and Ghibelline. Cardinal Hergen-
rother has given us the Guelf counter-pleading with
equal erudition and hardly less vehemence in his
" Catholic Church and Christian State," — a work of
accurate scholarship, abundant in original citations.
The late Professor of Church History at Kiel, Dr.
William Moeller, a Lutheran, has dealt with the
Church in the Middle Ages at great length in the
second volume of his well-known course, which
contains an exhaustive and minute catalogue of the
sources in every language. And Professor H. Grisar,
S.J., has begun to publish a most interesting as well as
authentic survey of the same period, historical and
antiquarian, which it is hoped will appear in English ;
but only the introduction, coming down to Gregory
the Great, is thus far in print.
To these must be added, as indispensable to
students, Mgr. L. Duchesne's standard edition of
the " Liber Pontificali.s." And Hauck's " History of
the Church in Germany," which travels over the
same ground but in another direction, may be

PREFACE Xi
compared with the French author's "Origin of the
Temporal Power." These works are not translated.
On special subjects and particular persons the
following will be found useful : Lightfoot, " St.
Clement of Rome," and " St. Ignatius of Antioch " ;
the volumes of Harnack's " History of Dogma "
which bear on the Roman Church at its beginning ;
Newman, " Development of Christian Doctrine " ;
Allies, " Formation of Christendom " ; Bryce, " The
Holy Roman Empire '' ; Hergerirother, " Photius " ;
Yoigt and Bowden on Pope Gregory VII.; Cotter
Morrison, " St. Bernard of Clairvaux " ; Hurter,
" Innocent III."; L. Tocco (in Italian), "Heresy in the
Middle Age " ; P. Sabatier, " St. Francis of Assisi,"
and other works ; E. A. Abbott, " St. Thomas of
Canterbury, his Death and Miracles " ; Professor
Maitland, " Roman Canon Law in the English
Church" ; Montalembert, " Monks of the West," with
introduction by Abbot F. A. Gasquet ; W. S. Lilly,
" Chapters in European History " ; L. Eckenstein,
" Women under Monasticism " ; Gosselin, " Power of
the Popes in the Middle Ages " ; Tosti, " Boniface
VIII. and His Times"; Rodocanachi, "Communal
Institutions of Rome under the Papacy " ; and
"Workmen's Corporations from the Fall of the
Empire"; H. K. Mann, "History of the Popes
during the Middle Ages."
There is no end to this or any other list of
authorities. Let me remark that I have, in my narra
tive, touched as briefly as possible on the relations
of England with Rome during the medieval period,
feeling that they were treated at length in many

Xll PREFACE
text-books. I conclude with the words which Pope
Leo XIII. has quoted from Cicero: "Above all
things let writers bear in mind that the first law of
history is never to dare to say that which is not true ;
and the second never to fear to say that which is
true ; lest the suspicion of hate or favour fall upon
their statements." WILLIAM BARRY.
Dorchester, Oxford,
November 9, 1901.

CONTENTS

I.
PAGE
Origins (b.c 753-A.D. 67)  1-20
Alaric in Rome— St. Augustine's " City of God "—The
Papal Monarchy in space — In time — Mohammedans ruin
Eastern Churches, threaten the West, and take St. Peter's —
Romans, Christians, Teutons, during Middle Age — Their
disputes end in the Reformation — Conversion of the Em
pire not a destruction of its forms — Pontifex Maximus in
Paganism, his privileges and duties — Romans eminently
religious — First Christians in the City — Succession of Roman
Bishops . . . II.
From St. Peter to Leo the Great (67-461). 21-46
Spiritual and legal dominion of Rome — Influence of its
Law on Christian language — Attitude of Popes towards
Greek speculations — East and West divided — Legend of
Constantine's Donation — Oriental Bishops and Papacy-
Latin Fathers exalt it — Empire organised as Church — Roman
Patriarchate — Byzantine prelates Erastian : Pope Damasus
Ultramontane — Wranglings and ruin of Antioch and
Alexandria — Innocent I. — Fall of Paganism — Leo I. at
Chalcedon — Against Manichees — Takes appeals from Gaul
— Genseric in Rome — Western Empire falls — Pope and
Bishops save what is left of civilisation.

xiv CONTENTS III. PAGE
Gregory the Great, Monasticism, and St.
Benedict (461-590-604) .... 47_6z
Justinian and his successors — Gregory's descent, virtues,
administration —He feeds and defends Rome — Makes peace
with Agilulf— His relations with John the Faster, Maurice,
and Phocas — Jurisdiction over Bishops — Mission to England
— Clovis baptized, eldest son of the Church — What the
Franks were to achieve — Arians despise the monk and
are vanquished by him — Spanish revolutions ; Hermenegild
martyr — Frankish and Roman influence in Britain — The
four triumphs of Monasticism — St. Benedict — His life at
Subiaco and Cassino — His Rule, " To labour is to pray " —
Monks of the West— Gregory dies.
IV.
Iconoclast Emperors and Lombard Kings (604-
739)  ' • 64-72
Feeble Popes, faineant Merovings — New powers in Italy —
Honorius I., Martin I. — Constans II. plunders Rome —
Low state of learning — War against images wakens Italian
freedom — Moors conquer Spain, are defeated by Martel —
His battles, alliance with St. Boniface, tyranny at home
— Ravenna throws off Iconoclast yoke — Gregory II.
restores Exarch — Romans, Lombards, Pope in league
together — Temporal sovereignty begins — Liutprand spoils
St. Peter's — Gregory HI. sends its keys to Martel and
makes him Roman Patrician.
n The Donation of Pepin (739-772) . . . 73-88
Was the Pope to be subject or sovereign ? — The Roman
"army "-and "venerable clergy" — Chances of Lombard
rule on the Palatine — Rejected as barbarian — Romans call
in Franks to defend Holy See — Zachary Pope — Invasions,
repentance, death of Liutprand — Rachis retires to Cassino —
St. Boniface founds German Church — His legatine powers —

CONTENTS XV

PAGE

He crowns Pepin by Zachary's command — Constantine V. ,
iconoclast — Astolf takes Ravenna — Stephen II. journeys
to Pavia, crosses the Alps, arrives at French Court — Pepin
invades Lombardy — Astolf yields and rebels — Second ex
pedition of Pepin — Lombards surrender — Pepin's Dona
tion — Desiderius — Fearful story of Duke Toto — Pope
Constantine II. and Christopher — Stephen III. invokes
Lombard help — Paul Afiarta — Shame and .death of
Stephen.

VI.
Charlemagne, Patrician of Rome (772-800) . 89-99
Hadrian I. reigns 23 years — Charles sets aside Carloman's
children — Taken to Pavia — Last efforts of Lombards —
Afiarta's end — French in Italy — Charles, pilgrim to the
Apostles, his meeting with Hadrian — Alleged grants of
Pepin — His own gifts — Ravenna's pretensions — The Pope's
court, officials, and nephews — New order but old names —
Opposition between Palatine and Lateran — Clergy dislike
the Pontiff — Bounds of Roman Duchy — Charles Patrician —
Hadrian's death — Leo elected same day.

VII.
The Holy Roman Empire (800-814) . . 100-113
Ominous incidents— -Hadrian's nephews attempt to murder
Leo III. — His escape ; is summoned to Paderborn, comes
back to Rome, purges himself on oath — Charles crowned
Christmas, 800 — Birthday of Holy Roman Empire — No
Concordat as to rights or bounds — Its necessity and
advantages — Parliament of nations ; crusades against
Islam — Legend and character of Charlemagne — His combats
with the Saxons — -Their forcible conversion — Feudal system
in Church and State — Defeat of the Huns — Emperor's
court, schools, capitularies — He fails to create a strong civil
order — The Norsemen arrive.

XVI CONTENTS
VIII. PAGE
Chaos Come Again (814-867) .... 114-129
Louis of Aquitaine, le Debonnaire, succeeds to the Empire —
His virtues and incapacity — Last years of Leo III. — Bernard
of Italy revolts, is defeated and blinded — Remorse of Le
Debonnaire — Lothair's rebellion — He intervenes at Rome —
His diploma gives laity share in Papal election — Gregory
IV. on the " Field of Lies " — Louis deposed, humbled,
restored — Treaty of Verdun divides France and Germany —
Lothair Emperor — Saracens lay waste St. Peter's — Leonine
City built — Louis II. paramount — Anastasius the Librarian —
Election of Nicholas I., called the Great — Three crises in his
reign, Photius, Theutberga, False Decretals — Nicholas
subdues Ravenna — Lothair of Lorraine repudiates his wife :
Caesar Bardas does the same — Irregular and usurped honours
of the learned Photius — Nicholas excommunicates him—
Photius retorts with a schism — His legacy to scholars ; more
dangerous one to the Greeks — Christendom divided —
Splendour of Islam, which also rent by factions — Peril of
Europe.

IX.
Feudal Hierarchy — False Decretals (847-
882)  130-14$
Troubles in Gallican Church — Nicholas compels Lothair».to
take back his queen and deposes French Bishops — Their
great insolence — Kings their servants — Hincmar's address to
Louis III. — Forgeries — The False Isidore — He is not a
Roman ; perhaps Benedict Levita, under Otgar of Mayence
in 847 — Immunity from trial of Bishops ; the Pope supreme
appellant judge — Earlier instances of appeal to Rome —
Sources from which new legislation compiled — Its authority
and detection — Hadrian II.'s domestic tragedy — Lothair's
pilgrimage and death — Charles the Bald seizes Lorraine — -
Protest of Hadrian, who supports Carloman and quarrels
With Hincmar — John VIII. crowns Charles Emperor-
Is himself murdered, after fruitless energy — Universal dis
order.

CONTENTS XVli
X. PAGE
House of Theophylact (882-964) . . 144-162
Eclipse of Empire and Papacy — Conversion of the North —
Guy of Spoleto — Formosus in Bulgaria — Reduced to lay
Communion — Restored by Marinus II. — Elected Pope,
crowns Arnulf, dies — Stephen VI. tries and condemns dead
Formosus in Lateran Council — Himself strangled — Two
Pontiffs, Sergius III., John IX. — Ordinations of Formosus
confirmed — Theophylact, Duke and Senator — His wife
Theodora and her daughters govern Rome — Sergius III.
brought back by her — More scandals — John X. from Ravenna
drives out Saracens — Hugh of Provence : his marriage
with Marozia — The Romans rebel — Alberic Senator —
Adelaide summons Otho from Germany — Greek alliance of
Alberic — His son, John XII., boy-Pope, crowns Otho, and
is deposed by him — Leo VIII. and Benedict V.
XI.
Romance of the Othos (964-1003) . . 163-178
"Privilege of Otho" — He becomes "Grand Elector" to
Papacy — His cruelties in Rome — Gives back some of St.
Peter's Patrimony — His wide dominion — Descent from
Henry Fowler — His battles, laws, beneficences to clergy —
Tenth-centujy Charlemagne — Crescenzio murders Benedict
VI. — Otho II. defeated by Saracens — Dies in Rome — His
Empress a Greek — Franco kills John XIV. and becomes
Benedict VII. — Youth and ideals of Otho III. — 'Crowned
at Pavia — Makes his cousin Bruno Pope Gregory V. — Trial
and pardon of Crescenzio II. — First appearance of Medieval
Tribune — Philagathus, Antipope — His fearful doom — Cres
cenzio taken in St. Angelo and executed — Story of Otho
and Stefania — Hopes of a better age — Gerbert's fortunes
and elevation — Otho assailed in his palace — His penance and
pilgrimings — His death — Followed by Gerbert.
XII.
Tusculan Succession — Papacy, Bought and Sold
(1003-1048)  180-189
New branch of Theophylact — Tusculum — Popes of that
ia

XV111 CONTENTS
PAGE
House— Emperor Henry II. recognises Benedict VIII., who
wars with Islam— Saints on the throne— Benevento given to
Holy See— Moral decadence of clerics— Another boy-Pope,
Benedict IX., Theodora's brood— Silvester Antipope—
Benedict sells the tiara to Gratian, or Gregory VI.— Henry
II. at Sutri deposes all three — Bruno of Toul appointed ;
known as St. Leo IX. — End of the dynasty of Theophylact
which had lasted 150 years. XIII.
Hildebrand (1048-1073) .... 190-205
Possible ways of escape from long degradation — Popedom
becomes Monastic and Benedictine — Monks had lapsed,
were reformed by Cluny — Its illustrious names — Hildebrand
on the Aventine — In exile with Gregory VI.— Returns with
Leo IX. — His resemblance to St. Paul — Programme, "Take
their wives from clergy, investitures from laity" — Leo IX.
travels over Europe — Penance of Godfrey of Lorraine — Pope
in Rheims Cathedral — At Presburg and Worms — His
military expeditions — Defeated at Civitella by Normans —
Dying moments — Hildebrand governs Church — Elects Victor
II., who is supreme also in Empire— Strange fortunes of
Stephen IX. — Roman troubles — Benedict X. and Nicholas
II. — Fresh rules exclude Emperor and laity from elections-^
Robert Guiscard, vassal of the Holy See — Alexander II.
opposed by Cadalus Antipope of Parma — War in Germany ~,
Henry IV. and his stormy youth — Hildebrand, elected by
popular voice, consents reluctantly.

XIV.
Henry IV. at Canossa (1073-1076) . . 206-227
Gregory VII.'s enterprise to free Church from feudalism — A
medieval Prophet, his raptures and sadness — Leader of a
growing movement — Discipline touching clerical celibacy
in East and West — Its desuetude — Peter Damiani, champion
of reform — Bishops and priests married — Instances —
Milan centre of struggle — Heribert — Guido and An- • 3
selm — People side with monks — Murder of Ariald and
Herlembald — Celibacy triumphs — Question of investitures

CONTENTS XIX
PAGE
more difficult — Papacy and Empire, strong or weak in same
points — Bishops take Henry IV. as their chief — His bad
bringing up, vices, repentances — Saxons revolt — Battle of
Hohenburg — German factions — Gregory abolishes investiture
— Forecast of later quarrels — Law of celibacy dead letter
north of the Alps — Cencio seizes and wounds the Pope —
Who summons Henry to Rome — Is himself called on by
Teutons to abdicate — Deposes the Emperor — Who loses
his friends and is disgraced at Tribur — He passes Mont
Cenis, appears at Canossa — His penance in the snow — Hard
conditions laid on him by Gregory — An event without
parallel. XV.
Normans, Crusades, Investitures (1076-
1123)  228-244
Revenge taken by Emperor — Siege of Rome ; Guibert and
Henry in St. Peter's — Robert Guiscard enters with his
Normans : massacre and conflagration — .Gregory retires to
Salerno, where he dies — Victor III., Abbot of Monte
Cassino — Urban II., French, author of First Crusade —
New grants to Papacy — Henry IV. conquers in part, is
deposed again at Piacenza — His son Conrad rebels — Council
of Clermont — Crusades make Pope Lord of the West — ¦
Emperor defeated and taken by Prince Henry — Dies at
Liege — New Emperor's feats in Italy — Paschal II. offers to
surrender regalia, i.e., to disendow Church — Furious dis
sensions ; Paschal a prisoner in St. Peter's and at Treviso
— He gives up everything — Indignation of Cardinals — His
decree rescinded — Misfortunes and death of Gelasius II. — ¦
French Pope, Calixtus II., makes peace — Concordat of
Worms : First General Council of Lateran.

XVI.
St. Bernard Overthrows Abelard and Arnold
(1123-1155)  246-262
King of the age, Bernard of Clairvaux — First symptoms of
modern ideas and institutions — The Cistercians — Bernard's

XX CONTENTS
preaching— Contested election in Rome : Bernard decides for
Innocent II.— Leads Second Council of Lateran— France
supreme at this period— Paris University — Anselm of Bee,
Lanfranc, William of Champeaux— Birthplace, character,
ambition, and catastrophe of Abelard — At St. Denis and the
Paraclete — St. Bernard accuses him at Sens — His con
demnation and last days — Arnold of Brescia, his disciple,
revives Roman Republic — Eugene III. — Second Crusade —
St. Bernard's renown — Hadrian IV. the English Pope-
Re makes terms with Barbarossa — Arnold hanged and
burnt — The Emperor's claim to universal dominion — First
chapter of dispute between Roman Law and Roman Pontiff.

XVII.
Frederick Redbeard and His Time (1155-
1177)  263-281
Ghibellines not heretics; Guelfs not saints — Barbarossa, a
German Hannibal — Guelfs uphold Italian freedom and are
partisans of the Pope — Hadrian IV. invests Normans with
South. Italy — Frederick at Besancon, at Roncaglia — Lom
bard League— Alexander III. — Octavian Antipope in Rome
— Alexander in France — Henry II. begins his quarrel with
Becket — Showy Chancellor : austere Archbishop — Consti
tutions of Clarendon — Thomas consents to them ; draws
back ; escapes to France — The Pope's hesitations ; venality
of Roman Court — Barbarossa tyrant in Rome — Plague
attacks his army ; shameful flight of Emperor — Interdict
published by Thomas — His return to .Canterbury — Martyr
dom and miracles — Henry II. offers England as fief to Holy
See — His last days and death— Frederick defeated at
Legnano — Reconciled with the Pope at Venice — Lombard
freedom. XVIII.
Enter Innocent III. and Frederick of Sicily
(1177-1214)  282-295
Third Lateran Council — Manichees and Apostolics 
Saladin conquers Jerusalem — Siege of Acre — Barbarossa
drowned in Asiatic stream — His legendary sleep — Marriage

CONTENTS XXI FAGS
of Henry VI. to Constance of Sicily — A man of blood and
iron — His frightful executions at Palermo — Frederick II.
born — Death of Henry ; election of Innocent III. — Great
reign begins — Takes Frederick under his protection ; sub
dues Central Italy — Philip and Otho candidates for Empire —
Long war, was it due to Innocent?— He sides with Otho,
then with Philip, then with Otho again — The latter cruel
and rapacious — Germans offer Frederick the crown — Inno
cent confirms it — Brilliant adventure of the young king —
Otho deposed, dies in monastery.

XIX.
Crusades against Greeks and Albigenses (1201-
1233)  296-310
Fulk of Neuilly — Fourth Crusade starts from Venice — Takes
Zara ; is condemned by Pope ; but seizes and plunders
Constantinople — Fatal Latin Empire — First example of
crusade against Christians — Followed by war of Albi —
Interests at stake — Languedoc, Manichean Judea — Ray-
mund VI. of Toulouse — Preaching Cistercians — Legate
murdered — Burgundy marches on Provence — Simon de
Montfort — Horrors of Beziers, &c. — Pedro of Arragon killed
at Muret — Total ruin of the Count and his people — Louis
VIII. renews crusade — Provence falls to French crown —
Retrospect and prospect from the garden of Gibbon at
Lausanne over these religious wars and their con
sequences. XX.
St. Francis — the Friars — -the Lateran Council
(1182-1215-1226) . . . . . 311-332
Italian tyrants — Luxury and leprosy — Francis of Assisi saves
the Church in Italy, adds a page to the New Testament —
Unique among Saints — Appeals to the Gospel and the people
— rPolicy towards him of Cardinal Ugolino — Moderates and
Spirituals — The Friars a Papal Militia — St. Dominic ; not
founder of Inquisition — What these new Orders accom-

XX-ll CONTENTS
plished— Their influence over middle class— Philip Augustus
and his marriages— Other bad cases— Innocent tolerates
King John's disorders— Stephen Langton — Crusade agajnst
John— He becomes the Pope's vassal— Magna Charta— How
dealt with in Rome — Fourth Council of Lateran — Medieval
legislation touching heretics and heresy — Contrast between
Innocent and Francis.

XXI.
Excommunication— Wars— Fate of Frederick II.
(1216-1250)  333-35°
Four acts of great drama beginning — Frederick takes the
cross, but delays expedition — Gregory IX. — Decretals and
Imperial Law — Under menace Frederick sets out, but returns
to Otranto — Is excommunicated— Arrives Acre, enters Jeru
salem — In Italy again, disperses Papal troops — Peace of
San Germano — The Emperor's sons — War with Lombards —
Imperial victories — Fresh excommunication — Popular dis
content with Gregory — Amazing works, perils, and anarchy
of this period — The Tartars — Gregory's end — Frederick
beats back the Scythian wave — Innocent IV. ; his character
¦ — He deposes the Hohenstauffen at Lyons — Misfortunes,
death, sepulchre of the last genuine Roman Emperor.

XXII.
Conradin Dies — The Sicilian Vespers (1250-
I299)  35I-374
Henceforth, Empire German, not Roman — Ghibellines put
down — Innocent's progress — Story of Manfred — The Pope
offers Sicily to Charles of Anjou and dies — Alexander IV. —
Industrial class against feudal lords — Urban IV., cobbler's
son — Charles of Anjou Roman Senator — Clement IV. —
Battle of Ceperano ; Manfred slain — French cruelties; — Ex
pedition, defeat, execution of Conradin — Gregory X.  ¦
Council of Lyons — Sicilian Vespers — Pedro of Arragon lands
at Trapani — Seventeen years' war — Papal suzerainty over the
South becomes mere name — Feudal system waning.

CONTENTS XX111

XXIII

PAGE

Roman Law

VERSUS

Roman

Pontiff

(1226-

1287)

375-39°
Steady growth of France — Blanche of Castile — St. Louis,
the Catholic Marcus Aurelius — His crusade in Egypt —
Henry III., the Charters, and English Parliaments — Award
of Louis — " Reign of Law " in thirteenth century — Frederick
II., Alfonso the Wise, St. Louis, Edward I. — Decay of Rome,
rise of Paris—Its University — The Schoolmen — William of
St. Amour — Friars lose their influence — St. Louis dies
at Tunis — Last Crusade — England and Russia destined to
subdue the world of Islam. XXIV.
Philip the Fair and Pope Boniface (1287-
1300) . . . . 39r-4°8
Transition to absolute kings and court lawyers — Philip shuts
out clerics from civil law and its functions — Pope Nicholas
IV. Franciscan — Conclaves and interregnum — Election of
Peter Morone, spiritual friar, from Abruzzi — Saintly ways
and innocence of Ccelestine V.- — He "makes the grand
refusal " — Is succeeded by Gaetani, after compact with
Charles of Naples — Boniface VIII. quarrels, with Guelfs,
friars, Romans, kings — Blasted by Dante's malediction — His'
real character — He keeps Ccelestine V. in prison — Adolphus
of Nassau and Albert of Austria — Edward I. lays heavy
tax on the Church — Confiscation of its property by lay
men — Philip the Fair and his " maltote " — He also plunders
clergy — Boniface issues the Bull "Clericis laicos" — Robert
of Winchelsea — Progress of quarrel between Pope and
France delayed by affair of the Colonnas — Its shameful
features — Arbitration — Scots appeal to Boniface.
XXV.
Dante's Vision — Anagni — End of the Middle
Age (1300-1303) .... 409-420
Jubilee of 1300 at which Dante is present — His Divine
Pilgrimage — Dispute with Edward and Philip resumed —
XXIV CONTENTS
PAGE
False tales — Real difficulties— Saisset of Pamiers — Letters
sent by Boniface, full of threats — " Ausculta, Fili" — States-
General in Notre Dame — Monstrous accusations against
the Pope— r-And in Assembly at Louvre — Philip compels .
all France to appeal to General Council — The reply is
the " Unam Sanctam " — King to be deposed September 8,
1303— -Nogaret and Sciarra enter Anagni day previous —
Assault on the Pope's palace — His " passion " of three days
— Rescued, dies in Rome, but not by violence — Dante's
verses — Charlemagne has given place to secular, antipapal
King and system.

Epilogue  421-428
Philip pursues the memory of Boniface — Mildness of Benedict
XL— Compact between King and Bertrand de Goth, who
becomes Clement V. — Council of Vienne — Papacy trans
ferred to Avignon — Medieval system ends with thirteenth
century— From Avignon to Constance, Basle, and Diet
of Worms—Benefits of Papal Monarchy far outweigh its
abuses — Rome, the meeting-place and centre of history
— The broken bridge of Avignon marks a turning-point-
Conclusion.

List of Roman Pontiffs ..... 429
Index of Names  43!

PAPAL MONARCHY

i
ORIGINS
(B.C. 753-a.d. 67)
In the night of the 24th of August, 410, Alaric,
King of the Western Goths, entered Rome with his
army, by the Salarian Gate — outside of which
Hannibal had encamped long ago — and took the
Imperial City. Eleven hundred and sixty-four years
had passed since its legendary foundation under
Romulus ; four hundred and forty-one since the
battle of Actium, which made Augustus Lord in
deed, if not in name, of the Roman world. When
the Gothic trump sounded at midnight, it announced
that ancient history had come to an end, and that
our modern time was born. St. Jerome, who in his
cell at Bethlehem saw the Capitol given over to fire
and flame, was justified from an historical point of
view when he wrote to the noble virgin Demetrias,
" Thy city, once the head of the universe, is the
sepulchre of the Roman people." Even in that age

ORIGINS

of immense and growing confusion, the nations held
their breath when these tidings broke upon them..
Adherents of the classic religion who still survived'
felt in them a judgment of the gods ; they charged
on Christians the long sequel of calamities which

HEAD OF THE REDEEMER.
(Fresco in Catacomb of San Callisto — Third Century.')
had come down upon the once invincible Empire,
Christians retorted that its fall was the chastisement
of idolatry. And their supreme philosopher, the
African Father St. Augustine, wrote his monumental'
work, "Of the City of God," by way of proving that

THE "CITY OF GOD" 3
there was a Divine kingdom which heathen Rome
could persecute in the martyrs, but the final triumph
of which it could never prevent. This magnificent
conception, wrought out in a vein of prophecy, and
with an eloquence which has not lost its power,
furnished to succeeding times an Apocalypse no less
than a justification of the Gospel. Instead of heathen
Rome, it set up an ideal Christendom. But the
centre, the meeting-place, of old and new, was the
City on the Seven Hills.
To the Roman Empire succeeded the Papal
Monarchy. The Pope called himself Pontifex Maxi
mus ; and if this hieratic name — the oldest in Europe
— ^signifies " the priest that offered sacrifice on the
Sublician bridge," it denotes, in a curious symbolic
fashion, what the Papacy was destined to achieve, as
well as the inward strength on which it relied, during
the thousand years that stretch between the invasion
of the Barbarians and the Renaissance. When w»c
speak of the Middle Ages we mean this second,
spiritual and Christian Rome, in conflict w'ith the
Northern tribes and then their teacher ; the mother
of civilisation, the source to Western peoples of
religion, law, and order, of learning, art, and civic
institutions. It became to them what Delphi had
been to the Greeks, and especially to the Dorians, an
oracle which decided the issues of peace and war,
which held them in a common brotherhood, and
which never ceased to be a rallying point amid their
fiercest dissensions. Thus it gave to the multitude
of tribes which wandered or settled down within the
boundaries of the West, from Lithuania to Ireland,

ORIGINS

from Illyria to Portugal, and from Sicily to the
North Cape, a brain, a conscience, and an imagina- '
tion, which at length transformed them into the
Christendom that Augustine had foreseen.
If the Papacy were blotted out from the world's
chronicle, the Middle Ages would vanish along with
it. But modern Europe cannot be deduced, as was
thought in the last century by writers like Voltaire
and Montesquieu, from Augustan Rome, with no
regard for the long transition which connects them
together. It is in this way that the medieval Popes
take their place in the Story of the Nations ; they
continue the Roman history ; they account in no
small degree for the institutions under which we are
living ; and their fortunes, so exalted, so unhappy,
and not seldom so tragical, shape themselves into a
drama, the scenes and vicissitudes of which are as
highly romantic as they are expressive of one great
ruling idea.
The stage on which this mighty miracle-play was
enacted, though spacious, was well defined. Our
direct concern will not be with any dogmatic or
strictly religious claims put forth by the Popes —
these belong to the theologian — but with the sove
reignty which they exercised, the nations affected by
their decretals, the Holy Roman Empire which their
word called into being, and the kingdoms which
gladly or reluctantly acknowledged in them a feudal
lordship. Thus their dominion never, if we except
passing interludes, went beyond the old Patriarchate
of the West, as recognised at the Council of Nicsea.
Not even the haughtiest Pontiffs pretended to make,

THE POPE A WESTERN 5
or unmake the Byzantine Emperors. They dealt
otherwise with the Frankish or Suabian chiefs, whom
they anointed, crowned, excommunicated, and de
posed at the tomb of the Apostles. But until
Gregory II. in 731 cast off his allegiance, they had
been subjects, not suzerains, of Constantinople.
With Latin Emperors they felt themselves able to
cope ; but the majesty of that earlier Rome lingered
yet on the shores of the Bosporus ; and the Papal
Monarchy vails its crest before it, unless when the
Franks have usurped a precarious and hateful power
in Byzance after the Fourth Crusade, or the Normans
and Venetians divide between them the strong places
of Attica and the Morea. Always the Pope is
Western, not Eastern, though he may become a slave
of the palace during the two hundred years which
follow on the conquest of Italy by Belisarius. Yet
even in that period of depression he was slowly
winning ground outside the Empire, and every tribe
made Christian was bringing a fresh stone to build
up the arch of the Papal power, fated for so long
to stride visibly across the kingdoms of Europe.
Had the Emperors of the East known how to
withstand the onset of those hordes which streamed
down over the Alps ; could they have overthrown or
subdued the Lombards, and so kept the Pepins and
Charlemagnes at home, it may be questioned whether
any Pope would have dreamt of playing the great
part in politics which was found inviting or inevitable
as time went on. But the old Empire shrank to the
Exarchate of Ravenna ; it could barely maintain
itself on the edge of the Ionian Sea. The Pontiff,

6 ORIGINS
looking round for help against the now converted;
but always detestable Longbeards of Pavia, signalled!
to the most daring of the new Christian nations.
Pepin answered his call ; overcame Astolphus ;
bestowed on St. Peter a patrimony in lands, serfs,
and cities ; and paved the way for his son's corona
tion in 800 as Emperor of the West. He certainly
did not foresee that the " Sacerdotium " and the
" Imperium " — those divided members which in
heathen Rome had been united in the same person — -
would struggle during the next seven hundred years
in a doubtful contest, until both sank exhausted and
the Reformation broke Christendom in twain. As
there is a unity of place, determined by the bounds
of the Lower Greek Empire, which includes this vast
and exceedingly human series of transactions, so
there is a unity of time, but as might be expected,
not marked by such definite limits. St. Gregory
the Great is its herald and anticipation ; Boniface
VIII. brings it to a, close. But as several centuries
take us slowly on to the culminating point, so the
fourteenth and fifteenth lead us downwards again
until the idea of an Imperial Papal Christendom has
spent its force. The Lateran Monarchy stood at its
height during some two hundred years — from
Gregory VII. to Innocent III., or perhaps to
Gregory X. (1073-1274). Its creative influence, if
we regard European civilisation as a whole, had
begun sooner and lasted longer ; it was often visible
at the extremities when Rome itself had sunk into a
strange barbarism. Its spiritual energy neither rose
nor fell in exact proportion to the outward splendour

MOHAMMED 7
of the Holy See, as many instances will prove in the
pages that follow.
But another condition of this second rise to great
ness on the part of Rome has been often overlooked.
If St. Peter was considered to be the spiritual

/ A

i SSTifP %

W(, /

/

HEADS OF SS. PETER AND PAUL.
(From a very Ancient Glass Patera.')

founder of the Papacy, and if the Emperor Constan
tine, by removing the seat of government to the
Golden Horn, had left it room in which to expand,
yet the marvellous apparition of Mohammed, and
the conquests of his lieutenants or successors, broke

8 ORIGINS
the power of the Christian East, and in so doing
allowed the West time to develop without hindrance
on its own lines. The Caliphate bears, indeed, more
than one point of resemblance, external at least, to
the dynasty of the Vicars of Christ established in
Rome. But it is the long series of invasions, strip
ping off province after province from the weak
Emperors of Byzantium, laying waste the churches
of Syria and Egypt, reducing the Patriarchates of
Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem to barren names,
and thus abolishing the older forms of the Christian
polity, which we have now in view. Straightway,
the fame and consequence of the one remaining
Patriarch who dated from Apostolic times must have
been indefinitely enhanced. The Pope became, as a
great Catholic genius has written, " heir by default "
of antiquity. Those Sees, and, above all, the. See of
Alexandria, which had shared with him in political
prestige, and could never be denied a voice when
there was question of dogma or discipline, had passed
for ever beneath the Moslem yoke. And the Bishop
of Constantinople was but the Emperor's chaplain,
incapable of pursuing a course for himself — the
nominee, the puppet, and sometimes the prisoner of
one who claimed in his own person to be most sacred,
a Divine delegate, and a god on earth. In Rome
the Bishop had no rival or second. He tended more
and more to become what Caesar had been of old,
the embodied city, with all its mysterious charm, its
predestination to supreme command, its unique and
indelible character as a shrine or temple of deity.
From the seventh century onwards, Rome appeared

PAPACY AGAINST ISLAM 9
in men's eyes to be the Apostolic See par excellence.
So much, unwittingly, had the Arabian prophet or
impostor brought to pass when his armed disciples
overran the many thousand bishoprics of Asia and
Africa. An hour there was when Islam appeared likely to
conquer not only the Spanish but the Frankish
Catholics. Mussulman armies crossed the Pyrenees ;
they came north as far as Tours ; but Charles Martel
in a bloody battle drove them south again. Yet
could not the unhappy and degenerate Popes of the
ninth or tenth century do much to repel their incur
sions. Under Leo IV. (in 855) they came up to the
walls of Rome and sacked St. Peter's — an amazing
feat, of which the Leonine City is to this day a
monument and witness. But no sooner did the
Holy See recover from its low estate than Gregory
VII. set his undaunted mind to inaugurate against
them a Sacred War — for Hildebrand, as he is the
restorer of the Medieval Papacy, is likewise the
author of the First Crusade. It was now Pope
against Caliph during nearly two hundred years.
Yet the conquest of the Holy Land, soon won and
in a short episode lost, was by no means the chief
gain to Rome of these world-famous expeditions.
From them we date the extensive and permanent
taxing-powers, enforced all over Christendom, which
the Sovereign Pontiffs insisted upon as their rights,
the Pope being, so to speak, generalissimo of the
armies of the Cross. This war-tribute, levied on
such a preamble, but constantly applied to purposes
of another, and sometimes an indefensible kind, while

10 ORIGINS
it enriched the Holy See, gave rise to murmurings^
and at last to rebellions which, like that under John
Wyclif, assailed the Papacy itself. It is not untrue
to assert that from the Crusades, which in their
beginnings heightened so greatly the Roman power,
sprang the first attempts at a Reformation.
We can now define, almost in a phrase, the
splendid but simple theme which we have under
taken. Let us state it. How, we inquire, did the
Pontifex Maximus, heir of old Rome and now its
Christian Bishop, deal with the peoples which
invaded and occupied the Western Empire ? And
how did they deal with him ? Broadly speaking, we
find ourselves in presence of three great world-facts
or forces — the Roman, the Christian, the Teutonic.
From these three modern civilisation is derived.
Their contest fills the Middle Ages ; their reconcile
ment in a purified Church and a Catholic Empire
was the dream of Dante ; but the poet's own time
marks the epoch when Teutons, despairing of Romd
as they saw it, turned back to their national
aspirations, and when the North was already begins"
ning to be rent from the South, as the Ten Tribes.
from the Kingdom of Judah. This parallel, which is
no less exact than profound, might be carried out
into most significant details. It will help us to
understand the rise, the decline, and the everlasting
attitude towards the German races of a spiritual
power which was clad in forms coming down to it
from a period long antecedent to Christianity, and
from nations like the Etruscan or the Greek no less
than the Hebrew.

ROMAN EMPIRE TRANSFORMED II
Until of late years, the immeasurable event known
as the " Conversion of the Roman Empire " has been
much misunderstood. We ought rather to call it
a transformation ; elements and institutions already
existing were brought under the influence of a few
far-reaching ideals, and of a Personality recognised
as the Divine Incarnation of these. The old Roman
life was not broken up and made over again. While
Christians refused to be idolaters, they did not, as so
many historians, including Gibbon, have taken for
granted, decline to share in the public or private
dignities, or to tolerate a multitude of harmless
customs, which they found in use. Vehement pole
mical writers, like the fiery Tertullian, exaggerate a
nonconformity which at all times must have been
tempered by concessions to the circumstances of
every day ; while the remains we still possess, from
at least the third century, prove that we may not
charge upon converted Romans a disdain for the arts,
the usages, or the business to which, as subjects of
the Empire or citizens of the Capital, they had been
accustomed. Their theological system underwent a
change ; their religion, in the deepest sense of the
word, was baptized into a new life ; but they took
over (and how could it be otherwise ?) the language,
the ritual, the yearly observances, the festal adorn
ments, and even the artistic symbols, to which they
had been brought up. Whatever Puritan dislike to
paintings and feastings of the Roman pattern had
been nurtured in the Jewish Ghetto on the Janiculum,
Christians in no long time must have laid it aside.
Not many of them in the third century were Israelite

1 2 ORIGINS
even by descent. And Tertullian himself, who stands
for the less accommodating principles, is our witness
that the Bishop of Rome (probably Zephyrinus. about
216) was not unwilling to be known as '' Episcopus
Episcoporum " and " Pontifex Maximus."
The Roman would be a Christian ; but he would
not improvise either language or ritual when he found
them ready to his hand. What he did was to cleanse
them of their idolatrous associations, to combine them
more or less skilfully with the teachings of the New
Testament and the personages and stories of the Old,
until a Catholic Hierarchy and a Christian Liturgy
rose into sight, sustaining each other in a majestic
and almost overpowering adaptation of outward to
inward, of spirit to symbol, and of authority to
doctrine. This was no sudden creation, but a slow
and imperceptible growth of time, extending over
five or six hundred years, so complete at length that
as in Pope Leo I. we may contemplate the Romulus, "
so in Gregory the Great we discern the not unkingly
Numa, of a city more sacred than the antique Rome,
yet hardly less imperial. Almost every step of this
transiauting process can be followed when we pass
out from the less lightsome centuries of the Christian
origins. The Church in the West was to develop
under the style of the Pontifex Maximus, in accord
ance with old Roman sacred rites, and by the strength
of the Roman Law. St. Peter was to inherit all that 1
Numa could bequeath, and to hand it down along the
line of his successors.
This word " Pontifex " — meaning the sacrificer on
the bridge — was associated from very early times :

THE PONTIFEX MAXIMUS 1 3
with ceremonies in honour or deprecation of the
dead, whom the Romans called Lemures. The feast
of the Lemuralia was kept on the Sublician Bridge,
which spanned the Tiber between Aventine and
Janicultfm, during the 9th, nth, and 13th of May.
Customary rites were performed, after which "the
pontifices, vestals, praetors, and other citizens," accord
ing to the Greek writer, Dionysius, cast into the
stream thirty figures, named " Argei," or " Argive
men," made of bulrushes and in the human shape.
There can be little doubt that these " priscorum
simulacra virorum " were a substitute for live men
once offered to propitiate the ghosts of the departed ;
as the legend says, they were invented by Hercules
when he did away with human sacrifices formerly
made at that spot in honour of Saturn. But a custom
with which these Lemuralia seem to bear affinities
— of " driving out " or " casting out " Death, at the
beginning of summer — has been traced in nearly
every part of Europe. Here, then, is the most
ancient ritual in which the Pontifex Maximus comes
before our view.
Numa, the mythical priest-king of Rome, is said
by Livy to have appointed a college of four pontiffs,
at the head of which was the Pontifex Maximus. In
81 B.C. the number was raised to fifteen; and Julius
Caesar, who was himself the Sovereign Pontiff, added
to it another when he returned from Egypt. Under
Augustus, and down to the fall of Paganism, the
Emperor always held the title ; he was Pope as well
as Consul and Imperator. He continued to hold it
for some time afterwards ; and not only Constantine

14 ORIGINS
but his more Christian successors, Valentinian I. andt
Gratian, are mentioned under this name on inscrip
tions now extant. . Theodosius, however, gave up ajlj
pretence to be the High Priest of a heathen worship.;
and the title passed to the Bishops of Rome, for whosej
office it must have long seemed a fitting designationjj
We learn from Festus, a Latin v/riter before 400,;!
that the old Roman pontiffs were looked, upon ; asp
" rerum quae ad sacra et religiones pertinent, judices,
et vindices " ; they judged and defended the interests'*
of religion at large. They ranked above all other-
priests, and regulated the general worship of the
gods. To them, it was said, Numa . had entrusted;!
the sacred " libri pontificales," in which were set down'|
the lawful rites of sacrifice, dedication, and augur-
ship, with their unchanging formulas. They were to
guard against the decay of worship and the bringing
in of strange gods and mysteries, such as those of
Bacchus, Isis, and Serapis, which caused so much 1
trouble at various times in Rome. Another, and, as
we have seen, a very primitive department of their
duties was concerned with the dead — how funerals
were to be carried out; by what expiations the
Manes, or the souls of the departed were to be given]
rest. They interpreted the heavenly signs of thunder
and lightning. The times of the .festivals were in
their keeping, and they regulated the Calendall
Julius Csesar, in his capacity as Pontifex Maximal^
reformed it in 46 B.C. And Pope Gregory XIII.,
under the same title, reformed it again by his Bull ;
of February 24, 1582.
Since the Pontiffs were not subject to any court of

CONFESSION OR TOMB OF ST. PETER IN THE VATICAN BASILICA.

1 6 ORIGINS
law, neither to the Senate nor the People, we may
accurately describe them as exempt from secular;;
jurisdiction. But they had their own courts, to which
not only priests but other individuals and even magis
trates were bound to submit, in all that related to
religion. Over the Vestal virgins they had and
exercised criminal jurisdiction. Where existing
laws did not suffice to determine the matter, they
made fresh rules which were called " Decrees of the
Pontiffs." The Supreme Pontiff was present at the
most solemn kind of marriage, known as confar-
reatio. He lived in a house which had the sanctity
of a temple, on the Via Sacra, not far from that of
the Vestals, until the Imperial palace became his
home. He received the solemn vows of games and
other dedications, whether by the State or private
persons ; and it is to be presumed that he used some
discernment in allowing them ; he had most probably
a dispensing power. Like all pontiffs, he wore the
toga prcetextata and a conical cap, called the galerus
(which is a name now appropriated to the Cardinal's
hat) with a wooden apex fastened to it. He could
not, in Republican times, leave Italy. Last of all,
the duty was incumbent on him of appointing the
six Vestals and the Flamens, or particular priests, of
Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus, and other gods.
It was the boast of Cicero, and Virgil's almost
hieratic poem of the iEneid bears him out, that the
Romans were a deeply religious people. This does
not signify that they cultivated a speculative theology,
or that their morals were austere and their lives
devoted to well-doing ; but that they observed a

ST. PETER IN ROME I J
ritual which left untouched no act of their public or
private existence. The gods had no concern with
virtue ; that was a man's own acquisition ; but they
watched over birth, marriage, death ; over war and
peace ; over agriculture and commerce ; they conse
crated oaths and treaties, and avenged their violation ;
they were pledged to the prosperity of the State.
Before every public undertaking they must be con
sulted. Certain sacred relics, the nature of which
could only be guessed at, were tokens of their amity
preserved by the Vestals in a secret shrine, before
which burned the " everlasting fire." Rome, as it
extended its conquests, brought home the vanquished
deities ; it became " the temple and the shrine of all
gods," but above them towered on his hill Jupiter
Capitolinus, and the polytheism of the nations was
rapidly merging into a Divine Monarchy, of which
Caesar appeared to be the visible image, the Vicar on
Earth, when Christians began to preach their glad
tidings in the Jewish Ghetto, over against the Porta
Portese, and in the region still known as " across the
Tiber." At what exact period this came to pass we have
no means of ascertaining. Was it within ten or
twelve years from the death of Christ, or something \
later ? An early tradition associates it with St. :
Peter's arrival in Rome and the year 42 A.D., which
Eusebius takes for the starting-point of his bishopric ;
or, to quote the stronger Latin of St. Jerome, at
that date " Peter is sent to Rome,, where, preaching
the Gospel twenty-five years, he remains Bishop of
the same city." But on what primitive testimony
3

1 8 Origins
this length of years was stated, it is impossible to
conjecture. In 58 A.D. St. Paul wrote his Epistle to
the Romans, when a Church already existed, some
members of which belonged to Csesar's household.
Three years later he was living at Rome in his own
hired house, preaching to those who came about him.
The severest critics are willing to allow a journey of
St. Peter to the Capital in 64, when he dated his First
Epistle from. Babylon, that is to say, from heathen,
persecuting Rome, as the Sibylline books of Jewish
origin had long ago named it. To the martyrdom.
of Peter and Paul under Nero there is abundant
witness, beginning with Clement (95 or 96), who
speaks of the " good Apostles " (which implies that
he knew them personally), and dwells on their suffer
ings. No explanation of the reference in St. John's
Gospel to Peter's death has ever been suggested, save
that he was crucified in his old age, and, as tradition
affirms, close to the spot where his tomb in the early
third century could be pointed out by Gaius the
Presbyter, who writes (about 220), " I can show thee
the trophies [or relics] of the Apostles. For if thou
wilt go to the Vatican or the Ostian Way, thou wilt
find the trophies of those who founded this Church."
And among his disciples in Rome Peter had " Marcus ]
my son," his interpreter — whom he sent by and by to
Alexandria — as likewise Silvar.us. Paul, we know
for certain, had about him when there Timothy, Titus,
Luke, Apollos. If a doubtful story could be accepted||
which Tertullian relates concerning the Apostle j
John — he was said to have undergone a trial at Rome
in the reign of Domitian — this Church would have"!

SUCCESSION OF THE POPES 1 9
beheld the chiefest of Christ's followers, and the
writers of three out of the four Gospels.
During the second century, Ignatius of Antioch,
who was martyred between 100 and 118 A.D. ; Papias
about 130; Dionysius of Corinth in 170; Irenaeus,
some twenty years later ; and the Muratorian Frag
ment ascribed to Hippolytus towards 190, confirm
these scattered notices, which connect Peter with
Rome as founding the Church and dying there in
a time of persecution. In like manner, the lists of
Roman Bishops carry us back to Peter and Paul,
who stand at their head. Five such catalogues are
extant, clouded over with errors of transcription, but
when duly revised, in agreement as regards the names,
years, and order, which last has been preserved in the
Latin Canon of the Mass. Hegesippus, a Jewish
Christian, writing about the middle of the second
century, drew up a list on the spot, now probably
accessible in Epiphanius (375). Irenaeus of Lyons,
who paid a visit to Rome after 177, gives us his own
catalogue. A third, due to Hippolytus, may be
recovered from the Liberian, edited under the Pope
of that name. On these and on Julius Africanus,
Eusebius relied in his Chronicle and History.
Irenaeus appeals to " the greatest, oldest, and uni
versally known Church, founded and established by
the most glorious Apostles Peter and Paul at Rome."
And he says that they " delivered the office of the
Episcopate to Linus." The order, now recognised by
experts, is therefore Linus, Anencletus, Clement,
Euarestus, Alexander, Xystus, and so forth. That
these names represent historical persons, who were

20 ORIGINS
"bishops, in the monarchical sense, of the Roman
Church," is admitted by the most competent scholars
of our day, and may be safely assumed. Of Clement's
"noble remonstrance," addressed to the Corinthian
schismatics, Lightfoot has declared that it was " the
first step towards Papal domination." He regards
the action of Victor, which he disapproves, at the
close of the second century, when that Pope excom
municated the Churches of Asia, as a " decided step "
forward. When Ignatius looks up to the Roman
Church as " presiding in love," this, observes Light-
foot, bears witness to its moral ascendency, which
was "the historical foundation of its primacy."
Cardinal Newman, as we might expect, takes a
loftier view : " It seems to me plain from history,"
he tells us, " that the Popes from the first considered
themselves to have a universal jurisdiction." It is
indisputable, to say the least, that before the year
200, the Bishop of Rome was recognised everywhere;
as the successor of St. Peter, and not only as head of
the local Church, but in some degree — to speak with
the Clementine Romance — as presiding over Christen
dom.

II
FROM PETER TO LEO THE GREAT
(67-461)
But our first glimpses, which are tantalising in
their brevity, of the Christians at Rome, show us the
Church rather than the Bishop. Clement admonishes
the Corinthians in its name, not in his own ; Ignatius
of Antioch, if his epistle be authentic, addresses " the
Church presiding in charity in the country of the
Romans " ; and Pope Soter speaks as representing a
community so late as 170 A.D. Thus the Bishop did
not stand alone ; like the Pontifex Maximus he was
head of a College of clergy ; and the Roman Church,
by its central position in the world's Capital ; by its
beneficent use of the wealth which it soon acquired ;
and by its familiarity with the laws and even the
fashions of the Metropolis ; — was marked out for dis
tinction as the Christian system moulded itself on the
Imperial, and Bishops fell into their places, according
to the importance of the cities over which they ruled.
Not even Jerusalem could have resisted a movement

22 FROM PETER TO LEO THE GREAT
so natural and widespread ; but the Jewish war had
made an end of Jerusalem ; and what other city could
vie with Rome ? By the year 274, A urelian is found
deciding that the Christian Church property at
Antioch, which was in dispute, shall be dealt with as
the Bishops of Rome and Italy think fit. Cyprian of
Carthage, in 256, recognises that Rome is the Chair
of Peter, "whence the unity of the priesthood took its. J
rise." These words, and this conception, were to ."
furnish the Magna Charta of the Papacy. For the.-;
Popes attribute to themselves all that the " Prince of
the Apostles" would claim, were he living on through \
the centuries. They fuse into one great idea the.
spiritual prerogatives of their founder and the legal
supremacy of Rome over the whole Empire. Rome
can be second to none ; St. Peter is the first among
his brethren. If the Churches of the world ever came
into the form of a confederation or a Hierarchy, and
they tended to do so from their earliest days, the*
Roman Church would of necessity be supreme.
As we see in Clement, the old and deeply-ingrainedj
conception of law and order, which is distinctively
Roman, had passed over at once into the Christian
mind. These converts, whether Jews or Pagans, did a
not indulge in speculation ; they started no new '
philosophy ; and such has been the character of the|
Church in Rome ever since. It dealt with practice,
ritual, discipline ; it developed a government, not a
school like Alexandria ; it held aloof from the wide ;
and remarkable effort of the Gnostics, or " Intellec
tuals," who attempted during the second century to
resolve the tenets of the Gospel into a theosophic

ARCH OF CONSTANTINE THE GREAT.
(Fourth Century. )

24 FROM PETER TO LEO THE GREAT
romance. The Latin mind neither comprehended
nor was drawn to these dreams of an Orientalised
Greek fancy. In like manner, as it was averse to the
speculations of the philosophers, so was the Roman
Church unwilling to narrow the bounds of conformity
by a regimen too severe for the multitudes, who were
now thronging about its doors. It would not permit
an esoteric creed to split up the congregation of the
faithful into "enlightened" and "ignorant." It refused
to shut out sinners from its penance, as the unbending
Montanists and Novatians demanded. While con
servative in doctrine, it exhibited a sagacious largeness
in discipline, and while suffering the strongly forensic
mind of Tertullian to model its tradition, it neither
approved nor condemned the venturesome thought of
Origen and the Alexandrian Clement None of the
early Popes were masters or pupils in philosophy;
but this negative wisdom counted for not a little in
the respect which was paid to them by the subtle and
restless East.
Not individual genius, therefore, but an endemic
"custom of the City," acting on a creed not fully
developed, and in the strength of what was allowed to
be Apostolic tradition, enabled this Church at the'
centre to grow in pre-eminence. It gave no theo
logians to Christendom ; it produced neither monks
nor thinkers ; in the list of thirty-two Popes before
Constantine, there is only a single illustrious name,
that of Clement. But with the fourth century we
enter on a new era. The Imperial Government takes
the cross and begins by its laws and policy to make
the Empire Christian. Constantinople is founded;'

LAW, NOT SPECULATION, ROMAN 2$
Rome ceases to be the capital. And an interminable
succession of quarrels on the philosophy of the Creed,
associated for ever with the names of Arius, Apollin-
aris, Macedonius, Nestorius, and Eutyches, rends the
East into factions, the Pope looking on from afar, not
entangling himself in the nets of metaphysicians,
receiving appeals from all sides, sitting umpire in the
midst of a theological chaos. Had he played the
philosopher, humanly speaking, he might have gone
astray. But the Pontifex Maximus was a Roman
and a statesman. He left to others the wrangling
over terms of Greek art ; for him it was enough to
insist upon what had been handed down. These
gladiatorial displays of logic went on for well-nigh a
hundred and seventy years, during which time the
only Pope who furnished a statement of any length to
the combatants was Leo I. ; and his manner is the
Roman, sententious and judicial, not argumentative.
The Latin language, copious in legal phrase, abound
ing in the technicalities of ritual, was neither delicate
nor flexible enough to express the finer shades of
heresy. It was the language of command : strong,
plain, and matter of fact. The Eastern Bishops
degenerated into sophists ; the Roman found himself
a ruler in a deserted but always august city.
Though long incorporated with the Empire, Gaul,
Spain, and Germany had never exerted the political
influence which was a characteristic of the Latin
races ; nor could they pretend to the charm, or contest
the supremacy, of Greek culture. Outlying provinces,
on the extreme line of defence, they lay open to
attacks from the wandering tribes of the North. At

26 FROM PETER TO LEO THE GREAT
Treves or Milan the Emperor lived in camp ; he, was
at home only in Central Italy, or in the stately!
Eastern cities, like Nicomedia, which displayed the
riches, the polish, and too often the luxurious softness,;
that were an inheritance from classic Hellas. Taken
as a whole, the East was compact in its geography,|
it had boundless resources of wealth, and could draw >
upon the mountaineers of the Balkans or the Cilician
Taurus to recruit its armies ; it could even make good
use of Goths and other untamed auxiliaries, without
falling a prey to their strong right arm. Considera-'
tions such as these weighed with the sagacious but
hardly great Emperor Constantine, when he turned
the course of the Roman eagles towards the rising
sun and left the Eternal City shorn of its crown of
dominion. Henceforth, East and West would go
their several ways. Europe was to be Latin, Frankish,;i
German, in its political forms ; in religion it was to
be Papal and Protestant; while the Greeks became
more and more Asiatic, and detested their Christian,;
brethren, the Franks, almost as deeply as they
feared the armed disciples of Mohammed.
Modern historians have seen in the founding of
Constantinople (330 A.D.) a necessary sequel to the
Edict of Toleration, published from Milan in 313, by
which the Christian Faith was made one of the ¦
religiones licitce. The Emperor could not have laid!
the foundation of his new Church and State on the i
Palatine, which was still the headquarters of Pagan-;;:
ism. Arguments, these, of politicians, plausible';,
enough; but in the Middle Ages legend threw the;'
motives of Constantine into a picturesque and grue-

LEGEND OF CONSTANTINE 2J
some story, to the glorification of Pope Silvester and
the Holy Apostles. Leprosy, that mysterious and
almost sacred disease, had laid its taint upon the
Emperor ; he was tempted to cleanse himself in a
bath of children's blood ; when Silvester, warned in a
dream, stepped between him and this awful experi
ment ; persuaded him to descend into the waters of
baptism ; and brought him out thence, purified like
Naaman in body and soul. Hereupon, Constantine
made over to the Pontiff Rome and Italy, with the
Islands of the West. He established the Pope where
Augustus had reigned, gave him the tokens and state
of royalty, and withdrew from the Holy Place. This
was the Donation of Constantine, as first told in the
eighth century, and believed down to the end of the
fifteenth. It is a prophecy after the event. Paganism,
abandoned and soon to be persecuted by its Pontifex
Maximus, without the conviction that makes martyrs,
and long a hollow formality, was dying. Christians
had the State in their hands. What was more, they
showed the fiery zeal, the proselytizing spirit, the
exuberance in quarrels among themselves, which are
signs of a youth rich in hopes, bent upon shaping its
own victorious future. Heathen Rome invited them to
subdue it. Public policy required that the centre of
administration should be at the heart of the Empire.
The balance of power was displaced. Neither Pope
Silvester nor any Pope for centuries dreamt of dis
owning the Imperial rule ; from the Goths in Italy
they suffered grievous things as the first subjects of
Constantinople. But Rome left to itself was Rome

28 FROM PETER TO LEO THE GREAT
in the hands of the Papacy, fronting the West and the
Barbarians. Constantine had imitated Alexander the
Great, who, in setting up his throne at Babylon in
330 B.C. — a curious coincidence — and assuming the
tiara, left Europe free to follow its own fortunes. Such
was the real Donation, not understood at the time by
Pope or Emperor, which never lost its force until the
Northern nations grew into a world as rich, as culti
vated, and as haughtily self-conscious, as the Greek. •'
Paganism, it may be briefly said, was to furnish
Roman Christianity with many of its holiday or out
ward shows. And the strange phenomena of heresy .
were to bring to light its powers of government, which,
used at the beginning in disputes of local churches or
contending sects, were afterwards applied to provinces
and kingdoms. The Pope, we have seen, did not
affect a speculative genius ; he administered rule — a
busy and extensive rule in so frequented a place as
Rome — according to the tradition of the first age ; he
would never hear of innovations on the Creed. " Let
there be none such, but only what has been delivered,"
said Pope Stephen in a quaint phrase to Cyprian (254
A.D.). Now the heretical movement, dating chiefly :
from Antioch and the Syrian literalists, was an
endeavour to lighten the difficulties of the Creed by
bringing down its " mysteries " to the capacity of
human thought ; a process at all times foreign to the
spirit of Rome. For Rome, as Dollinger says, " took
the world ready-made." It would not vex itself with
philosophic inquiries, whether in its former heather^
or its present Christian stage. In discipline it was
accommodating, in dogma inflexible, and this from of

ROME AND TRADITION 2Q
old. When, therefore, conservative Easterns, such as
the unconquerable Athanasius, the golden-mouthed
Chrysostom, or the violent Cyril, looked round for
help in their struggle with the party of Rationalism,
it was a matter of course that they should appeal to
Rome. And Rome stood by them. The Pope was
at a safe distance from Court ; he could not easily
be taken or sent into banishment ; his unswerving
attitude, by which he seemed only to be maintaining
that which had always been the rule, made him
respected in an age when Bishops lost their dignity
by engaging in hot and acrimonious disputes. It is
significant that the three Popes who have proved
embarrassing to Roman apologists — Liberius, Vigilius,
and Honorius — were all charged with innovation.
There was never any danger in holding to what had
been received. Hence the Popes, unlike the Eastern
Fathers, do not meet the arguments of heretics with
counter-arguments ; they decide, but they decline to
reason the matter out. They attend no Councils, if
they can help it, away from the Lateran. The only
creeds which they approve are those of Nicasa in 325
and of Constantinople in 381. Pope Ccelestine im
poses on the Council of Ephesus (431) his own
judgment by the imperious hands of Cyril; the session
begins and ends in a summer's day. Leo the Great
sends his " Tome," which is by no means a treatise,
to Chalcedon (451), and with the open assistance of
Emperor and Empress compels six hundred Bishops
to accept it. In a later controversy, Hormisdas (519),
relying on the secular arm, makes his creed law
throughout the length and breadth of Asia ; it is sub

30 FROM PETER TO LEO THE GREAT
scribed, or acquiesced in, by perhaps two thousand
five hundred Bishops.
But all the writings on divinity of the Roman
Pontiffs down to Gregory the Great would not
fill a volume of considerable size. Even where
they approve, they content themselves with as few
words as possible. Contrast the folios of Augustine,
to whom they were benignant, with what Innocent,
Zosimus, and Ccelestine did not write, on a subject so
momentous as that of grace and free will. To others
they resigned the task of explaining or defending
Christian truth by methods adapted to the intellect.
They put down heresy by cutting off the heretic from
their communion. In this way, Rome exercised the
functions of a Supreme Court of Appeal, and its
judgments anticipated those of the General Councils,
which were held in the Emperor's presence or that of
his lieutenant.
We cannot describe the Popes of the fourth
century as men of rare personal qualities. One of
them, Damasus (367-384), has some features, in his
tumultuous election and his worldly pomp, which
forecast the days of Avignon or the Renaissance. '%
Another, Siricius, who followed him immediately, is
the first of whom we possess any genuine Decretal,
as the letters were styled that the Roman Chancery
sent to Bishops on points concerning which its opinion
was asked. Yet the Church was steadily mounting
towards pre-eminence. The Latin Fathers — this is
their golden age — could not but magnify it by their
character, their eloquence, and their achievements.
Even Cyprian, who a hundred years earlier had

AMBROSE, JEROME, AUGUSTINE 3 1
quarrelled vehemently with Rome, " did far more,"
says Milman, " to advance her power by the primacy
which he assigned to St. Peter, than he impaired it
by his steady and disdainful repudiation of her
authority, whenever it was brought to the test of
submission." But Ambrose, Bishop of Milan (375-398), was the
most saintly of Western prelates — a true Roman
born out of due time — and his reverence for the
Apostolic See, during a long pontificate, summed
itself up in the famous expression, imitated from the
legists, " Where is Peter, there is the Church." On
this classic sentence the policy of excommunication,
interdict, and even deposition — which is the story of
the Middle Ages — may be made to depend. The
language of Jerome (342-420), most learned, lively,
and provoking of the Fathers, is identical ; and he
who smiles at the frivolous elegance of Damasus or
his clerics, yet cries out to him, " I am with thy
blessedness, that is, with the Chair of Peter." When
he undertakes his immortal work, the translation of the
Bible, it is with the approval of the same Pope ; and
the Vulgate, which was the Scripture of the West for
nearly twelve hundred years, might almost be reckoned
among the genuine Decretals. Then came Augustine
(354-430), whose inexhaustible fertility in dispute
never drew him into controversy with Rome, though
his deep or ingenious commentaries on received
doctrine were, in the great break-up which we call
the Reformation, turned against her by those most
resolute enemies, Luther, Calvin, and Jansenius. But
Augustine did more than all the Fathers to lift up the

32 FROM PETER TO LEO THE GREAT
Papacy as on a visible height — to idealise it as the
new Jerusalem and the Christian Sion — when he put
forth his vision of the City of God. There was no
place known to men except Rome which could fulfil
so large and sovereign a mission ; and that some dis
tinct sanctuary it must be, the Middle Ages would
have asserted no less confidently than the Greeks,
who beheld the temple of the Sun, not in the open
sky above them, but on the island of Delos or in the
mountain-gorges of Delphi.
Marcus Aurelius, the crowned philosopher and
Stoic (161-180), had in a touching apostrophe made
invocation to the " dear City of God," which was to
embrace all mankind. At that very time Christians
were beginning to define their own society as the
" Catholic Church," and to oppose against the multi
tude of Gnostic rites its mystic and divine unity. It
was impossible that converts from heathenism should
lose the sentiment, universal since Augustus, that
Rome was the sacred capital of a world-wide civilisa
tion, the meeting-place of all worships, and the centre
of religion. This great idea can never have died out.
Nor would it fail to be kept alive by the progress of
the new creed, since it spread from the Imperial
cities to their dependencies, and the Roman Province
became the Metropolitan circle, with bishops occu
pying the rank of prefects, or subordinate to them,
on the lines of the civil organisation. The primitive
Church was the Empire taken a second time, but for
spiritual and heavenly purposes. In every metro
polis, says Bingham (whose evidence has stood the
test of modern research), as there was a magistrate

THE PATRIARCH OF THE WEST 33
over the magistrates of each city, so there was a
Bishop over the local bishops. That arrangement
the Council of Nicaea confirmed. Constantine had
new modelled the Empire. This first of the General
Councils (325) acknowledged, in accordance with his
dispositions, three great Patriarchates — Rome, Alex
andria, and Antioch. The Bishop of Rome, it
observes in its sixth Canon, already exercised his
rights over "the suburbican churches," which are
understood to mean the churches of the " Diocese of
Italy." What the Popes did actually claim, as time
went on, was a supreme right of interference in the
" Prefectures " of Italy, in the two Gauls^ which
included Spain, and in Eastern Illyricum. Besides
these particular jurisdictions, of which the last was
frequently contested, they held, as appears from
Athanasius, who cites a letter of Julius I. to this
effect, that it was against the tradition to assemble
councils and proceed to grave resolutions without
their concurrence. All this betokens a close and
increasing communion among the different local
bodies of Christians. It is the old Roman vision of
a world-empire expanding and realising itself as a
Catholic Church, which if not yet governed by a
Supreme Head, was by all its institutions calling
for one.
The division of the Empire, which followed on
Constantine's death, gave this problem a fresh turn.
Of the Easterns it must be said, in general, that they
were Erastians, if we may apply the language of the
seventeenth century to the fourth. In the Emperor
they owned a Divine right of superintending the
4

34 FROM PETER TO LEO THE GREAT
Church ; he was a kind of lay Bishop, and it was
impossible to say where his power ended. The
secular arm executed the decrees of Councils, drove
heretics into exile, and through all the controversies
which tore Christendom wielded the sword of the
Lord. It seemed a conclusion from this Old Testa
ment view that the Imperial city ought to share in its
master's prerogatives. Constantinople, which as
Byzantium had been the suffragan of Heraclea, (
would not submit to be reckoned among the inferior
churches. It aspired to independence ; and though it
dared not vie with " Old Rome " at first, it elbowed
aside not only Antioch but the ever-orthodox
Alexandria, and boldly insisted on taking the second
place. Nor, as was shown in the sequel, did it pause
when that was attained. Its Patriarch, John the
Faster, wrote himself " Universal Bishop " in 590.
His successors are still denominated " CEcumenical,"
which is the title he usurped ; but neither they nor
he establish their claim on a direct descent from one
of the Apostles. The ground taken was frankly
political ; the city of the Emperor must be supreme.
In two General Councils, one held within the walls
of Constantinople (381), the other in sight of its
towers and palaces at Chalcedon (451), this demand
was formulated as a Canon, or rule of law. The
Popes, without losing a moment, raised the cry of
alarm. They felt the danger which this Erastian
principle would bring on their own policy of inde
pendence and freedom. Damasus, in a statement
which might have been dictated by Hildebrand,
asserts emphatically the idea to be henceforward^

BYZANTINE PRETENSIONS 35
echoed in every tone by the Apostolic See. To
the temporal greatness of the Empire he opposes
(381) the voice of the Lord Himself, who has given
to Rome the primacy in Peter. It owes nothing to
synods ; it is above all other Churches, because of
the text in the Gospels. Even Alexandria is " the
second See," as being "consecrated in the name of
Peter," through his disciple, Mark the Evangelist ; on
a like account Antioch is honourable, " for Peter took
up his abode there, before he came to Rome."
In these declarations, and in the acts to which they
were an answer, we note the beginnings of the great
schism that has divided the East from the West.
Constantinople is Erastian ; Pope Damasus is Ultra
montane. The answer to Constantinople was the
Papal Monarchy.
Disputes concerning precedence among Bishops
may seem the vainest of quarrels ; but we cannot
fail to perceive that the races of men and the systems
of philosophy extant within the Roman Empire were
struggling here mightily against one another, like the
winds on the great sea in Daniel's vision. Egypt had
been from of old the home of a mystical and ascetic
religion, of which Neo-Platonism and the Christian
teachers had borrowed as much as they would.
Antioch and its vast dependencies were now covered
with schools, in which the Greek spirit of reasoning
and contention exercised full sway. To this side Con
stantinople was drawn by the habits of its indolent
population ; but though they welcomed a Syrian of
genius, like St. John Chrysostom, in their Arch
bishop's chair, they would not submit to rank below

36 FROM PETER TO LEO THE GREAT
a provincial city on the Orontes. And Rome, which,
was neither given with the Egyptians to ecstatic
dreaming, nor involved in the subtle syllogisms of
the Asian Greeks, but which held fast by law and
tradition, sided now with one of these parties and now
with another, as the interests of orthodox govern
ment demanded. The history of the fifth and sixth
centuries does but exhibit the three Eastern capitals
weakening one another by internecine wranglings,
with their accompaniments of riot and persecution,
until Syria and Egypt lay defenceless before Islam,,
and Constantinople trembled within her sea-girt
fortifications. By the time of Gregory the Great,:
the two Patriarchal Churches associated with the
name of St. Peter had almost run their course. Rome
was left as the sole Apostolic See, founded on the
rock. We may watch this conception growing ever more
luminous in the utterances of the Pontiffs themselves.
It was to be strenuously acted upon, after the taking of
Rome by Alaric, in matters of Church government as
of dogmatic teaching, when Innocent I., Ccelestine, and
Leo the Great displayed their conviction that in them
and through them the Prince of the Apostles ruled.
Innocent (402-417) declared that all the Churches of
Italy, Gaul, Spain, Africa, and Sicily had been
founded by Peter and his successors ; it was in
cumbent on them to follow the " use " of Rome. He
reminds the Bishops 'of Macedonia that they must
send an account of their proceedings to the " head of
the Churches." He takes the part of Chrysostom g
excommunicates the usurper of his See, Acacius ; is

POPES IN THE LATERAN 37
urgent against the Donatist schism in Africa ; con
demns Pelagius, who brings into the fifth century
such a modern air of " Naturalism " ; and strives to
enforce upon the prelates at Carthage the power of
receiving appeals which he grounds on the Canons of
Nicaea. He was met, in this instance, with a counter
claim for verification ; the Canons (real or inter
polated) were those of a Latin assembly at Sardica,
now Sophia, in Bulgaria. But they took their place in
the Corpus Juris, and helped, like the ever-growing
pile of Decretals, to furnish precedents on which the
medieval Popes were ready to act in every part of
Christendom. The fall of Rome in 410 was the destruction of
Paganism. As a public religion it disappeared no
less completely than the Jewish rites and sacrifices
on the burning of the Temple. Innocent had saved
the Basilicas of the Apostles from profanation, and
Alaric remained only three days in the city. But,
henceforth, sacred ceremonies, popular festivals, and
the great days in the Calendar must all be Christian.
The Prefect of Rome was a shadow of the impotent
Honorius, cowering behind the marshes and walls of
Ravenna. But the Popes in their Lateran palace,
given them by Constantine, lived amongst the busiest
throngs of the ancient Capital, which until the fires
kindled by Robert Guiscard and his Normans (1085)
spread out round the Palatine, Caelian, and Esquiline
Hills. It was the duty of the Pontiff, as it had
formerly been of the Emperor, to feed the people in
seasons of famine ; to make good the losses occa
sioned by earthquakes, conflagrations, risings of the

38 FROM PETER TO LEO THE GREAT
Tiber, invasions of Goths or Vandals ; to preside at
the crowded Church festivals, which took the place of
gladiatorial sports, abolished at this time ; and to do :
what in them lay as mediators between the people-^
and their conquerors. Alaric had besieged Rome
three times ; Italy was soon to be threatened by the
strange figure of Attila the Hun (449), famous in
history as the Scourge of God and in medieval poetry
as Etzel, the hero of the Nibelung Epic. In 455
Genseric the Vandal took and plundered the city.
Yet these reiterated misfortunes did but enhance the
Papal greatness ; since, whatever mercy was shown
amid the prevailing cruelty, the faithful attributed it
with Augustine to the power of the Christian name ;
and Innocent, but much more Leo, might take the
credit of it as granted to the Holy Apostles at their
intercession. While, therefore, the Bishops of Constantinople
were falling, like Nestorius, into heresy, or suffering!
deposition and exile ; and while Alexandria was dis-!
graced by furious partisans like Theophilus, or mis-,
creants of the stamp of Dioscorus and his MonophysiteJ
successors, the Roman dynasty grew in strength,
acquired influence with foreign and even hostile^
nations, absorbed into itself the renown of the]
Eternal City, and looked forward to subduing thej
whole West by missionary enterprise. Ccelestinef
(422-432), the Pope who put down Pelagius and the!
Pelagians in Africa, and who withstood their intrigues*
at the Imperial Court, was the same man that ordered
the deposition of Nestorius at Ephesus, and is said
to have dispatched Palladius, as afterwards he sent

GALLA PLACIDIA AND ST. LEO.
(Mosaic above Triumphal Arch in St. PauVs outside Rome.

Fifth Century.)

40 FROM PETER TO LEO THE GREAT
St. Patrick, to preach the gospel in Ireland. Such
missions were Roman in their language, liturgy, Canon
Law, and cast of civilisation. They as truly implied
a conquest to the legislation of the Church, as Caesar's
victorious campaigns in Gaul had brought with them
the sovereignty of what was by and by denominated
the Jus Civile over the vanquished barbarians. What
was now attempted in the farthest Western Isle would"
be successfully carried out with the Franks before
the century ended; with the Angles and Saxons a,
hundred years later ; and at length with Germans,
Danes, Norsemen, Wends, Poles, and Hungarians.
The Papacy looked west and north. Its inheritance
came to it from the old world ; but during the next
nine hundred years it appears in Europe as the
principle of progress, expansion, assimilation, and
novelty, disguised under the outward forms of law,
which was continually enlarging its bounds by
precedent. Leo I., deservedly known as the Great (440-461),
exhibits all the most splendid features of a medieval
Pope, with no admixture of their forbidding or violent
complexion. Like the eminent among them, he was
a Roman by birth and breeding ; yet we should not
overlook the picturesque detail that he had personally
made the acquaintance of Augustine in Africa during
the troubles with Pelagius ; he seems, indeed,' to
have risen up out of the pages of the " City of God,"
with his " noble aspect and spare youthful form,"
as though to carry their stupendous design into
execution. He preached a majestic theology in
language that no Papal briefs have surpassed,

LEO AND THE MANICHEES 4 1
though the best among them aim at reproducing it ;
for the Ciceronian amplitude of later and present
times is a lapse from the cursus Leoninus. But he
was more than a teacher in the schools. He laid
down the law with authority. Rome had now
" become, through the sacred Chair of Peter, head of
the world ; " its religious empire stretched far beyond
its earthly dominion ; and this was the work of
Providence. As already seen, the Roman Pontiff
did not stoop to argue with the time-serving Bishops
at Chalcedon ; they must subscribe his " Tome "
as he sent it ; and these men, who would fain have
exalted Constantinople, can yet flatter him in their
epistle as " keeper of the Lord's vineyard," and
" Archbishop of the world."
In Rome his action was no less decided. The
Manichees, who were now and all down the Middle
Ages to inherit the speculative tenets and bad name
of their Gnostic forefathers, had been condemned
to extinction by the Code of the Emperors. They
survived, nevertheless ; nay, they flourished exceed
ingly ; nor did the conversion of Augustine to their
sect, which they effected in his youth, ever pass from
the mind of the mature theologian. A discovery made
of them in the city (443) was followed by charges of
magic, and of gross crimes against morality — the usual
accusations, to be repeated with terrible consequences
in after times, whenever a Manichaean society came to
light. It is said that the evidence was strong and
conclusive. Some were admitted to penance. The
sect at large underwent exile and proscription ; but
none were put to death. Leo, whose share in dealing

42 FROM PETER TO LEO THE GREAT
with them is described by himself, wrote to the Bishops
of Italy to make search after these pestilent heretics,
and persuaded Valentinian III. to renew the severest
edicts against- Manicheism. The whole story reads
like a chapter from the Albigensian campaigns of
Innocent III.
The tremendous Scythian, or Hunnish invasion,
which in 449 and the years following swept over
Europe, had met with only the shadow of resistance
from Theodosius II. It seemed likely to raze out
the last vestiges of Western civilisation. With his
innumerable hordes Attila laid siege to Constanti
nople, marched down to Thermopylae, turned back
through the Austrian and German forests, crossed
the Rhine, and pitched his camp in Eastern Gaul.
A battle of the giants was fought on the Plains of
Chalons ; on the second day Attila underwent a
horrible defeat at the hands of young Thorismund,
the Visigoth, not altogether without assistance from
Aetius, the Roman commander. The Hun retreated,
but only to la)7 waste Italy as far as the banks of the
Po. He might now have captured Rome, whither
Valentinian III., last of the line of Theodosius, had
fled for refuge. But on the reedy shores of the
Lago di Garda, not far from Mantua, the Barbarian
was met by a solemn embassy, Pope Leo at its ,
head. To the petition of the venerable Pontiff he
yielded. He would be content with tribute — it was
called the dowry of the Princess Honoria, who had
offered herself in marriage to this ogre — and would
retire beyond the Alps. That he listened to Pope
Leo's prayers is certain ; his motives must remain a

HIS INTERVIEW WITH ATTILA 43
conjecture. Was it disease in his army that held
him back ? Or a presentiment of approaching death,
excited by the speedy end of Alaric after he had
broken into the world's Capital ? Or did he behold
the Apostles in the air threatening him, while Leo
spoke with grave sacerdotal eloquence ? Later ages
put faith in the sublime legend. But it is doubtless
true that the wildest of Barbarian chiefs felt a
superstitious reverence for the name of Rome. Ex
amples will be frequent of lawless freebooters who
turn aside even from sanctuaries known to be
wealthy at the word of saint or monk, and in dread
of the deities who dwelt there. Leo had saved the
city ; he was hailed on his return as a new Camillus.
Such noble achievements must have led him to
reply with scorn and indignation, as he did in three
letters still extant, to Anatolius the Patriarch who
claimed for Constantinople the second rank, as en
acted in Canon 28 at Chalcedon. He would not
hear of it ; whoso pretended to be an CEcumenical
Bishop was Antichrist. Yet he not only received
questions from all over the West on points of dis
cipline, but when Hilary of Aries in 445 had, in a
Council, deposed the Bishop Celidonius and the
latter had appealed to Rome, Leo annulled the
sentence and restored Celidonius. This was some
thing new. Hilary, coming to the shrine of the
Apostles, pleaded the usages of the Gallic Church
and his own Metropolitan rights, in language of
remarkable violence, to which the Pope answered by
an epistle to the Bishops of his province, Vienne,
releasing them from their allegiance to the See of

44 FROM PETER TO LEO THE GREAT
Aries, and interdicting the offender from being pre
sent at future consecrations. Nay, more; Valen
tinian III. — a dissolute and cowardly prince, but
devoted to the Church — issued at Leo's request a
" Perpetual Edict " which recognised the Papal
primacy as resting on the merits of St. Peter, the
majesty of Rome, and the decree of a sacred Council.
To resist the Pope's commands was treason ; his
decrees were law and did not need the Emperor's
confirmation ; he was ruler of the Universal Church ;
and all persons whom he summoned to him for judg
ment should be brought up, if they did not come
willingly, by the Moderator of the province, that is
to say, by the secular arm.
This establishment of the Roman Church" as a
supreme tribunal is attributed to the Empress
Placidia, Valentinian's mother, and a staunch friend
of the inflexible Pontiff. Regulations of a tenor not
unlike, but without reference to Gaul, are quoted by
a Roman Council of 380 in its address to Gratian
and Valentinian II. " Following the precept of the
Holy Apostles," say the Fathers, "ye have decreed
that the Bishop of Rome should institute inquiries
concerning the other priests of the churches." In
these words we perceive that the ecclesiastical immu
nities were then allowed ; or, to quote St. Ambrose,
" Priests (alone) were to pass judgment on priests."
Quite another question was it whether the Pope
could take appeals over the head of Metropolitans ;
but the Perpetual Edict answered in the affirmative .
four hundred years before the False Decretals (about
850) made this principle the corner stone of a vast

THE PAX ROMANA CEASES 45
legal system. Hilary, it must be observed, was
charged with tyrannical procedures, not with false
doctrine. And the Gallican Church was already
appealing from the Pope to its ancient Canons or
customs — in vain now, as afterwards under Bossuet
and the Assembly of 1682.
The crimes, follies, and murder of Valentinian
brought Genseric with his Arian Vandals up the
Tiber in 455. Rome could make no stand against
him. Fourteen days were consumed in the pillage
of the churches and plundering of the city. Pagan
trophies were crammed on board ship, only to sink
on their way to Carthage. The seven -branched
candlestick and other sacred emblems brought by
Titus from Jerusalem shared the same fate. The
ladies of the Imperial house were made slaves,
though not dishonourably treated. Leo might plead
successfully with the Pagan Attila ; but the Vandals
were heretics, and did not heed his expostulations.
Yet they passed away suddenly as they came, while
the Pontiff and his clergy remained, to console, to
teach, and in some degree to preserve from the rising
flood of barbarism a people who now saw in the
Church their only ark of refuge.
If we extend our view over the ruins of the
Western Empire, such is the spectacle that meets us
on every side. Laws are broken up ; governors
cannot defend ; the sword is the arbiter of public and
private right ; the Pax Romana has ceased ; it is a
universal confusion. But wherever a Bishop holds
his court, religion protects all that is left of the
ancient order. A new Rome ascends slowly above
f

46 FROM PETER TO LEO THE GREAT
the horizon. It holds within it the Hebrew and
the Christian Testaments ; it has never forgotten the
forms of jurisprudence ; it possesses an art, an archi
tecture, curiously modelled upon the lines of happier
days ; it is even the heir of the religion which it has
overthrown ; it assumes the outward splendour of
the Caesars ; but its reliance is upon a Creed they
never knew, in which justice and mercy, qualities of
the spirit, not of the flesh, are to serve as its strength
and guidance. The Emperor is no more ; the Consul
has laid down the fasces ; the golden Capitol has
seen its gods and heroes carried into captivity by a
Wendish robber from the shores of the Baltic. But
the Pontifex Maximus abides ; he is now the Vicar
of Christ, offering the old civilisation to the tribes of
the North. He converts them to his creed, and they
serve him as their Father and Judge ' Supreme.
This is the Papal Monarchy, which in its power
and its decline overshadows the history of Europe for
a thousand years.

Ill

GREGORY THE GREAT, MONASTICISM, AND ST.
BENEDICT.
(46 I-590-604)
THOUGH Leo I. had seen clearly the part which
this New Christian Rome was destined to play, and
himself had acted up to it magnificently, the next
hundred and thirty years brought tj> the Papacy little
honour and much tribulation. Not until we come to
Gregory, best and greatest in the long line of
Pontiffs, do we meet a ruler of powers equal to his
task, while the unexpected revival of the Empire,
due to Belisarius and Narses, but called by the name
of Justinian, made the Pope subject once more to an
Eastern Court. Obscure but embittered controversies
led to a schism in spirituals between Rome and
Constantinople which lasted thirty-five years (484-
519). A Council, the Fifth General, is supposed to
have cut off Pope Vigilius from Catholic Communion.
But if the Greeks repudiated him, the Westerns
revolted against him. Africa fell away ; Ravenna,
47

48 GREGORY THE GREAT AND ST. BENEDICT
Milan, Aquileia strove to be independent. The
Goths were Arians ; and three times under their
rude heretical kings did they besiege' the Eternal
City. After the last sieges by Totila (546~549)> the
population, greatly diminished, fled from their houses ;,
during forty days Rome lay desolate and silent. I

TOMB OF THEODORIC AT RAVENNA.
(Sijxth Century.)
The end had come of its greatness ; even the old
race was extinct or was lost among the Barbarian
adventurers. A plague, returning with terrible fre
quency, almost as fatal as the Black Death long
afterwards, spread from Egypt to Gaul. Earth
quakes, floods, and a darkening of the air which
seldom lifted, were taken to be signs of approaching

MIDDLE AGES BEGIN 49
doom. When the Gothic kingdom fell before the
Lombards, when Theodoric, Boethius, and Cassio-
dorus were fading into memories of a past not
wholly uncivilised, the ruin of the Western Empire
was complete. At this hour of deepest eclipse
Gregory ascended the Papal Chair, and the Middle
Ages began.
In this noble and attractive person we may affirm
that all which the ancient world could now bequeath
to the modern was to be found. He sprang from
the most conspicuous of late Roman Houses, the
Anicii, who had long been Christian. The grand
son of Pope Felix and son of Gordianus, at one
time he was Praetor, if not Prefect, of the City.
Then, in obedience to the strongest current of his
age, he had become a monk. He turned his fine
mansion on the Cselian into a monastery. He gave
himself up to prayer, to reading, and to ascetic
exercises. By Pelagius II. he had been sent to
Constantinople as apocrisiarius, or charge d'affaires —
an appointment which, while the Byzantine Court
governed at Rome, led up, as a rule, to the Papacy.
Though not in the classic sense a scholar, and
affecting some disdain for heathen accomplishments,
he spoke and wrote a Latin which was far superior to
the jargon now resulting from the wild intermixture
of peoples and languages in Western Europe. In
music and the arts that served for ritual or decora
tive purposes within the churches of Italy he was
skilled to a degree which has made the name of
Gregorians famous. Nor did he lack the qualities
of a lawgiver and administrator. With ambition,
5

SO GREGORY THE GREAT AND ST. BENEDICT
pride, or avarice — the temptations to which more
than one Pope afterwards yielded — Gregory cannot
be charged. His mind was not that of a philo
sopher ; he shared in the beliefs so widely prevalent
at his day, and by his book of Dialogues con
tributed not a little to spread them during the
medieval period. His genius and character, direct,
sincere, practical, yet over-laid with allegorising
fancies (the common feature of decadence in thought),
were altogether Roman.
Elected against his will in 590, he had no arms
wherewith to resist the Lombards, whose Arian
beliefs and barbarian race, no less than their burnings
and plunderings, made them detestable to the older
Italians. Yet on him it fell to feed and defend the
city. The Imperial officers could do nothing. But
the Church held large domains in the Agro Romano,
in Calabria, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, and Dalmatia,
which went by the name of St. Peter's Patrimony.
It was a custom as early as Pope Soter (180) for the
Roman Church to send assistance wherever Chris
tians found themselves in distress. Now as then the
Church fed the Roman people ; to such elemen
tary human offices had it come ; but in thus stooping
it laid foundations deep for the Pope's temporal
power. Gregory acted as lieutenant of the Empire
though not by designation. The Exarch came
from Ravenna ; took with him what was left of
the garrison ; and deserted the city against which
Agilulf was bringing his wild followers. They were
bought off by the Pope, who called himself with a
smile "paymaster of the Lombards." When he was

LOMBARDS AND GREEKS 5 1
rebuked by the Emperor Maurice, he could answer
that he was sharing in the dangers and warding off
the captivity of his own city. The sovereign power
was passing into his hands. He defends officials
who appeal to him from the violence of Byzantine
corruption and secular judges. He alone signs the
treaty of peace with Agilulf. Hq' insists on the
freedom of soldiers who are desirous of becoming
monks, although the Emperor had forbidden it. If,
as Pope, he was the richest landowner in Italy, with
thousands of serfs and myriads of acres yielding him
a revenue, from these resources he nourished his
Romans at the doors of the basilicas. Neither would
he permit his coloni to be ruthlessly oppressed. He
maintained the churches, ransomed captives, set up
hospitals for pilgrims, and saw to it that twice in the
year a corn-bearing fleet from Sicily supplied Rome
with provisions at Portus. His tribune protected
the inhabitants of Naples from tyranny. He advised
or commanded military precautions to be taken in
Sardinia. Yet he would not exasperate the Lombards,
hoping doubtless to see them turn one day from their
heresy, as they came more and more under the
magic of the Roman name.
His relations with the Bishops and Emperors of
Constantinople were fluctuating. He had persuaded
Eutychius to give up the doctrine of a purely
spiritual resurrection. John the Faster, who styled
himself " Universal Bishop," was reminded of the
protest formerly made against this encroachment on
the rights of his brethren and of the Papacy ; but it
was a title which Gregory put from himself with

52 GREGORY THE GREAT AND ST. BENEDICT
horror. The signature of his own predecessors, as
the documents witness, had been " Bishop of the
Catholic Church of Rome."
In 602 the Emperor Maurice was dethroned and
murdered by Phocas, a centurion. That Pope
Gregory had learned the details of this blood-stained
revolution is not clear ; but he acknowledged the
usurper, received his portrait solemnly in the Palatine
chapel, and wrote to him in terms of Oriental adula
tion. It is said that he resented various measures of
unkindness on the part of Maurice ; above all, his
connivance in the ambitious designs of John the
Faster. And confirmation is sought in the decree,
put forth by Phocas in 607, which ordained that " the
See of Blessed Peter the Apostle should be head of
all the Churches." This undoubtedly was meant as
a rebuke to the Patriarch and clergy of Saint Sophia.
On the other hand, it does not appear that the Popes
ever attached importance to the proclamation. In
all their arguments they take their stand resolutely
on the words of Scripture and their own Decretals,
which had the force of law in Western Christendom.
The Bishops were fast growing into great temporal
lords. Wherever a breathing time from war was
given, men and women disposed of their wealth for
spiritual blessings and benefits. Even unfit or youth
ful candidates now begin to appear, as the Sees of
Christendom are worth coveting by noble families.'
But no Bishops can plead exemption from Gregory's
jurisdiction. They are subject to his " forum." He
deposes the Bishop of Naples, degrades him of
Melita, threatens in severe terms the prelates of

THE ARIAN GOTHS 53
Tarentum, Cagliari, and Salona. He abounds in
remonstrances, which bore little fruit, against the
scandals of the Gaulish Church, under Queen
Brunhilde and the Kings Thierry and Theodebert.
He has a certain power in Greece ; but his directions,
even in matters of dogma, • find no acceptance in
Illyricum. The West was to be Rome's peculiar
province. There Gregory overthrew the failing
squadrons of Arianism, reconciled Spain, and by
means of his legate or missionary, Augustine, estab-^
lished in England a succession of Bishops, under
whose ecclesiastical government the country was
organised, as its inhabitants 'gradually submitted to
the Gospel, and men like Theodore of Tarsus were
sent from Rome to rule over it (597-668).
Had Arianism stood its ground outside the Greek
Empire,.a state of incessant religious warfare, ending
at last in toleration, might have ensued, as when,
long afterwards, the Peace of Westphalia (1648) set up
a balance of power between Catholics and Reformed
Christians. But the Arian creed was the product of
a learned and disputatious temper, more congenial
to reasoning than to simple faith ; its home had
always been the cultivated cities of Asia. From the
Imperial Court it spread among the Goths. As they
moved onward and took possession of Southern Gaul
and Spain, the links which bound them to a Syrian
system and a rationalising philosophy grew constantly
weaker. Of learned teacher^ they could scarcely
boast. UJfilas, their Bishop, had translated the Bible
into Maeso-Gothic ; but schools of theology they had
none, nor a centre of religious life, nor the logical

54 GREGORY THE GREAT AND ST. BENEDICT
refinement out of which this not very attractive
heresy had sprung. In the lapse of time it was
upheld only by Court favour.
Arian chiefs had reigned at Ravenna, Pavia, Aries,
and Toledo ; but the Catholic Bishops disdained to
give way before them. ' And towards the close of the
sixth century this political arrangement was breaking
up. By a supreme good fortune, the Franks under
Chlodowig (Clovis, Louis, Ludwig, are all forms of
this Teutonic name) had accepted Roman Christianity
at the hands of Remigius, Bishop of Rheims (496).
It was a conversion equal in importance to that of
Constantine, nor unlike it in its motives or its results.
The mightiest sword wielded by a Barbarian was now
at the disposal of the Roman Pontiff. The French
King became " Eldest Son of the Church." He was
destined to smite the Arian, to drive back the
Mohammedan, to endow the Papacy with a kingdom
of its own, to make the name of Frank synonymous
with Christian all over the East for many ages, to
found the Holy Roman Empire, and to lead the
Crusades. In its palmiest days the Arian had never been a
popular creed. Against it the multitudes had risen
in tumult ; but its fiercest enemies were the monks,
who swarmed out of their deserts and filled the
streets of Alexandria or Ephesus with noisy pro;
testations of the orthodox faith. Now, the whole
world was turning to monasticism. It claimed to be
the perfect, the Divine life. Its triumphs under
Benedict, Columban, Boniface, of which we have
soon to speak, were already assured in the conviction

FRANKS OVERTHROW VISIGOTHS 55
even of the wild German tribes^ on whom it exercised
an irresistible charm. All that was mystic, miraculous,
and beyond nature in the Christian teaching, found
its realisation wherever the solitaries planted their
staff in the wilderness. The Arian despised the
monk, and was vanquished by him. Something not
unlike the first age of the Gospel might be remarked
in this contrast between simple or enthusiastic
believers and the prelates, who were clothed in
soft garments and dwelt in kings' houses. If the
common people were to decide, the issue could not
be doubtful.
Thus the newly-baptized sword of France, and the
miracle-working rod of monasticism, were at the
service of a polity in Rome which had never
wavered since the days of Silvester and Athanasius.
To this array of forces the Arian host was quite
unequal. Law and learning, martial courage and the
enthusiasm of the cloister, were banded against it.
Burgundy, which had existed as an heretical power
since about 430, fell in 520 before the assaults of the
Franks, and with the dynasty its Arianism came to
an end. This was to be the tale everywhere. Spain,
under its feeble Visigoth rulers, abounded in crimes
and tragedies. Yet, unlike the Vandals in Africa, they
had given large toleration to their Roman or Catholic
subjects (the names are now used indifferently), and
had the Franks not come down upon them, Spain
might have exhibited the rare spectacle of a heretic
prince living in peace with his orthodox tributaries.
But in 507 the sanguinary Clovis wrested from these
Visigoths Toulouse and Aquitaine. There ensued

56 GREGORY THE GREAT AND ST. BENEDICT
hereupon a death-struggle between the Catholic party,
which looked for assistance to the Franks or the
Greeks, and the Arian nobles with their king, who
were now hemmed about as in a circle of fire.
Leodevigild had two sons, Hermenegild and
Reccared. Their mother was Greek and orthodox ;!
the sons shared her beliefs. Against Hermenegild
the charge was brought that, in conjunction with
Leander, Bishop of Seville, he meditated treason, and
was for calling in the Franks. His father began
general measures of persecution ; imprisoned Her
menegild, offered him the Arian confession, and on
his rejecting it, had him put to death. All proved in
vain. The young prince was revered as a martyr.
Leodevigild died speedily (586), and Reccared, now
King, held a tourney of argument between the con-
\ tending Bishops at Toledo next year, which ended in
his declaring himself a Catholic. Formal acceptance
of the Nicene Creed followed in 589. Pope Gregory
canonised Hermenegild, the story of whose martyr
dom he has written with tender feeling. And in ad-i
dressing Reccared, he spoke as though the Spanish
kingdom were subject in a peculiar way to the
Roman Church — a claim which later Pontiffs
heightened into their suzerainty over the whole '
Peninsula. As the Franks were instrumental in this conquest ,
of Spain, so they took no insignificant share in the
success of Gregory's mission to the Anglo-Saxons.
Queen Bertha was daughter of Charibert, King of
Paris. Frankish interpreters accompanied Augustine
to Thanet ; and St. Martin of Tours, whose shrine

ST. GREGORY THE GREAT.
(From an Engraving in the British Museum Print Room.)

58 GREGORY THE GREAT AND ST. BENEDICT
may be almost termed the cradle of the French
monarchy, has to this day his church at Canterbury,
founded by the pious Queen. Monks whose home,-
was Iona or Lindisfarne, helped to make England
Christian, from the Cheviots to the Thames. But
Augustine, Paulinus, and Wilfrid of York made it
Roman in hierarchy, ritual, and learning. The Saxon
kings were constant pilgrims to St. Peter's shrine.
Four times has the Papacy won its triumphs over
barbarians or heretics with the aid of men who had
renounced the world only to conquer it. Gregory
the Great was a monk and a Benedictine. Without
these marching legions he could have done nothing
for civilisation, and neither England nor Germany
would have known the Gospel. St. Benedict is the '
Cadmus and Solon of the centuries which find their
Caesar in Charlemagne. But the Dark Ages follow;
and four hundred and fifty years after Gregory,
another of his name, the monk better known as
Hildebrand, calls again to his cloistered brethren.
With their, help he reforms the clergy, sets free the
Church, beats the Emperor to his knees, and dies
feudal lord of Europe. Once more, under the most
majestic of the Popes, Innocent III., Christendom
seems to be falling in pieces, rent by factions, simony,,
clerical vice, popular heresy. And again the monks,
transformed to friars by Francis and Dominic, but
disciplined by yet another Gregory, charm the people
back to their allegiance, put down the dissenters,
subdue to- their scholastic doctors the philosophy of
Aristotle and the Arabians. Last of all, during the
agony of the Reformation, Ignatius Loyola and his

MONASTICISM 59
Jesuits, taking to themselves the principle of utter
self-sacrifice as a motive for combat and conquest,
restore the day which had been all but lost, and cover
the New World no less than the Old with churches,
schools, universities, colonies. Medieval Europe can
never be seen as it really was except in the light of
that omnipotent monasticism.
Eastern in origin, it entered the West with
Athanasius (340), captivated the impetuous Jerome,
and was fostered at Milan by Ambrose. It flourished
at Tours, Lerins, and Marseilles, and found a law
giver in Augustine, who cultivated its most austere
virtues. But though Cassian sketched its heroes in
his Fathers of the Desert, it was to derive from
Benedict of Nursia its lasting form, at once more
practical and more moderate than even the Rule of
the lofty St. Basil. Romansor Barbarians would not
endure the pillar-saints of Syria; and wildly picturesque
as were the lives of Celtic hermits, the good sense
which marked Imperial laws and ordinances tamed
even these, when Columban's severe regulations
yielded to the genius of a more considerate legislator.
Not that Benedict ¦ had learning, or took on himself
a civilising mission. His aim was strictly religious,
ascetic, personal. But he framed a code upon which
the life in community might be lived during ages of
social confusion.
Thus the Christian republic began like some
dream of Plato. Its celibate members were drawn
from a world in' which the sword alone had rights ;
where traffic had become piracy1 or brigandage ;
where libraries were but sheepskin, the fields a thorny

60 GREGORY THE GREAT AND ST. BENEDICT
waste, the Roman high-roads between city and city
fallen into disuse, and all Europe lay in the gloom
of a forest stretching unbroken from the shores of
Brittany to the steppes of Russia. A few walled
towns, calling themselves Roman municipalities, stood
up as isolated rocks in the deluge. Over them the
Bishops ruled as defensores civitatis, with phantom-
officials at their elbow. But the question was, who
would subdue the savage lands to the plough, and
their intractable conquerors to a life not wholly
warfare ? After six hundred years of the strangest
vicissitudes it was answered by St. Benedict's disciples.
To all that is admirable in the Medieval centuries
they lay a just claim, and the mighty figure of their
hermit-founder stands aloft over modern civilisation
as its author, if not its ideal. " The Order of St.
Benedict," says Michelet, " gave to a world worn out
by slavery the first example of labour done by the
hands of the free."
His "legend,"" written by St. Gregory, takes us
at a bound from the dead classic literature into
the miraculous air and curiously painted lights of
the Middle Age. Born near Spoleto (480), sent
to study in Rome, he fled from the doomed city,
and hid himself in the gorges of the Apennines, not
far from a country house of Nero at Subiaco, where
he lived three years in a cave, and where his twelve
monasteries arose by and by, as well as the convent
of his sister, Scholastica. The glory of monasticism
was to be shared by illustrious women of genius, not
Italian chiefly, but French, Saxon, Irish, German,
whose institutes were adapted from those of the

11 TO LABOUR IS TO PRAY" 6 1
sterner sex, while their industry in cultivating lands
or books was scarcely inferior. Thus began the
emancipation of woman in our Western world —
behind the safe walls of a cloister, in a sacred peace,
and under vows which Kings themselves could not
trample on without remorse and public condemnation.
Benedict, however, was to end his days at the yet
more famous Monte Cassino, which still towers above
the Garigliano,. and which became a monastic Rome,
mother and mistress of the thousand communities
spread into every country where the Papal power
extended. Here the Saint encountered Totila, King;
of the Goths, overawed him, and foretold his death.
Cassino was ruined in these perpetual wars ; but
when Benedict and Scholastica passed away, almost
at the same moment, their work had been set on an
everlasting base, and time would prove this dream of
enthusiastic piety to be as enduring as the foundations
of Rome itself.
Much of the Saint's legend is romantic poetry.
What the man did and was we may contemplate in
his Rule. Its unstudied Latin lays down the sum of
discipline for monks, who are to spend their stated
hours in chanting the Divine service, in reading, in
manual labour. The brethren are to serve God with
their hands — Laborare est orare — a perfect idea, in
some magnificent degree fulfilled when the Order had
restored agriculture and the arts of life, had saved
from destruction the masterpieces of antiquity, and
" Eden raised in the waste wilderness." To the letter
they accomplished this word.
They were laymen, not clerics, except the tew

62 GREGORY THE GREAT AND ST. BENEDICT
needed for Mass and other ordinances. Abstinence
from flesh, much fasting, silence, and the strictest
obedience to command, were all means well suited
to creating a peaceful, orderly temper, at once the
marvel of barbarians and a check upon the universal
Faustrecht, or rule of the strong hand. No one who'had
taken the vows could quit them at his good pleasurg|
Children were often dedicated before coming to
years of discretion ; we must not suppose 'the
modern respect for personal liberty in a timefso
rude and inchoate. A man belonged to his dan,
his lord, or his community, unless he fled aw.ly
to the wild wood and became a heathen or Christian
Ishmaelite. But soon Maurus in Gaul, as the stoii
tells, or at all events some follower of Bened'§
was establishing the colonies which had swarme
from Monte Cassino. Houses multiplied all throuj
Italy. The Lateran had its monks, and Gregory the
Great, as we have seen, turned his mansion on the;
Caelian Hill into a cloister, from which he ascent
the Papal throne, and England received its Chril
tianity. The great lines of medieval Europe werf
drawn as on a chart, its problems designed, their;.
solution foreshadowed, when the most Roman of the
Popes died, after a reign of only fourteen yea|B
crowded with memorable issues, on March 12, 604.1
He was not much more than sixty.

ST. BENEDICT ABBOT.
{From a Portrait by Sassoferrato at Perugia.)

IV
ICONOCLAST EMPERORS AND LOMBARD KINGS
(604-739)
Between a dying system and one waiting to be
born, the Pope stood, as it were, undecided for a
hundred and thirty years after Gregory. His mis
sionaries had gone out West ; but he in the Lateran
could not shake himself free of Constantine's
successors, ruling by an Exarch at Ravenna, by a
Dux Romanus in the Imperial City, and in the South
by their military captains. On every side the Ponti
fex Maximus felt a power too strong for him. To
rebel was not in his thoughts ; still less would he
or the citizens of Rome, proud though degenerate,
exchange the tyranny of the Empire for the hated
Lombard yoke. And what of the Franks? Their
time was not come. Relations once frequent be
tween the Pope and the Merovingians, seem tohave
died away in the seventh century. Councils were
seldom called by the French bishops — only eight are
recorded — and the petty kings, their wives, concu-
64

DUKES IN ITALY 65
bines, nobles, and serfs offer the dramatis personce of
a horrid, blood-stained play, in which scarcely a trace
of human kindness is discernible. Clovis had given
monasteries the right of sanctuary ; too often they
were prisons into which reluctant but defeated royalty
was thrust, its head shaved, and a gown instead of a
soldier's mail upon its back, to meditate vengeance
on the next occasion. From these kings, voluptuous,
cowardly, and imbecile, nothing could be hoped.
Yet the Byzantine rule in Italy was doomed. With
the Lombard invasion (569) the old order had come
to an end. Always advancing, the new race drove
before it to the sea, to Rome, Naples, and Otranto,
what was left of the Imperial troops. In 650 the
Lombard Duke of Beneventum held the South, while
his lord the King reigned at Pavia ; the provinces
were transformed into military departments ; instead
of a Count there was now over the cities a feudal
Guastaldo ; and above these rose the Dukes of
Beneventum, Spoleto, Tuscany, Friuli. Venice
behind its lagoons was independent, though it
acknowledged the Empire. But in this falling
state, when the Exarch was feeble and his officers
corrupt, Byzantium looked to the Pope as at once
its subject and representative, nor would be content
unless he took on himself the burden of a defence
which brought him only affliction.
In one hundred and twelve years (604-716), down
to the quarrel about image-worship, by which this
intolerable degradation was violently brought to an
end, we reckon twenty-five Popes, a series rivalling in
lack of historic greatness those who encumbered or
6

66 ICONOCLAST EMPERORS AND LOMBARD KINGS ."
disgraced the tenth century. Two names are still
remembered. Honorius (625-638), the victim of an
imprudent answer to a captious question in divinity,
was anathematised by the Sixth General Council, but
was otherwise blameless. Martin I. (649-655), in
repudiating the heresy charged upon his predecessor,
fell into the hands of Theodore Calliopas the Exarch.
He was hurried to Constantinople ; stripped in the
Emperor's sight before an innumerable crowd, who
heaped curses upon the half-dead Pontiff; dragged
through the city with an iron collar round his neck ;
and after eighty-five days of loathsome imprisonment
was exiled to the Crimea, where he died. Such was the
treatment a Pope might expect from Emperors who
loved to be despots and theologians. His tormentor,
Constans II., last of the Byzantines to visit Rome,
spoiled the city in 663 of statues and works of art past
reckoning, and took from the Pantheon its roof of
bronze. The sea claimed this plunder, little of which
ever reached the Bosporus. But it was clear that
Monothelite and Iconoclast lords of slaves would
sooner or later rouse the free West to break their
bands asunder. The Churches were drifting towards
separation. Ravenna, encouraged to brave Rome, as
the story went, by Heraclius and Constantine, saw its
Archbishop Maurus excommunicate Pope Vitalian,
who retorted in kind. A dim shadow of Ghibelline
Emperors and North Italian antipopes looms up out
of this fog in which Latin erudition, and even the
sense of history, appear to be failing from the school:
of the Palatine. Agatho in 680 can but apologise
for the ignorance of his Curia, and hope that

¦t '¥ ^1 1 ,

THE IMAGE-BREAKERS 67
Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, a Greek and a
philosopher, will come to- his help. So low had the
Imperial City fallen ! " The very profession of the
clergy is the knowledge of letters," says Cardinal
Newman, reflecting on this correspondence ; " if even
these lost it, would others retain it ? " Lombard and
Greek were both enemies of the Holy See. What was
to be the end of these things ?
Romans, Greeks, and even Syrians pass in the rapid
and obscure Papal succession ; but Constantine, who
died in 716, was the last undoubted subject of an
Eastern Court. The dispute about images, a Puritan
reform attempted by the rude Cilician peasant, Leo
the Isaurian (717-741), suddenly transported into the
church and the market-place a controversy which
could not leave the people unaffected. Instead of
abstract science, here was the practice of religion, the
visible art and daily worship now a custom of centuries,
called in question by the Emperor, defended by Pope
Gregory II., by Germanus, Bishop of Constantinople,
by John of Damascus (destined to fix the standard of
orthodoxy for Eastern Christendom), and, above all,
by the monks, the multitude, the very women and
children who pulled the ladders from under sacri
legious officials bent on defacing the Cross or
shattering the marble effigies of the Saints. What
the Popes had longed for was given them — a support
on which to lean against the hitherto unassailable
majesty of Caesar. With them now were the people
of Rome, of every Italian city, of Ravenna and
Byzantium itself. If Leo the Isaurian had learned
his lesson, as has been affirmed, from the Moslems,

68 ICONOCLAST EMPERORS AND LOMBARD KINGS
then Mohammed may be looked upon as indirectly
the occasion of the Pope's temporal dominion, with
all that it involved during eleven hundred years. -
Checked in their siege of Constantinople by Leo,
a valiant soldier, the armies of Islam had triumphed
in Africa ; the Moors, a people not Semitic, beginning
their career of romance and victory, had been con
verted to the Koran; and in 71 1 Tarik passed the
Straits of Gibraltar, to which he gave his name.
Thrice were the Berbers of the Atlas to conquer
Spain, first from the Christian " infidels," and after
wards from their own fellows in the Mussulman faith.
Not Saracens but Moors achieved this mighty enter
prise, which in 720 brought them to the Pyrenees.
In Languedoc, the old Roman city of Narbonne" was
their headquarters, whence in 725 they issued to
capture Carcassonne, and destroy Autun, while they
held Nismes to ransom. Their light horse swept into
Burgundy. In 731 they gave the shrine of St. Hilary
at Poitiers to the flames. Odo, Duke of Aquitaine,
pressed hard, called in his natural enemies the
Franks. Near Poitiers, South and North met in
their first shock of battle (732); Abderrahman was
defeated with unknown loss by Charles Martel, the
Gallo-German chief, whose surname alludes to Thor's
invincible hammer. A new royal race had come out
from the Vosges mountains, and the Crusades had '
inscribed their great initial letter of crimson and gold;!
on the chronicles of history. 3
St. Columban of Luxeuil, it is said in his Life, had
warned Theodebert, a base Merovingian, that the ruin
of his kingdom was at hand. From Austrasia, the

CHURCH OF SAN VITALE, RAVENNA. (Sixth Century^

70 ICONOCLAST EMPERORS AND LOMBARD KINGS
country between Meuse and Rhine, a pathway for
invaders, that prophecy would now be fulfilled.
Arnulf, Bishop of Metz, an Aquitanian, had been
married before consecration. His grandson was
Pepin, who defeated the successors of Dagobert II.
at Testry, near St. Quentin (687), took the family of
Clovis under his wing as Mayor of the Palace, and
left a brave bastard son, more Pagan than Christian,
this Charles of the Hammer. His wrestling was
with Frisians, Saxons, Germans of every tribe, eager
to get a footing west of the Rhine. Their Paganism
devoured his ; Charles found that the new Christians
in Germany were his best allies ; that Boniface, their
Anglo-Saxon Bishop, would be the stay of the Franks
and their unbought lieutenant ; that to keep a hold
upon Teutons he must join himself to the Roman
Pontiff. At home he behaved as a despoiler of the
clergy ; beyond the Alps he seemed to defend the
holy place against Saracens, and might prove to be
a willing champion of the Pope against the not less
intolerable Lombards.
It was in 726 that Leo the Isaurian published his
edict for the destruction of images. Next year,
when tumults had filled the streets of his Capital,
the Exarch Scholasticus put it forth in Ravenna.
Straightway, and without prompting, the people
rose. Gregory II., whose character and abilities
bore no proportion to those of his great namesake,
watched the struggle from St. Peter's Chair. His
own city, like Ravenna itself, was adorned with
mosaics which depicted Christ, the Virgin Mother,
and the Saints in glory. No one could dream that

GREGORY II. LORD OF ROME 7 1
the Pope, any more than the people, would relinquish
usages and traditions which might be traced on the
walls of the Catacombs almost to Apostolic times. But
the Lombards were now orthodox ; their King Liut
prand swooped down on Ravenna, took the popular
side, drove out the Exarch, and overran Pentapolis. If
not the unexpected, this, to Gregory and his Romans,
was in the highest degree abominable. Scholasticus
had escaped to Venice. The Pope stirred into action
the fleet of these islanders, and under his direction it
combined with troops from the centre to get back
Ravenna, which Liutprand for a moment had
quitted. Such was the ancient policy of the
Lateran. Gregory himself, says Duchesne, had
maintained in its obedience Byzantine Italy, from
Istria to Naples. He now, in effect, set up the fallen
Exarch ; doubtless to keep at a distance the " un
speakable " Lombards — as the Pope terms them again
and again. But in requital threats of assassination
were made, or fancied by the excited populace, on the
part of Leo's officers against the intrepid Pontiff. He
v/as to be murdered, the images broken ; Paul the
Exarch was marching on Rome. A general insurrec
tion announced that Italy was lost to the Emperor.
Eutychius, last Exarch, landed at Naples ; his pre
decessor had been slain in a riot ; and though
Gregory would not favour open rebellion, the Cap
tains began to set up for themselves ; Lombards
joined with Romans in a common league ; and the
citizens pledged their oath to live and die with their
orthodox Bishop. In this act of spontaneous surrender
we mark the birth of the Popes' sovereignty over Rome.

72 ICONOCLAST EMPERORS AND LOMBARD KINGS
" Their noblest title," says Gibbon, " is the free choice
of a people whom they had redeemed from slavery."
Liutprand, however, was playing a double game.
If the Pope, as it appears from his passionate
epistles to Leo (729), had in view, chiefly or alto
gether, the defence of images, and did not aim
at independence, the Lombard, a wily politician,
enlarged his territory by the Dukedom of Spoleto,
and was ready (or so he pretended) to let the Exarch
have his Rome again. He came south ; entered the
Holy City ; threw himself at Gregory's feet ; dedi
cated sword, crown, and cloak on the altar of St.
Peter's. A truce was patched up. The Exarch
withdrew to Ravenna. In 730 a Council at Rome
condemned the image-breakers and rejected Leo
from its communion. But Gregory neither deposed
the Emperor nor released his Italian subjects from
their allegiance, though he may have winked at their
withholding of the customary tribute. Leo, not
very wisely, confiscated the Papal estates in Sicily
and Calabria ; tore Illyricum from the Western
Patriarchate ; and demanded a heavier capitation
tax. At this juncture, in 731, the Pope died, and
Gregory III., a Syrian, reigned in his stead, This
was the man who, in 739, sent to Charles Martel the
keys of St. Peter's shrine and filings from his chains,
with the title of Patrician or Roman Consul, as a lure
which might tempt him over the Alps. For Liut
prand had come to the gates of Rome, and the lamps
adlimina Apostolorum, in St. Peter's itself, were seized
and borne away by his marauding troops. Would
the Eternal City become the Lombard capital ?

V
THE DONATION OF PEPIN
(739-772)
We have reached the turning-point in Papal
history. There had been a Duke of Rome, resident
in the Imperial house on the Palatine ; an exercitus
Romanus, which comprised the nobles who, however
mixed their blood, fabled a descent from the Cornelii
and the other Patricians of classic renown ; last, but
greatest, the Pontifex Maximus held his court with' its
array of clerics about the Church of the Saviour.
And how did he stand to Duke and nobles ? While
the Emperor governed, he was a subject, his election
not valid till confirmed from the Golden Horn ; and
the " army," which claimed to be the Roman People,
shared in his naming with the " venerable clergy."
Now, was the Duke to continue when the Emperor
had ceased? If not, the whole of Italy might be
absorbed into the Lombard Kingdom, and the Pope,
exercising a purely spiritual jurisdiction, would still
have been a subject, liable to the military chief at
Pavia, whose government he would consecrate but
never share. 73 '

74 THE DONATION OF PEPIN
Neither Pontiff nor citizens felt disposed. to accept
this solution. Religion, we are to understand, was
not at stake. Lombard Kings, Liutprand, Rachis,
Astolf, Didier, were as orthodox and pious according
to the standard of the age as any Carlovingians.
They founded monasteries and more than once
retired into them ; in gifts to the sanctuary they were
lavish ; their reverence for St. Peter did not fail, even
when his keys were fashioned into spears . to smite
them by the invading Franks. But once admitted
within the walls of Rome, they could not be thrust
out. Their rule would not pass with transient ex
peditions ; they were at home in Italy, the Franks
must always be foreigners. Intervention was One
thing, conquest another. From Pepin to Napoleon^;
III. French armies have come down into the Roman
States ; but on the morrow they are gone, and Pope
and people exult in their departure. With a Patrician C
whose centre of government should be at Aix-la-
Chapelle, Paris, or Worms, Rome might be free;
then the question would arise whether the Pope was
to rule the army, or the army to set up, pull down,
pursue to death, or welcome in triumph its own
Pontiff. Unaided, these turbulent sons of Romulus
could not beat back the hardy Alpine mountaineers.
At their bidding it was that Gregory III. and his
successors, who shared the popular sentiment, called .
aloud to Martel, Pepin, and Charlemagne.
The majesty of Rome, although an Emperor no
longer bore it up in the West, survived under the
name of the Republic, and in the prerogatives of St
Peter. At a distance this wonderful charm, religious

POPE Z A CHARY 75
and full of mystery, wrought its effect. What was a
Lombard captain of yesterday, when compared with
the shadow of Augustus, or with a living Pope ?
Franks, in whom the Christian faith was now after
long eclipse coming to the light again, would have
looked on calmly while the Roman exercitus fled
before Liutprand. But if the Apostle sent for them,
his command would not fall on deaf ears.
Yet Charles Martel, with Germans and Moors upon
his hands, might have been unable, as he was perhaps
unwilling, to take the decisive step. Gregory's loud
laments had not been answered, when both the high
contracting parties died, within a month of each other,
in 741. A man of remarkable character, a Greek
named Zachary, endowed with no little share of that
firmness which we attribute to the Roman, succeeded.
He met the pious though aspiring Liutprand in 742 at
Terni, overawed him by a fervent appeal to the in
visible powers, and won from him all the estates of
the Church in Sabine territory, as well as Narni, Sutri,
and Ancona. A truce of thirty years with the Roman
Dukedom was agreed upon. Zachary made a
triumphant march, on his return, from the Pantheon
to St. Peter's, amid the plaudits of his people. But
Liutprand assaulted Ravenna. Once more the Pope
stretched out his hand to save the Exarch ; he
travelled in state to Pavia ; confronted and subdued
his Lombard, who gave back what he had taken, to
die soon after with the reputation of a Saint. Rachis
followed him upon the throne. He too, in 749, broke
the peace, and invested Perugia. Zachary sought
him out, enlarged on the favourite medieval text,

76

THE DONATION OF PEPIN

" All is vanity, except to love God and keep His
commandments," drew him from the camp to a
monastic life, and saw him a votary at Monte Cassino.
There he must have been the associate of Carloman,
Charles Martel's first-born son, who had quitted the

POPE ZACHARY, A.D

Mayoralty of the Palace in favour of Pepin, his
younger brother.
Now came to pass the momentous series of events
which bound in everlasting alliance the French nation
with St. Peter at Rome. Pope Zachary was to reap
where Gregory the Great had scattered the seed.

BONIFACE, APOSTLE OF TEUTONS 77
During the Merovingian period, Christian and indeed
natural virtues had seemed to die utterly away among
the Franks. Queens like Fredegonde and Brunehaut,
Furies in mortal shape, had made even that genera
tion pale with astonishment at their awful wickedness.
Irish monks, of whom Columban was the most
illustrious by his severity of life and strength of pur
pose, had thundered against the heathen vices which
they could not extirpate. They preached to the
Neustrians, the Swiss, the Italians ; but they turned
aside from the German folk, although Kilian at
Wiirzburg, and the philosophic Virgilius at Salzburg,
have left their names as Apostles across the Rhine.
An Englishman of Devon it was, Winfred or Boniface,
who now stood forth, a fine historic figure, to unite
the Pope with the dynasty of Pepin and to create
in these^ immense Teutonic forests the churches,
townships, and Christian peoples that should later
on come into view as the Holy Roman Empire.
Boniface (680-756) made several journeys to the
shrine of the Apostles. He was submissive in teach
ing as in station to " St. Peter and his Vicar." When
he founded the See of Mayence, which was to be
supreme over Christian Germany, and that of Cologne,
second only to Mayence, he insisted that they should
always ask for the pallium — the token of spiritual
authority — from the Pope. His orthodox mind
could not endure the errors, as he thought them, of
Scots and speculative dreamers like Adalbert,
Clement, Samson, and the more learned Virgilius.
The same frank English temper led him to remark
on the venality and corruption of which he heard

78 THE DONATION OF PEPIN
as prevailing in the Roman Court. Living as a Saint,
he died a missionary and a martyr, among the wild
Frisians, in 756. But his work was accomplished.
Four years earlier he had anointed Pepin King of
France in the name of Pope Zachary.
It was a deed without precedent. No Pope had
hitherto given away kingdoms or adjudicated between
the nominal sovereign, legitimate but helpless, and
his lieutenant, who could only be a usurper if he
mounted the throne. Pepin sent his priest, Fulrad,
and Burchard, Bishop of Wiirzburg, to consult
Zachary, before the nobles elected him. Then the
Pope authorised what the nation executed at Soissons
in their Field of Mars ; he spoke a winged word,
" Let the man be called king that in fact is so," and
it was done. Childeric, stripped of the dignity to
which he had been born, found himself a prisoner in
a convent. While we bear in mind that the laws of
succession were unsettled in a barbarous age ; that,;
the Merovingians had long lost their grip of the
sceptre ; and that Pepin's ancestors had rendered
inestimable service to France as to Christendom, it
is impossible to deny that this was a revolution,
peacefully carried out, with the consent and
consecration of the highest religious authority. ;
Could the Pope give crowns? Then he could take
them away. Such was to be the public law of
Europe during the next six hundred years, never in
principle resisted until Philip the Fair withstood and
overcame Boniface VIII. It is significant that the
same nation which now accepted a ruler at the Pope's
hands should be the first to proclaim that kings are

NEW FRENCH DYNASTY 79
inviolable, and their crowns beyond the jurisdiction
of the Canon Law.
Writing to the iconoclast Leo, Gregory II. had
warned him that the Popes were the bond of union
and mediators of peace between East and West.
" The eyes of the nations are fixed on our humility,"
continued the Pontiff,; "they revere as a God upon
earth the Apostle St. Peter, whose image you threaten
to destroy." Language as bold as it was affected,
yet no fiction. In the memorable transaction by
which Pepin's dynasty became legitimate and sacred,
St. Peter had done his part. It remained that the
Frankish monarch should do his. Constantine V., an
able ruler who has come down to us in a dark and
probably calumnious legend — for, like his father, he
pursued images with a Mohammedan fury — still laid
claim to Rome and the Exarchate. Had he not
defaced the icons, he would have found an ally in his
Roman Bishops, reluctant to face the unknown,
counselling moderation lest a vigorous tyrant in Pavia
should leap into the saddle and ride them down in
their own city. But Astolf, the Lombard, saw in the
abandoned provinces a desirable prey. He took
Ravenna for the last time ; extinguished the Byzan
tine government; and held all as far as Perugia (which
escaped him) before 751. Not long afterwards
Zachary left the Papal Chair to Stephen II., who
made a truce of forty years with his Northern assail
ants, to be broken in four months. At this point we I
reach the Frankish descent upon Italy ; the Donation
of Pepin ; and the establishment of St. Peter as a
secular prince. /

80 THE DONATION OF PEPIN
Southern chroniclers are. never to be trusted when
they speak of their foes. Violent terms, scarlet adjec
tives, which the facts will not warrant, appear to them
as lawful in war as any other weapons. That the
Lombards despised the Romans and called them liars
and poltroons, full of lust and greed, we know from
Liutprand. And that the Romans, though too pro
bably the offspring of slaves or fugitives from every
province of the Empire, scorned these tall, fair-faced
men of the North as barbarians, is manifest in every
line which Gregory the Great and succeeding Popes
have left us concerning them. Had the Lombards
told their own story, it would doubtless be still more
evident than it is now that the quarrel which brought
Pepin over Mont Cenis was on behalf of the Roman'
Republic, to which the Pope served as a figure-head,
and that it did not originate in the high region of
doctrine or discipline.
Astolf demanded once and again that the Imperial
City should submit, pay a yearly poll tax of a
golden crown, and leave him in possession of
all he had seized in Central Italy. He could
not win the city, but he dug up and carried away
the bodies of certain Saints, to be laid in a shrine
at Pavia. Some fruitless negotiations followed.
The Pope sent urgent messages to the French King,
and in return Chrodegang, Bishop of Metz, and the
legendary Duke Autchaire or Ogier, were despatched
as ambassadors to the Lateran. From Constanti
nople an injunction, which Stephen humbly accepted,
bade him journey to the Lombard Court and there in
person demand the restoration of Ravenna. With

STEPHEN II. IN FRANCE 8l
his Frankish protectors he set out, October 14, 753.
The Imperial Legate was in his train. On arriving,
despite Astolf's menaces, he spoke up boldly, offered
gifts, and pleaded with tearful eloquence for the
Greek Emperor's lost provinces. But his heart was
with Rome, and only his words for the Exarchate.
Astolf would yield nothing ; but he did his utmost to
keep the Pontiff from prosecuting his expedition
across the Alps. They separated ; the Byzantine
Legate, with what nobles had accompanied him, went
back to Rome, and disappears from history. Stephen
and his clerks crossed the St. Bernard ; stayed a
moment at the abbey of St. Maurice ; received a
welcome from Prince Charles at Langres ; and on the
Epiphany, January 6, 754, found themselves in the
presence of Pepin at his rude Teutonic castle of
Ponthion. The King prostrated himself and held Stephen's
bridle ; the Pope/with his attendants, amid solemn
chantings, knelt in sackcloth before this mighty pro
tector, imploring his aid for St. Peter and the Roman
Republic. Still the argument ran upon " restitution,"
but Pepin brushed it aside. He would neither defend
the Eastern Emperor nor quarrel with him. He was
all for peace and accommodation between the Lom
bards and St. Peter. So the winter passed. Stephen,
in the monastery of St. Denis, sickened and recovered.
Again he crowned the successful usurper, his wife,
and his sons. From Monte Cassino an unexpected
messenger had arrived to take part with Astolf— the
royal monk, Carloman, Pepin's brother. It was a
bootless errand. He could not be suffered to stand
1 7

82 THE DONATION OF PEPIN
in the way of these great impending events ; and in
the seclusion of a religious cloister at Vienne he
expired with almost dramatic propriety. After long
debates, war was decided upon at Quercy-sur-Oise,
in a popular assembly, or, as we should say, a Parlia^'
ment, Easter 754. The passage of the Alps followed
at once. Astolf was besieged in Pavia ; without
serious fighting he gave up his conquests, at least on
paper ; and the Franks went home. Stephen, dis
trustful but impotent, returned to his own place. His
fears were well-founded. On New Year's Day, 756,
the Lombard, with three divisions of a plundering
army, was encamped round the Roman gates from
the Salarian to San Pancrazio.
Fresh envoys from Stephen, at their head the
martial Abbot Warneharius — a Frank who delighted
in his armour and set the bad example of a fighting
churchman, too frequent during the Middle Age — got
clear of the Lombards, and crossing the sea reached
Pepin. They bore three letters, couched in terms
of deepest affliction ; the third, addressed to king,
nobles, and army, was written in the person of St.
Peter, and already spoke of the Gesta Dei per
Francos in terms which, if inspired, were flattering.
Myth and history embraced ; the battle was won.
A second time Pepin descended with his warriors
from the Cenis ; once more Astolf yielded ; the Greek
Silentiary John begged for the lands, the cities which
his master had not been able to conquer. He was
answered with civil scorn. Devotion to the Apostle,
and the hope of pardon for his sins, had been the
motives which actuated the Frank who now, by right

TEMPORAL POWER FOUNDED 83
of conquest, made over all his winnings to the Holy
See. Fulrad, another warlike Abbot, in command of
a small detachment, passed from town to town,
accompanied by the Lombard commissioners ; he re
ceived their keys from a rejoicing people, and laid
them on the shrine of St. Peter along with the legal
document which conveyed them to their new lord.
This is Pepin's never-to-be-forgotten Donation.
Its text can no longer be found. But in Stephen's
Life, as told by the Liber Pontificalis, a catalogue of
the territories informs us that Comacchio and Ravenna
passed to the Pope with all the country between
Apennines and Adriatic, from Forli in the north to
Jesi and Sinigaglia in the south — dead cities now,
not easily reached by the tourist, and with nothing
to show but antiquities. Ancona was not included
nor the rest of the March. "Faenza, Imola, Bologna,
Ferrara lay outside the royal grant. Except Narni,
this so-called restitution comprised no more than
Astolf had taken — the Exarchate and Pentapolis in
their latest period. The Roman republicans still
wondered if they could get again what Liutprand
had borne away, and round off their possessions with
Bologna and Osimo.
Yes, it might be, when Astolf to their delight was
killed out hunting, and his brother Rachis, the monk
of Monte Cassino, called to succeed him, was opposed
by the Duke of Istria, Desiderius. Pope Stephen
sent Fulrad, the warlike Abbot, and his own brother,
whom we might describe as the Cardinal, Paul of Via
Lata, to this aspiring Duke. The Duke promised,
if he won the crown, to give back the remaining

84 THE DONATION OF PEPIN
cities, Ferrara, Ancona — whatever they demanded.
Desiderius became king ; Stephen wrote to Pepin
with transports of joy; he was now, in a manner,
lord paramount of Italy. Rachis, at the Pope's
order, retired to his convent. But the crowned
Lombard kept only half his promise, and fresh
troubles came in sight.
At this stage a series of deplorable events in Rome,
to be often repeated amid fury and bloodshed, must
engage our unwilling attention. Stephen died in 757.
He belonged, it would appear, to a noble rather than
a clerical family — we will explain how much this
meant in due course — and his brother Paul was
elected, not without opposition from Theophylact, a
name which recurs with tragic frequency in the
Roman annals. Paul was severe : his exactions were
large, his prisons crowded ; and the Imperial Law, !
which he took over with his new dominion, inflicted
death where Franks or Lombards would have allowed
wehrgelt, or a fine. He began speedily to be detested
as a tyrant ; but his victims or enemies bided their
time. No sooner was he elected than he wrote to Pepin,
interposed between Desiderius and the rebel Dukes
of Spoleto and Beneventum, sought for them (though
they were clearly in the wrong) a French protectorate,
and urged on the Lombard that he should fulfil his
engagements. Pepin received these overtures with
politic serenity. But he declined to cross the Alps
any more. His envoys made peace on the principle,
"Keep what you have got and be satisfied." Paul
submitted, perhaps because the Greek Emperor was
holding out a hand to France, where the veneration

ROMAN SACRILEGES 85
of images had never struck deep root. The French
king steered a middle course ; he made Desiderius a
sort of Vicar in Italy, left the religious question to the
Pope, and kept the peace. We shall have occasion,
not once or twice, to contrast the moderation of these
French Constantines, when Roman affairs call them
in, with the intense and blind fury which seems
indigenous to the City on the Seven Hills. It was
now to burst forth like a volcano, throwing up ashes
and fire.
Paul was dying in 767 when Toto, Duke of Nepi,
broke into the city with an armed band. He repre
sented the nobles, who could not endure that a priest
and his acolyths should rule over them. Toto would
not have scrupled at murdering a Pope ; but Chris
topher, who had been Paul's Secretary of State,
prevented this horrible sacrilege ; yet he could not
hinder the monstrous Duke from seizing the Lateran
(Paul had now expired) and proclaiming his brother
Constantine Bishop of Rome. That the elect ruffian
was a soldier and not a cleric ; that George, Bishop of
Palestrina, was compelled to ordain him on the spot ;
and that the Sunday afterwards he received episcopal
consecration from this prelate and two others at St.
Peter's shrine, throws a strange and far from heavenly
light on the Roman world of the eighth century.
Christopher still held out ; he was a captive, then he
escaped — but not till a year had passed — to the Court
of Pavia with his son Sergius, and came back, the
Lombards helping him, on his errand of revenge.
Toto was killed in the fight that ensued ; Constantine
fell into the victor's hands. The atrocious Greek

86 THE DONATION OF PEPIN
custom of blinding prisoners was now common,
especially in Italian tumults. Constantine, his
brother Passivus, and the Bishop Theodore had
their eyes put out. But this was not until a fresh
Pope, Stephen III., had been elected— a feeble, good
man, who let Christopher execute judgment as he
pleased. When no more victims were forthcoming,
order reigned in the Lateran.
Pepin did not choose to acknowledge Constantine ;
and his sons, who succeeded him in 768, despatched
no fewer than thirteen bishops to the Lateran Council,
which was to cover up the irregularities committed
by Stephen III. before and during his election. For
he had earlier recognised Constantine as Pope. This
unhappy creature, thrust on his knees in presence of
the assembly, was reviled, beaten and flung out, and
the acts of his Pontificate burnt. His ordinations
were declared null and void — a fatal precedent which,
one hundred years later, led up to the most ignomi
nious of all the incidents that have darkened the
history of the Popes. Stephen III., not relishing the
species of tutelage in which he was held by Chris
topher, triumphant over the military faction, called
in Desiderius, who came on pilgrimage — he was
sincerely devout, though shifty — during the Lent of
771. A revolution was the consequence. Paul
Afiarta, then celebrated, and a rival of the Secretary,
served as a go-between to all the interests leagued
against him. Stephen, a captive in the Lombard
tents round St. Peter's, sent for Christopher and
Sergius, to whom he had bound himself by solemn
oaths ; they came at his command ; he celebrated

PAUL AFIARTA 87
Mass in the Basilica, and at once entered Rome
across the bridge with Desiderius, leaving these men
to their fate. Gratiosus, the assassin of Toto, whom
Christopher had raised to a dukedom, now turned
traitor. From the Apostles' shrine the unhappy pair

POPE HADRIAN I. A.D. 772.

were dragged out at nightfall by Afiarta and led to
the bridge of St. Angelo. There, by a just but fearful
judgment, father and son were blinded. As they
had done to Constantine, so was it done to them..
Christopher died three days afterwards ; Sergius lived
a year in the great prison of the Lateran. He was

88 THE DONATION OF PEPIN
drawn thence by Afiarta not many days before
Stephen's death, half strangled, and buried alive
under an arch in the Via Merulana. Stephen lay
helpless in the hands of Desiderius, who could, and
did, threaten him with the consequences of these
murders if he made appeal to the Kings of France,
In 772 the Pope went to his account, and Hadrian,
the future friend and counsellor of Charlemagne,
ascended the Apostolic Chair.

VI
CHARLEMAGNE, PATRICIAN OF ROME
(772-800)
On 'an average, the duration of a Papal reign is less
than eight years. Hadrian I. ruled for twenty:three
(772-795). He stands out thus between Silvester in
the fourth century and Pius VI., who closed the
eighteenth, by his near approach to "the years of
Peter." Learned, as the age reckoned learning ; of
illustrious descent ; of pious and edifying morals ; he
satisfied the military by his pedigree, and the clergy
by his devotion to their cause. Under Afiarta, the
Lombard interest had governed Rome by proscrip
tions, exile, and murder. Young Carloman, the
French senior king, meditated vengeance on the
assassins of Christopher and Sergius ; his brother,
Charlemagne that was to be, had married, or, at
least, had taken to himself, after divorcing a previous
wife, Desiderata, daughter of the Lombard chief.
But in a year the lady was sent home ; Hildegard,
of a great Suabian family, took her place. Carloman
89

90 CHARLEMAGNE, PATRICIAN OF ROME
died, and his children were set aside in favour of
their ambitious uncle in an assemby near Laon.
Their mother, Gerberga, took the children and fled
with them to the Court of Desiderius, who now
staked all on a decisive throw. He lost, and his
kingdom came to an end.
Before Gerberga's arrival, he had despatched an
embassy to Hadrian, who replied by sending to him
Paul Afiarta, as an easy means of getting him away
from the city. Scarcely was the Chamberlain gone,
when rumour announced that the Lombards had
seized Faenza and Ferrara ; that they were moving
against Ravenna ; and that Desiderius would insist
on the coronation of the exiled French infants by
Hadrian. Into this scheme Afiarta flung himself
heart and soul. He boasted that, willing or unwilling, '
the Roman Pontiff should meet the King's wishes.
But the Pope knew his man. A judicial inquiry was
opened at Rome touching the circumstances under
which Sergius had been half-strangled and buried ,
alive. The guilt 'of Afiarta came to light. His
accomplices died in prison or were exiled to Con
stantinople. The grand culprit, arrested by Hadrian's
orders in Ravenna, confessed his crime, and before
the Pope could deliver him out of his enemy's
keeping, was put to death by the Archbishop and
the Consular as a friend to the Lombards. Thus
broke up in tempest the unnatural peace between
Rome and Pavia. We seem to discern in Afiarta
the strong man of action, unscrupulous and bloody,
but a Roman patriot, whose alliance with the Italians
of the North meant death to the foreign invader.

FRENCH DESCENT ON LOMBARDY 91
By his Dukes of Spoleto and Beneventum, the
Lombard still wasted St. Peter's patrimony with
fire and sword. Hadrian sent to Charlemagne at
Thionville (now Diedenhofen, since 1871), and his
appeal, which might have been unheeded, was enforced
by Desiderius, who marched on Rome with Carloman's
children in his train. At Viterbo he was met by three
Bishops, charged to warn him off under the menace
of anathema. It was an ominous expression, employed
for the first time in a dispute concerning the Temporal
Power. But for the moment it had an effect. The
King returned to Pavia. Some idle negotiations led
on to the expedition which, about Midsummer, 773,
came down by the valley of Aosta and Mont Cenis,
under Charles and his uncle Bernard. The passes were
betrayed to them by old Italic natives who bore no
goodwill to their Lombard chieftains. Adelchis, the
Prince Royal, gained some advantages, but famine
dispersed his troops ; he was compelled to take refuge
in Verona with Duke Ogier and Carloman's children ;
the road lay open to Pavia. Both the King and his
son stood out manfully behind their thick walls. No
resistance was made._elsewhere. Spoleto, tired of its
dukes, declared itsejf subject to the -Holy See.
Ancona, Fermo, and other cities followed its
example. Hadrian .was lord of Central Italy before
Charles could grant it away to him.
Verona fell, and Adelchis fled to the Greeks. Pavia
would not surrender. In the meanwhile, Charles came
on pilgrimage to Rome and was received (Easter, 774)
with the honours formerly given to the Exarch. At
St. Peter's, Hadrian waited at the head of the great

92 CHARLEMAGNE, PATRICIAN OF ROME
staircase to welcome his protector. Charles— a
notable sight — ascended it on his knees, kissing the
steps, as is customary still when pilgrims go up the
Scala Santa. The Pope embraced him ; they entered!
the Basilica hand in hand ; the solemn chants re
sounded, and the ceremonies of Holy Week began.
On Wednesday after Easter (April 6, 774) was
held the memorable meeting in St. Peter's which
sealed this transaction, the birthday, in no questionable
sense, of our modern Europe. Hadrian exhibited a
document, drawn up, it was said, at Quercy-sur-Oise
in 754, which, under the name and signature of Pepin
and his two sons, made a present to the Pope not only
of the Exarchate much enlarged, but of Spoleto,
Beneventum, Tuscany, Corsica, Venetia, and Istria.
In accordance with this more than royal, donation,
we are told, Charles had a new formula composed*
copied, and solemnly ratified. One document was
put into Hadrian's keeping; another was left wi.th St.
Peter in his shrine. Then the French King went
back to besiege Pavia. It unclosed its gatesjj
Desiderius with his Queen Ansa retired from, the
world ; and at Corbey the last of the Lombardsjrived
and died a monk, with the reputation of sairftly
virtues. ,
So extensive a donation as this of Quercy, though
acknowledged by Charles in public assembly, takes
away our breath. It was never fulfilled ; we ask
whether it was really proposed. Did we possess the
original diploma, we might judge for ourselves. But
that parchment has long since disappeared; and when
we reflect on the manipulation of ancient deeds which

sK
Co
^5

94 CHARLEMAGNE, PATRICIAN OF ROME
the legal conscience of those times indulged in and
thought no crime, we can hardly take on trust a
supposed engagement which would have made the
Pope nothing less than King of Italy.
In any case, all that Charles yielded to Hadrian at
this time were certain cities in Emilia; but even upon
these Leo, the Archbishop of Ravenna, laid violent
hands. He did so in the name of his Saint, the martyr
Apollinaris. Ravenna claimed its share of the Lombard
spoil. Its first Bishop, the story said, was a disciple
of St. Peter ; he could not be overlooked in the dis
tribution of that Apostle's patrimony which was going
forward. The late vassals of the Exarch were restive
under what they called the Roman yoke. Neither
in spirituals nor in temporals did they welcome it.
Their Archbishop aimed at independence, like the
prelates of Milan, Aquileia, and Grado, who had
never been content to bow down before the Pope as
Metropolitan or Patriarch of the West. Bishop
Sergius in 756 had interpreted Pepin's donation as a
gift of the Exarchate and Pentapolis to St. Peter at
Ravenna. But Stephen III. had called him to Rome;
kept him there until he submitted; and sent him back
as his own Vicar. When Sergius died, Michael the
Scriniarius was made bishop, despite the Pope's re
monstrances, and held the See during a )?ear. Then
Leo came in, and his prompt execution of Afiarta
shows what manner of man he was. While seizing the
booty left after Desiderius had abdicated, he seems
never to have lost credit with Charlemagne; it is
possible that his death in 778 relieved Hadrian of an
adversary whom he could not despise. Ravenna

THE PAPAL COURT 95
maintained its pretensions. Italy, like the ancient
Greek world, was fated to be the battle-ground of civic
strife, every little town against its neighbour, a prey
to foreign foes because of its internecine and in
curable factions.
Upon Ravenna and the adjacent territory Hadrian
could now recover his purchase. He was continually
adding parts of the old Sabine country, of Campagna
and Capua, to his jurisdiction as a temporal prince.
The Pope was henceforth to be a lord over many.
He numbered his feudal retainers, who did him suit
and service. He held a brilliant Court. He made
generous donations to churches, charities, and
especially tp the city of Rome, which Hadrian
restored and, beautified. His kinsmen were to share
in these unexpected honours. Paschalis and Cam-
pulus were nephews of the Pope. It is the first
occasion on which we hear that word, destined to
play a part as disedifying as momentous in Papal
history. They became Primicerius and Sacellarius,
heads of the Chancery and the Finances. There
were always two sides, seldom if ever in agreement,
of the Roman administration. On the Palatine
resided the lay officials, who kept up the fiction dear
to that proud people of a Republic, free and sovereign
over Italian cities. At the Lateran dwelt their
master, when he was not their slave or their victim,
the Pontifex Maximus, with his twenty-five Cardinal
priests and his seven Deacons, to whom we must add
the seven suburban Bishops. The Papal Palace had
its chamberlains, esquires, masters of ceremonies ; it
was already displaying the forms of Byzantine hom-

96 CHARLEMAGNE, PATRICIAN OF ROME
age, the prostrations, enthronements, and studied
acclamations which are yet observed in the Roman
Court. An officer predestined to greatness was the
Archdeacon, first of the seven Cardinal Deacons. In
the Chancery writers were trained ; a Latin style not
altogether barbarous was preserved amid the frightful
grammar and inflated diction of the period ; and
notaries superintended the archives, issued new docu
ments, and edited old ones ; nor was the library quite
forgotten. But the entire government devolved on the Pope,
who, imitating the policy of Augustus, took no fresh
title, and whose wisdom it was to veil the transition
from serfdom to independence under well-worn
phrases. Hence a confusion of terms, rights, laws,
privileges, exemptions, and contradictory claims,
which no acuteness of jurist or historian has ever been
able to clear up. What were the limits of jurisdiction
for the Pope, the Patrician, the People ? Seek them
in the direct power, the indirect influence that each
was able to exert ; when the waves mounted, the
sands were covered ; as ebb-tide came after flood,
again the sands stretched out unbroken. Living
forces, often conquered, yet in their essence uncon
querable, struggled, and to this daycare struggling,
each for supremacy ; but the Constitution, the Magna"
Charta, which would reconcile them, has not yet been
written. Only this we may affirm. Pope and aristocrat''
were opposed from the beginning. It was not on
purely religious grounds that the Pontiff held or
added to his temporal dominion, for-, how could

FACTIONS IN ROME 97
religion be affected by his rule over Capua, Ferrara,
and cities across the Apennines ? Nor did the
nobles, as a class, look up to him with reverence, or
at any time take into account his relations to the
Church at large. In their eyes he appeared like
any other feudal sovereign, whom they would resist,
dethrone, murder without scruple — it was the fortune
of war — unless he were willing to purchase a doubt
ful immunity by leaving the government at their
disposal, and sharing with them tax and tribute from
the subject people. That divinity which, as we view
the Pope's origin and venerable claims, should have
hedged him above all men against sacrilege, never
once hindered the Romans from proceeding to
extremities with their ruler, alive and dead. In a
ferocious time, they yielded nothing in barbaric
violence to Franks or Easterns, and their outlook
on the world was bounded by the walls of their
blood-stained city. These factions, which often con
verted the Lateran or St. Peter's into a Colosseum
where wild beasts tore one another, had sprung up
long ago in the days of Pope Symmachus (501), and
were to break out again after Hadrian's decease.
Elected from a noble house, he satisfied the Roman
"army" for awhile; but did he satisfy the clergy?
We may conjecture from the sequel that a sullen
discontent brooded on their wrongs and waited for
the day of reaction.
Outside Rome it was not likely that the princes
and potentates overthrown by Charlemagne would
keep still. Hildebrand of Spoleto, Rotgard of Friuli,
Arichis down at Beneventum, were all stirring.

98 CHARLEMAGNE, PATRICIAN OF ROME
Adelchis, now in the South, urged them on ; Bene
ventum was to inherit the fallen dignity of Exarch.
In 776 Charlemagne appeared on the plains of
Lombardy ; he slew Rotgard in the first encounter,
and went back to his German wars. But he turned
a deaf ear when Hadrian spoke of the magnificent
promises made at Quercy and St. Peter's, which were
not yet fulfilled. When he came to Rome the
second time, in 780, a still more imposing Lombard
league demanded his attention. Arichis, the Bene-
ventine Exarch, son-in-law of Desiderius, and the
Patrician of Sicily, were laying waste Campania.
Much was attempted, little achieved, by the restless
Greeks. But, in the sequel, Hadrian gave up Terra-
cina ; Grimbald contrived to secure the independence;
of Beneventum ; and the Holy See bartered its
claims on Spoleto and Tuscany for the tribute which
these Dukedoms had paid into the treasury of Pavia.
To make it quite clear that the Donation of Charle
magne would not be exceeded, his sons Pepin and
Louis were crowned Kings of Italy and Aquitaine.
Under a new form the /Lombard monarchy was
revived. Nevertheless, aj his third visit, in 787,
Charles gave his "friend. and brother," for whom he
entertained a sincere affection, Viterbo, Orvieto, and
some other prizes in Romari.Tuscany.
The sum appears to be this. Pope Hadrian
obtained for the Duchy (not the Province) of Rome
those limits which it preserved during the entire
Middle Age and almost down to 1870. He was
master of the Exarchate, Pentapolis, and the inter
vening territories as far as Perugia; but Spoleto

GIFTS TO THE HOLY SEE 99
remained independent. From Charlemagne he had
gained the Northern provinces and those on the
Eastern slope of the Apennines. But in Rome
and Perugia his dominion, never precisely deter
mined, was a substitute for that of the Greek
Emperors, cast off by the people because of their
image-breaking heresy. Towards the South, as
Byzantium lost, the Pope won ; we shall see him
putting forth claims by little and little to Naples, to
Sicily, and to all the Italian islands. By way of
recompense for this " pact of love and loyalty " on I
his part, Charles is made Patrician of the Romans.
He was to mount higher yet, but not in the lifetime
of Hadrian, who died on December 26, 795. The
same day Leo III. was elected.

VII
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
(800-814)
SUCH headlong haste, which in later times was
forbidden by regulations touching the obsequies of
a Pope and the choice of his successor, must have
been due to the still smouldering feud between clergy
and army. Leo's election is described as unanimous ;
events showed by and by that it was not grateful to
Hadrian's nephews, put down now from their high
offices of dignity and emolument. At once Leo 'sent
to Charlemagne, Patrician and Consul, the certificate
of his election, with St. Peter's keys and the Roman
standard — formalities hitherto not observed — which
allowed or invited the Frankish ruler's interposition
as a judge of appeal, were the electors disposed to
make one. A legate even was asked for who might
receive the popular oath of allegiance to Charles,
Angilbert, a French Abbot, was sent, but no allegiance
sworn. In the Lateran palace Leo built a triclinium,
or dining hall, which he adorned with mosaics ; Christ

LEO III. OUTRAGED 10 1
giving the keys to Silvester, the labarum to Constan
tine ; St. Peter bestowing on Leo the pallium, and
on Charlemagne the royal banner. Rome had two
sovereigns, it would appear. But the Romans
obeyed neither, except when they had no choice.
Arn, Archbishop of Salzburg, wrote to Alcuin in
798 from the city that discord was busy and the
conduct of Leo himself not altogether apostolic.
Paschalis and Campulus spread these reports or
took advantage of them ; a conspiracy was formed,
and on St. George's Day, 799, as the Pope rode out
in procession, these discontented churchmen saw
their chance. At San Silvestro he was pulled off
his horse by a troop of armed men. Hadrian's
Cardinal-nephews flung themselves upon him bodily ;
they did their best to tear out his tongue and his
eyes ; but not succeeding, dragged him into the
church, beat him till he fainted, and left him for
dead in front of the altar. Night came, and he was
thrus't into a cell at Sant' Erasmo on the Caelian. His
assailants, no dOubt, supposed that if he escaped
death, a blind and dumb Pope could not be allowed
to govern Christendom.
But Leo, as by miracle, recovered. The French
legate, Wirundus, and the Duke of Spoleto, helped
him to flee out of the city. Charlemagne com
manded his presence at Paderborn, gave him a
splendid greeting, and sent him back with a troop
of German Counts and Bishops. His return was a
triumph ; the insurrection went out in smoke ; yet
charges had been made and must be met if the
Pope's good name were not to be lost for ever.

102 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
In his own painted triclinium Leo confronted the
Frankish judges ; Paschalis and Campulus were
handed over to the royal power ; but, manifestly,
until Charles himself appeared on the scene no
conclusion would be reached. He came once more
to Rome. On December i, 800, before clergy and
laity in St. Peter's, the cause was opened by, their
secular sovereign. Yet who would accuse ? And
how was the Supreme Pontiff to be judged ? He
consented to purge himself by oath in another
assembly on December 23 — a humiliating;! and
dangerous example, in which the majesty • of the
name of Leo underwent eclipse.
Two days later Christmas brought the people
together again. Mass had been chanted, and the
King lay prostrate before St. Peter's shrine, when, at
a given signal, the Pope, his suppliant of yesterday,
took a diadem from the altar and set it on his brows,
the choir breaking forth in acclamation : " To Charles
the Augustus, crowned by God, great and pacific
Emperor of the Romans, long life and victory!"
His "lauds" followed, as in the triumphs of old ; he
was already anointed, but on the head of his youthful
son and namesake the holy oil was now poured ; the
Empire. of the West had come to life in a Frankish
chieftain, after an abeyance of three hundred and
twenty-four years.
Not the same as that which Augustus bequeathed
to his successors. For the first time a Pope had
crowned an Emperor, on his knees before St. Peter's
Confession. This was the everlasting mosaic which
all through the Middle Ages kings and nations saw

EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF THE EMPEROR CHARLEMAGNE IN THE
VESTIBULE OF ST. Peter's. (Cornacchini.)

IO4 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
above their heads when they looked up to Rome, the
Capital of Christendom. In their mystic view, which
deepened as years went on, no man could be God's
lieutenant over the people unless crowned and
anointed like Solomon by the priests in the sanctuary.
Who was equal in exploits or renown to Charles the
Great ? Yet he it was, and not another, that had
received the insignia of royalty from a Pope in the
attitude of feudal obeisance. An age that delighted
in symbols, that could not read, and therefore attached
to visible ceremonies an importance we scarcely com
prehend, gave to this Christmas pageant the value of
those hieratic and wonder-working pictures in which
its religion found so vivid an expression. The new
Roman Empire was, from its birth, a Theocracy.
But the Emperor could not be, as in Pagan days,
Pontifex Maximus, and this distinction of persons
should have warned Pope Leo that a Charter, or
Concordat, was necessary to prevent misunderstand
ings. None had been devised ; the act of Christmas,
800, has all the air of an impromptu suddenly got up
and carried into effect as if to atone for the humilia
tion of two days previously. A candid no less than
ingenious writer, Duchesne, has reminded us that
the False Donation of Constantine, dating from 774,
alluded to by Hadrian, and probably the work of
Lateran scribes, must needs represent the idea then
favoured at Rome of an Imperial but absentee protector.
The first Christian Emperor, said this lawyer's romance.
had surrendered to Pope Silvester " all the provinces,
places, and cities of Italy or the regions of the West."
Could not, then, Leo yield on his own terms such

CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTENDOM 105
powers as he might choose to a vicar in temporals,
who would draw his sword always on the Pontiff's
behalf, never against him ? Justinian's Pandects
were forgotten in these barbaric Occidental nations ;
and though Charlemagne legislated for many peoples,
he could scarcely write his name ; he was no student
of law-books, and had only monks for jurists. His
actions demonstrate how little he was disposed to be
merely a Papal legate on the thro'ne. Yet even an
Emperor must reckon with captains who would not
always obey, and with a clergy to whom the Donation
of Constantine speedily became a corner-stone of
history and jurisprudence. Latin Christendom had
assumed the form of a Teutonic Empire.
Natural, inevitable, under the conditions of the
ninth century, this bold idea, however imperfectly
realised, was alone capable of hindering a return to
the tribal chaos out of which order had been slowly
• emerging. It enabled the Pope to act on all ranks and
dignities throughout the West, as a spiritual teacher
indeed, but with a two-edged sword at his command.
It gave to the nations who have established their
laws and carried their civilisation over all continents
an outward and visible unity. When Byzantium
turned more and more towards the rising sun, or
shrank within the walls of. Valens, it created an
independent, homogeneous Europe, one amid all its
dissensions, arrayed in a feudal, an ecclesiastical
hierarchy, at the summit of which sat enthroned
the Pope and the Emperor, fountains of law, justice
and religion. In the august CEcumenical Councils at
the Lateran, on the banks of the Rhone, or in the ,

106 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
city of Constance, a Parliament of the peoples met :
there was felt and acknowledged the claim of brother
hood among Christians, so far as an age of embittered
and ignorant controversy could imagine it. The
Popes, by their restoration of the Empire, but with
the cross above its crown, were doing for our Western
world that which Mohammed and his Caliphs
attempted to do for the Arabs, Persians, Egyptians,
and Moors. Nor is it possible to conceive that
Europe would have held its own against the Moslem
onset — which, had it been victorious, must have put
an end to the Christian Church and what was left
of the Roman inheritance — did not this mighty
spiritual force, embodied in the successor of St.
Peter, consecrate the Teuton, Norman, English, and
Flemish sword, rouse up host after host of princes to
a distant Crusade, and meet the fanaticism of Islam
with an enthusiasm derived from Charlemagne and
his paladins, the champions of Christendom.
It is time that we viewed more closely this extra
ordinary man, great in his achievements, his conquests,
his laws and schools, his devotion to religious aims,
weak only in his passions. The Charlemagne of
legend and song is a prodigy, equal to Alexander.
In the Chansons de geste, he is everywhere pre
sent, the King " a la barbe florie," whom that sweep
ing and stately verse appears to confound with
Charles Martel, nay, even with Charles the Bald,
ascribing to him all the victories, voyages, intrigues,
events of the court, the field, the camp, which send
him now to conquer Jerusalem, and now to perish
with all his chivalry at Roncesvalles or Fontarabia.

EPIC OF CHARLEMAGNE 107
The splendid " matter of France " had this Charles
for its hero, whom it handled with a lad's bold and
careless freedom, sometimes carrying him on uplifted
shield, anon plucking at his plenteous beard in the
mood of satire. Chief in a republic of princes, the
King must be as ready to strike as unscrupulous in
watch and ward against treason ; he is a man of
blood and fire. But he has likewise a loud, eloquent
tongue, and the heart, or call it the sentimental and
amorous temper, of the troubadour, with a veneration
unbounded, yet hardly in our sense religious, for the
" Apostle of Rome."
Whatever date we assign to this epic poetry, the
figure thus drawn is not unlike Charles as history
paints him. Frank and Gascon by descent, akin to
priests on every side, prompt and far marching as
Julius Caesar, with a touch (and more) of the native
subtlety masked by courage in arms which has ever
characterised the Gallo-French ; an admirer of old
Teutonic ballads, yet willing to overlook treason in
Paulus Diaconus because he wrote an elegant
Latin ; the Emperor added to these qualities an
imposing presence and stature, which the Chansons
exaggerate beyond human proportions. To them
he is a giant in size and in prowess — the defender
of the Cross, the enemy of the Saracens, who cannot
bear up against his onslaught. Allowing for per
spective, the picture is grandly and not falsely
conceived. Charlemagne inherited from his ancestor,
Martel, the renown of the victory of Poitiers. In
establishing the Papacy at Rome on a basis of
temporal power, while he assimilated the Church

108 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
more than Dante would have approved to a feudal
or secular hierarchy, his acceptance of the Empire
was a step towards the making of Europe. Across
the Rhine he fought and subdued in thirty-three
campaigns another enemy, stubborn as the sons of
the Desert, and resolute in their hatred to the Latin
civilisation, the Frankish more settled life, the
religion which cursed their gods as devils, which cut
down their sacred oaks, and which burnt their forest
sanctuaries. The Saracens whom Charles overcame
were the Saxons. He did not win great victories,
but he harried and drove these heathen from his own
frontiers at Worms to the Lippe, the Weser, the
Elbe, the Baltic. Like Mohammed, he preached with
an army at his back. Death or baptism was the
choice offered, and to give it emphasis, in one batch
the Emperor massacred four thousand five hundred
Saxons at Verdun on the Aller.
Violence marked his conquests ; but the missionaries
who followed him were heralds of peace ; after
repeated efforts at independence Witikind descended
into the waters of baptism ; his barbarians submitted
to the clergy and paid them tithes, which was all that
the Frankish victor asked of them. As long as they
would be Christians, the Saxons might be compara
tively free. From 787 onwards we trace the founding
of the eight chief Bishoprics — " religious colonies "
they have been rightly termed — Minden, Seligenstadt,
Verdun, Bremen, Miinster, Hildesheim, Osnaburg,
Paderborn. There was a German Church, complete
in its appointments, richly endowed, and entitled to
the homage as well as the protection of the newly-

CHURCH AS FEUDAL SYSTEM I09
converted nobles, long before the German State could
be said to exist. When we arrive at the period of Anti-
popes and Anti-emperors, of Bishop-Electors arrayed
against lay Dukes in the Diets of the Fatherland,
it will not be unseasonable to remind ourselves that
Mayence,, Cologne, and Miinster claimed precedence
by their origin as much as by their ecclesiastical
dignity of the great secular lords.
This twofold Hierarchy, of which Rome in Pope
and Emperor set the example, arose over Western
Europe under Charles's fostering legislation. Every
district had its Bishop and its Count ; a county was
a Diocese, just as in England the ancient bishoprics
were conterminous with the little kingdoms of the
.Heptarchy. At the base a widespread, almost
universal serfdom ; above that, qualified military
charges, rank over rank, ascending to the Markgrave,
Count, or Duke, who held of the King. To this
pattern the Church conformed. Even a monastery
must be a feudal tenure, and Bishops, though in vague
and disputable fashion, held of the Metropolitan, who
would fain have had no master. The False Decretals
taught him that he must suffer appeals from his
judgment to the Apostolic See — as indeed true
examples dating far back were there to show. But,
looking at this early medieval government as a whole,
we may pronounce it to have been a confederation
of freebooters with some semblance of law — a caste
which disdained to till the soil, which would have
thought commerce a degradation, and which lived
and died with arms in its hands.
From such an aristocracy the Bishops were

110 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
taken as a matter of course; plebeian prelates, if
by some happy chance elected, found themselves
in society as uncongenial as that of an English
mess to an officer raised from the ranks. Some
Bishoprics, like Clermont, Metz, and it would
appear Milan, ran in families. Royal blood had a
claim on wealthy benefices, and thus what the
Sovereign gave with one hand he took away with the
other. Medieval Theocracy too often meant a Knight
in armour who was consecrated Bishop that he might
enjoy the revenues, and command the thousands of
serfs, attached to a Saint's inheritance. The Abbot
raised his troop of horsemen and rode at their head ;
the Bishop received a training for the field, but little
or none for the altar. When Europe was one vast
camp — which is a true description of it during the
centuries before Venice, Pisa, Genoa, and the Hanse
Towns achieved commercial greatness — Ecclesiastics
were military chaplains, inured to battle and blood
shed, who, even if they escaped and set up their
abode in the wilderness, saw their Cluny, their
Clairvaux, too soon endowed with lands, tenants,
and public offerings, the price of which was always
absorption in the feudal State.
Among barbarians, the tribe had claimed the
man, but land was a fleeting possession. Now, every
individual was adscriptus glebae ; the Church, tenant-
in-chief of a third, a half, or two-thirds, of the whole
country, had become a feud ; its Gospel character
was strangely disguised in a parti-coloured garment,
stained not unfrequently with sanguine hues. Its
enormous and ever-growing wealth tempted Kings

FRANKISH VICTORIES III
not so much to plunder as to appropriate these
treasures, by the hands of their children, legitimate
or bastard, and to trade in the selection of the
unfittest to stalls, canonries, abbacies, mitres ; until
the world rang with a sinister cry of " Simon Magus,"
the detestable and ubiquitous Heresiarch, who bought
or sold for money the gifts of the Spirit in every
Church throughout the West.
When he had overthrown the Saxons, Charles
found fresh enemies behind them, the Wiltzi or Slavs
on the Oder. From these he took hostages, and
marched on the Huns, encamped in their wooden
huts amid swamps, but gorged with the spoils of
Constantinople. They underwent defeat at the
Raab ; it seemed that a Frankish Emperor would
emulate the feats of Trajan, extend his dominion to
the Danube, and appear as the neighbour no less than
the rival or suitor of Irene, soon to be Empress of the
East. He was recalled by troubles in Aquitaine,
whither Hixem, the Moorish Caliph, had penetrated,
and by a revolt of the Saxons. But his son, travers
ing the Theiss, defeated the Huns a second time,
captured their ring, or stronghold, and sent home an
incalculable booty. The Tartar Chagan professed
himself a Christian ; his power was annihilated.
At Aix-la-Chapelle it might have been imagined
that Rome in all its majesty was about to begin a
second Augustan age. Vassal or suppliant Kings,
Egbert of Wessex, Erdulf of Northumbria, Lope
Duke of Biscay, flocked to the Imperial Court.
Clement and Mailros, Irish Scots, came with the
reputation of 'philosophers, and opened schools for

112 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
the children of the nobles. Albinus, an Englishman,
better known as Alcuin, the disciple of Bede, received
from Charles the Abbey of St. Martin at Tours, and
became first rector of the Studium, which grew by
and by into the University of Paris. An all-embrac
ing system of laws, the Capitularia, dealt with every
class of the Emperor's subjects. It fixed the revenues,
and insisted on the duties of clerics ; required an oath
of fealty at their hands ; and commanded their appear
ance as feudatories at the Sovereign's muster, called
Heerban. It might even, in a more settled age, have
fulfilled the task which so perplexed his descendants,
of coping with the Roman, Ripuarian, Lombard,
Bavarian, Salic, and Canon Laws, under which his
subjects were liable to every kind of conflicting
obligation and justice bowed to the sword of the
stronger. But active and incessant as might be Charlemagne's
efforts to create order in a chaotic world, his enact
ments fail in the large wisdom, they never display
that mastery of principles, which the ancient legisla
tion of Rome bequeathed for later times to apply or
interpret. His advisers, who were Churchmen, gave
to their own Canons an exorbitant place in his collec
tion. But neither they with their tradition, nor the
Emperor with his genius, could arrest on the down
ward slope a society which was too little versed in
things of the mind to found a genuine civilisation, too
far removed from the spirit of Christian freedom and
equality not to have transformed it into a real and
scarcely disguised system of caste, where industry
ministered to pride, war was the only honourable

THE NORTHMEN ARRIVE II3
profession, and not even monastic solitudes could
follow after peace or ensue it.
On Charles's death, an Empire which had no
inherent principle of life or unity, fell to pieces. The
century and a half succeeding were one long inter
regnum ; the Emperors move by like figures in a
pageant ; the sole reality was a feudalism which held
its chief a prisoner, or which dethroned and murdered
him, while fresh barbarian races came, saw, and con
quered, to' fall in their turn under the Church's
influence. In 810, the victorious but fatigued
Charlemagne was told that a fleet of Northmen had
touched the coast of Friesland. With his own eyes
he saw their light barks on the Ocean in a city of
Narbonnese Gaul. "They are not merchants, but
pirates!" he exclaimed to those around him. "I weep
over the harm they will do to my sons and my
people." Godfried, who happened then to be leader
of the Northmen, had allotted to himself the German
Empire. His kinsfolk were more ambitious ; they
became the masters of East and West.

VIII
CHAOS COME AGAIN
(814-867)
NOT unlike Augustus in his length of reign, exten
sive dominions, and combination of violence and
cruelty with a charm which passed for good nature,
Charlemagne resembled him also in the irregularity
of his lusts, and the calamities which fell upon his
immediate descendants. Pepin, his eldest and
favourite son, died before him. With the consent of
clergy and nobles, he named as his successor Louis,
Prince of Aquitaine, whom we remember by his
pretty old French title of the Debonnaire. But, as
Michelet rightly observes, we should rather call him
Saint Louis. The youth, bred up among priests, had
learned piety, justice, tenderness, from their teaching
rather than their example. Alone^of the Emperor's
sons he survived. That strong woman, Hermengard,
the Empress, thought to govern him ; as did after
wards his young second wife, Judith, mother of
Charles, surnamed in his time the Bald. Yet, in the
114

THE FIRST SAINT LOUIS I15
beginning, he acted on' his own ideal principles; he
reformed the scandals of the Court ; he forbade his
prelates to wear spurs and ride like cavaliers to
battle ; he sent back into their cloister the intriguing
Adelhard and Wala, royal monks, who had counselled
Charles, not wisely, in his old age ; and he dreamt
even of restoring the Benedictine Order to its former
greatness, by the severe rule which Benedict of
Aniane drew up. In his youth he had taken
Barcelona from the Saracens. His heart yearned
over the miseries of the serfs whom he tried to relieve.
To the Saxons he gave back their right of inheritance.
He would not, as his father did without scruple,
appoint Bishops on his own authority ; and in the
Papal election he declined to interfere. .Such was
the man, simple, serious, chaste and merciful, whose
virtues ruined the Empire, and whose multiplied
humiliations have cast a shadow upon all, whether
Bishops or Princes, that brought down his grey hairs
to the dust.
He began his unhappy reign in 814. Two years
later, Leo III. passed away. His end was not peace.
Soon after Charles's death, a conspiracy of the familiar
Roman type had broken out ; the conspirators were
seized, a large company, and executed under the
ancient Imperial law of treason. Louis, on hearing the
tragic event, was shocked. His milder law had been
disregarded, himself not consulted. Bernard, his
nephew, the young King of Italy, was charged to
intervene at Rome. He did so ; Leo sent an embassy
which apologized to the French Court. But rebellion on
one side, evictions in Campagna on the other, and the

Il6 CHAOS COME AGAIN
need of fresh reinforcements from Bernard, testified
that discontent was rife. Leo died, neither loved nor
popular. A protege of Hadrian's, noble, and of
accommodating temper, was chosen, Stephen IV.
He exacted an oath to the Emperor from the
Romans, travelled into France, crowned Louis at
Rheims with a consecrated golden circlet, took back
the exiles, and died on his return, in 817. The same
day Paschal I. succeeded to a thorny inheritance.
He was destined to disgrace and the hatred of his
turbulent people.
Meanwhile, the long threatened storm was bearing
down on Louis. With his own hand he crowned
Lothair, his eldest and most vigorous son, at Aix, in
817. It was the signal for Italy to rise. Bernard
had never acquiesced in his uncle's succession ; he
reckoned now on the Bishops and cities of the
Peninsula to support him against the Transalpine
barbarians. But the enterprise came to naught : he
was captured, saved from death by the Emperor,
blinded by Heimengard, and expired soon after.
This crime weighed heavy upon Louis. Yet he put
down the Slavs and Basques who had revolted ; he
invaded Brittany ; he beat the Danes, gave Hamburg
its first Bishop, St. Anschar, and sent another to
Sweden. All this could not turn his mind from its
remorseful thoughts. He insisted, like another but
willing Theodosius, on undergoing a public penance ;
he was scourged before the altar ; and his feudal lords
seized the occasion to revolt from an Emperor so
feeble. The movement was headed by his three
sons, who shut him up in a cloister. Then his people

CHARGES AGAINST PASCHAL I.

117

at Nimeguen restored Louis, and Lothair, with the
leaders of the revolt, was in his power. Louis forgave
them (830).
Paschal, it is said, like the Bishops of Milan and
Cremona, had favoured Bernard's stroke for Italian
independence. In 823, when Lothair was in Rome,

CHURCH OF SANT' AGNESE OUTSIDE ROME, A.D. 625.

he crowned the young Emperor, whose hand the
Popes were to feel more than they liked in the sequel.
Obscure causes led almost immediately to the blinding
and murder of two high Roman officials — Theodore
the Primicerius and Leo the Nomenclator — an act
charged upon Paschal by his enemies, from the guilt
of which he purged himself by oath before the

"JP"

THE FIELD OF LIES 119
sions, and haughty, but far from enterprising nobles,
when whatever courage or learning was left had taken
refuge in the Church. Louis acts like a monastic
saint ; his kinsman, Wala, whom he had exiled from
the Court to his cloister and imprisoned in the
Castle of Chillon, is a politician, all-powerful with
Lothair and now the adviser of Gregory. This
Pope, therefore, followed the Italian King when he
rebelled once more against his father. Judith, famous
for her beauty, but more than suspected of infidelity
to her husband, was always bent on securing to
the infant Charles that Empire which, as an aged
man, he obtained during a few troublous years.
His step-brothers reckoned him the adulterous
offspring of Bernard the Aquitanian ; they would
share among themselves the dominions of Charle
magne ; and, in 833, Pope Gregory entered the
Imperial camp at Worms as a mediator, but left it
only when Louis had been betrayed. Judith, a captive
in Lothair's hands, went her way to the Castle of
Tortona; Charles, too young for vows, was imprisoned
in a German abbey. This tragic intervention of the
Pope and clergy was long known as the " Field of
Lies," equal in disgrace to the still more famous
" Day of Dupes." Gregory went back to Rome, and
that is the last we know of him.
But Louis, in the Church of St. Medard at Soissons,
was compelled to utter a confession in which he took
on himself the guilt of this long civil war. Stripped
of crown and armour, clad in a lugubrious garment,
he acknowledged his sins, and submitted his conduct
to Ebbo, Archbishop of Rheims, whom he had raised

120 CHAOS COME AGAIN
from a servile estate, and to Agobard of Lyons, the
apologist of his sons, the accuser of his wife. This
penance, which the Bishops inflicted on a meek if
incapable Prince, called forth a speedy reaction,
especially among the Germans and the lower people.
Lothair's chief partisans died ; a crowded assembly
at Metz annulled the Diet of Compiegne ; and
Agobard was deposed, with some other great prelates.
New treaties and more partitions filled the remaining
years of Louis, with sorrow ; they were death-tokens
upon an Empire now breaking up irrevocably. In
840 he died himself; in 843 the agreement of Verdun
divided France from Germany for ever.
The documents which attest this memorable event
were drawn up in both languages. Charles signed as
King of the French, Louis as King of the Germans.
Lothair was Emperor, holding a middle and transient
domain which extended from the Meuse to the
Mediterranean ; but his Imperial dignity seems to
have depended on his possession of Rome and Italy.
AH three were weak and failing powers. Northmen
laid waste their maritime cities, burnt their abbeys,
and sailed up their rivers, with a gay insolence which
sang of war as a summer pastime. Saracens or
Moors, above all the Aglabites from Kairouan
(Cyrene), infested the seas, attacked Sardinia ; in 831
they laid hands on Palermo ; Sicily was almost '-
colonised by these Africans. Yet in 840, two miser
able pretenders to the Duchy of Beneventum called
them in as allies, and the Peninsula lay open before
them. On August 23, 846, they landed at the mouth
of the Tiber. Ostia was abandoned ; the children of

SARACENS PLUNDER ST. PETERS 121
Ishmael came up to Rome, occupied and profaned
St. Peter's, devastated St. Paul's, and went off with
their booty. Some indecisive battles appear to have
taken place, and the story ran that a tempest, over
taking these miscreants on the shores of Africa, had
buried their sacrilegious spoils beneath the waves.
Though Europe lay under a cloud of ignorance
and imbecility, an outrage so deplorable stirred the
public conscience to its depths. People charged
Lothair the Emperor with criminal negligence ; the
Pope, they said, was a simoniac. Sergius II., elected
in 844 without consulting the Franks, had raised his
brother Benedict to the See of Albano and suffered
him to buy and sell in the courts of the temple.
Even the monasteries were spoiled by this Mayor of
the Palace, who contrived to get into his hands the
civil no less than the ecclesiastical authority. The
shock was great. Lothair ordained a reformation of
the clergy ; despatched his son Louis with an army
against the Saracens of Beneventum ; and levied a
collection for the building of walls and towers to
defend St. Peter's. A fresh Pontiff, Leo IV, carried
out this project in the still surviving Leonine City.
Beneventum was conquered and divided. For the
next twenty-five years, Louis II. is paramount in
Italy (850-875). He combats the Saracens in Cala
bria ; attempts Bari, which they had made their place
of arms ; interferes between the Pope and his own
Missi or legates, threatened with death by Leo IV. ;
and prepares the choice of a Pontiff less unfavourable
to the Franks by naming as Legate Arsenius, Bishop
of Orte, whose son was the learned but unstable

122 CHAOS COME AGAIN
Cardinal of St. Marcellus, the secretary or librarian
Anastasius. This young man, it seemed likely, would occupy the
Papal Chair as an Imperialist when Leo passed from
it. On grounds which we cannot ascertain, — but the
Iron Age possessed no historians and has left only
meagre chronicles and a few scanty, not to say, partial
documents, — he had been excommunicated and was
living in exile. The year 855 saw a new election;
Benedict III. became Pope ; but he was not the
French candidate. Anastasius returns with the
Emperor's legates, is master of the city and the
Pontiff. The Roman clergy hold out ; a compromise,
a second election, the degradation of Anastasius to
lay or monastic rank as Abbot of St. Mary across the
Tiber, carry us on to 858, when Louis could appoint
a man of his choice. It was the Deacon Nicholas,
who shares with Leo and Gregory in the Roman line,
and not without reason, the epithet of Great.
His reign, which lasted only nine years (858-867),
was marked for remembrance among the obscure
Popes of this period by three momentous and critical
transactions, — the deposition of Photius, intruded
Patriarch of Constantinople ; the attempted but un
successful divorce of Lothair II., King of Lorraine,
from Theutberga ; and the» putting down of quasi-
independent prelates, who aimed at something like a
national Church, whether in Ravenna or in Rhine-
land, but whose efforts and defeat have attained
undying celebrity through the False Decretals. Each
of these chapters fulfils the condition of a great and
tragic history. The Greeks, hitherto on strained but

NICHOLAS THE GREAT 1 23
not schismatical terms with Rome, now stereotype as
differences of dogma what had been thus far regarded
as variations in discipline. Christendom is rent in
two not long after the Empire of Charlemagne
falls to pieces. On the other hand, the Popes reser
ving to themselves the matrimonial causes of Kings,
ascend a tribunal from which they depose sovereigns
and give away sceptres. By a simultaneous stroke,
the Church, instead of breaking up, as Charles's
monarchy had broken, into petty and opposed
principalities, iscentralised in the West. A supreme
Court of Appeal is set up in the sight of mankind, its
charter the Bible, its weapons spiritual, but entailing
penalties in ' this world. For deposition, interdict,
excommunication greater or less, carry in their train
forfeiture of dignity, goods, or life, and the Holy See
can reckon on sentiments which become the founda
tions pf order, in the State as in the Church.
Whenever, as now, the Pope seemed a man of
genius and character, his great office made him
supreme over all causes ; the higher the ground he
took the more implicitly was he obeyed. Though
Nicholas- had an Emperor at his doors, he upheld the
independence of the Holy See in language not to
be surpassed by Hildebrand. He began with the
Archbishop of Ravenna, who was vexing in his
neighbourhood certain Papal subjects. Summoned
to Rome, protected by Louis II., and disregarding
the mandate, he fell under excommunication in a
Lateran Synod (the Pope in Council), which went on
to forbid the intermeddling of strangers in elections
to the Chair of Peter. At last the Archbishop came

124 CHAOS COME AGAIN
with Imperial legates, — but too late. Nicholas, during
a journey northwards acted like a sovereign in
Ravenna. Louis gave up his man ; a forced but
absolute submission was the consequence ; and the
city of the Exarch was once more humbled before
Eternal Rome.
But Nicholas bore on his shoulders a double
burden, under which it may be said that he sank,
though victorious. The King of Lorraine, brother
to Louis, had repudiated on a monstrous charge his
innocent wife Theutber,ga. And at Constantinople
Caesar Bardas, after a similar act, was living in open
shame with his son's widow. The prelates of Rhine-
land, including Treves and Cologne, had not scrupled
to bless Lothair's wickedness in solemn Synod ; his
concubine Waldrada was enjoying the honours of
a Queen. More melancholy still, an accomplished,
eloquent, and not unamiable scholar, the layman'
Photius, had suffered himself to be caught up in a
scheme of revenge, devised against the lawful Patri
arch by Bardas ; in six days he had been carried
through all the degrees of the priesthood, and was
now seated upon a usurped throne. Ignatius, the
deprived and persecuted Bishop — a Saint in the
eyes of his own generation — who had rebuked the
Caesar and brought these evils on his head, was a
prisoner in Mitylene. And Photius, by the hands of
four prelates, sent to Nicholas a letter which did
not tell the truth, and which sought recognition for
himself from the Apostolic See.
But in Rome the facts were suspected ; these
Bishops returned with a cautious answer in which

PHOTIUS THE SCHOLAR 125
the Pope demanded a free Council, the unforced
resignation of the canonical Patriarch, and the
restitution of ancient rights over Illyricum, Epirus,
and Thessaly. For bringing a message so insolent,
the Emperor — that is to say, Bardas — threatened
the Roman legates with violence ; and they yielded
to menaces or bribery. A Council was held ; the
legates suppressed what their master had written ;
Ignatius, tortured or under fierce compulsion, was
made to sign (if he did sign) a blank paper,
which his enemies filled up with a confession of guilt
and a formal resignation. The judgment of this
Court assembly Photius then despatched to the Holy
See, with a letter of his own in which there is some
beautiful but hollow writing. But Nicholas disowned
his legates, refused to acknowledge the layman,
and called on the other Eastern Bishops to execute
his decrees. Early next year (863) Ignatius found
means to acquaint him with what had really taken
place, and with his own sufferings. The cup was
full, it was running over. Sentence of excommuni
cation was launched against Photius and Gregory of
Syracuse, who had consecrated him. His acts, his
ordinations, were pronounced null and void. Those
who would not recognise the true Bishop were
threatened with the woes of Judas and Canaan. All
this Nicholas put forth in St. Peter's name, and from
it no appeal was lawful.
A violent interchange of threats and anathemas
filled the ensuing years. Photius kept his See,
charmed the multitude, convoked a Council in 867,
and secured nearly a thousand signatures to the

126

CHAOS COME AGAIN

manifesto in which he upbraided Rome with apostasy
from primitive faith and usage. Bardas had come to

a bad end ; Michael the Drunkard still protected the
intruder. But scarcely was the meeting dissolved

THE GREEK SCHISM 127
when a revolution in the palace led to Michael's
assassination, and his murderer, Basil the Macedonian,
deposed Photius, who had formerly crowned him as
co-regent, and now perhaps would not condone his
regicide. Ignatius was restored, and began*-a fresh
reign of ten years.
By this time Nicholas was dead. The Eighth
General Council, as it is reckoned in the Western
Church, was celebrated in 869 under Hadrian II.
Though Photius had been degraded in a tempest of
obloquy, it does not appear that any one proposed
to take his life. A student, he might have been
happy in his exile could he have carried his
books with him. On the death of Ignatius, he
persuaded Basil to receive him into favour once
more ; and in 879 he mounted the shaking throne
of Sancta Sophia, with the consent of that fiery
Pontiff, John VIII. Again expelled by Leo the
Philosopher, tried for high treason and acquitted,
he withdrew into solitude and ended the schism of
thirty years by his death, — perhaps in 891. To
scholars and, critics he has left in his Myriobiblion
a feast of learning, which testifies to his insatiable
and omnivorous appetite. To the divided Churches
of East and West his more dangerous legacy has
been the Eight Articles which, on grounds too
frivolous for a smile, too trivial for refutation, have
set Latins and Greeks in everlasting schism. Doubt
less, the one sufficient article, not named among
these, was the Papal Supremacy which Constantinople
never would admit, except when the enemy was at
her gates.

128 CHAOS COME AGAIN .
Photius, Hincmar of Rheims, and Nicholas I., all
three contemporaries, light up the dull anarchy of
their age by learning, force of character, and some
of those qualities which entitle men to rank in
universal history. Had they been united, France,
Rome, and Constantinople might have offered a far-
shining and formidable front to the Mohammedan,
who was exacting tribute from Italians and Greeks ;
the Norsemen would have been subdued by a
civilised world at peace within its borders ; and
centuries of confusion need not have vexed mankind,
But the ambition of a literary and not over
scrupulous Byzantine led Photius to scorn and
reject the Roman Church. Nicholas would never
consent to abandon his claims on the ecclesiastical
provinces of Bulgaria and Western Greece. Hinc
mar, who ruled the French King, behaved towards
Pope and people, towards his suffragans and Charles
the Bald himself, with the insolence of a high-bred
noble who held the crozier in his left, but was ready
to strike with the sword in his right. Pretensions,
real or fictitious, were bolstered up with forgeries.
None of the scribes could be trusted not to interpo
late or mishandle official letters ; laws were invented
as well as evaded ; violence was the order of the day.
Yet this perpetual turbulence did not imply strength
of head or of arm. Invading Danes or Norsemen
found the cities defenceless, the country open. Islam,
which in our eighth and ninth centuries rose to
splendour, and could boast of its art, science, litera
ture, philosophy, and chivalrous manners, had lost in
vigour what it gained in luxurious refinement. But

THE TURKS 1 29
it was yet able to put armies of Christians to flight.
Like a crimson cloud it hung over Bosporus and
Tiber simultaneously. Nothing save its internal divi
sions, the weakness of the Caliphate, and the sudden
ascent of the Turks to greatness, while these had
their eyes turned in the direction of India rather than
Europe, prevented the conquest of Christendom in
the years before us.

10

IX
FEUDAL HIERARCHY — FALSE DECRETALS
(847-882)
It has been observed that the French Kings by
their matrimonial disorders gave the Popes an
authority in the Gallican Church and realm which
might otherwise have been difficult to maintain.
With them this was the standing quarrel, as with
German princes the investiture and feudalising of
clerics. Lothair, who had inherited the middle
kingdom of Lorraine from his father and namesake,
married Theutberga, daughter of Boso, Duke of
Burgundy. But there was an Anne Boleyn, named
Waldrada, whom he desired to raise to the throne.
Horrible and false accusations were made against
Theutberga ; she was cleared by the ordeal of boiling
water to which her champion submitted. Neverthe
less, driven wild by persecution, the unhappy lady
. acknowledged crimes that she had never fallen
into ; and in three synods at Aix-la-Chapelle, the
cowardly Bishops, including Treves, Cologne, and
130

LOTHAIR OF LORRAINE 131
Metz, annulled the marriage and proclaimed the
concubine their lawful Queen.
Hincmar of Rheims, a learned and masterful prelate,
was disposed to take advantage of Lothair, whose
dominions Charles the Bald coveted, as in the sequel
he annexed them. The Archbishop had been watch
ing this bad business. Fie drew to it the attention of
Pope Nicholas, who, in a reply addressed to him,
quashed the proceedings at Aix, ratified the marriage
with Theutberga, rebuked the King in scathing terms,
and deposed Glinther of Cologne as well as Theotgand
of Treves, the leading sycophants. These Bishops, after
corrupting his legate, had been foolhardy enough to
appear in Rome before the Pope. They even brought
down on him Louis II., whose mixed and lawless
soldiery entered the city, scattered a procession of
clergy and people, and threatened the Pontiff himself
(863). Nicholas crossed the Tiber from the Aventine
in a boat, and spent two days and nights at St. Peter's
shrine. The Emperor fell ill. There was always
something fatal in the Roman air to these Northern
princes. Terrified and ashamed he made peace by
abandoning the two Bishops, who fled home in
disgrace, but pretended to excommunicate the Pope,
and would not resign. Then Lothair deserted
Giinther, professed repentance, and would come as a
pilgrim ad limina. The Pope scorned his pilgrimage.
He ordered him to take back his wife. He sent
Arsenius, who had long administered the Roman
Chancery — an able but covetous man — to keep the
peace between these Carlovingian phantoms, to
restore Rothrad, Bishop of Soissons, over the head

132 FEUDAL HIERARCHY
of Hincmar, who had deprived him, and to see Theut
berga crowned. His victory was complete ; historians
agree that it was well merited.
Not that Lothair yielded once and for all. He
could not give up Waldrada. But judgment was
awaiting him at Rome when he should finally appear
in his pilgrim's garb under Hadrian II. Meanwhile,
as the Chronicler says, Nicholas " tamed kings and
tyrants, and ruled the world like a sovereign." When
he dealt so inexorably with the Archbishops of Treves
and Cologne, putting them out of place by his simple
decree — not remitting them to the sentence of their
brother Bishops — he was acting a part which, even
more than his language to the miserable Prince of
Lorraine, implied oecumenical power from which none
were exempt. We have come to the False Decretals.
It is a singular story of fraud and Nemesis.
Bishops who had been transformed into Barons, and
had themselves divided the Empire at Verdun ; who by
the Capitularia of Epernay shared the civil jurisdiction
equally with Counts ; who elected, tried, and deposed
Kings ; were now arrogating an independence such as
the Polish nobility claimed and exercised down to
1772. Charles the Bald was their humble client.
Hincmar writes to Louis III., "I and my colleagues
with the rest of the faithful have chosen you to
govern the kingdom, on condition that you keep the
laws." Charles, on the ground that he was anointed
by Wenilon, Bishop of Orleans, pleads that to depose
him without trial by the Bishops, who are " thrones
of the Divinity," would be a sin. Contrast the
language of Henry VIII. to Cranmer when giving

BISHOPS ABOVE KINGS I33
him leave to proceed in his great matter of the
divorce : " Albeit, we being your King and Sovereign,
do recognise no superior on earth but only God, and
(are) not subject to the laws of any earthly creature."
The real King was at Rheims, where Hincmar raised
troops against the Normans, and held Parliaments
attended by the spiritual and temporal lords. Except
where a Bishop controlled the city, little or no order
was observed. Even the Abbot, says Chateaubriand,
was merely the old Roman patrician, with his
vassals, farmers, villas, towns, and territories, and an
enormous income. Louis le Debonnaire had raised
plebeians to sacred heights, but the affront was bitterly
resented ; an aristocracy of birth did in fact rule in
Church and State.
These overweening prelates, rich and often dissolute,
ambitious, hard, quarrelsome, could not brook the
judgment of Metropolitans who, no better than
they in morals and not more than their equals
in blood, were ready to depose their suffragans, to
sequestrate properties, to intrude favourites in the
episcopal seats. From this peril deliverance must
be found, and obviously appeal to a supreme yet
distant Court was the way of escape. Rome might
curb the Metropolitans ; and a strict or almost
impossible form of procedure, sanctioned under
the Apostolic name, derived from primitive ages,
would shield the Bishops when accused by their
subjects of rapine or violence. To manipulate ancient
writings, to edit history in one's own favour, did not
appear criminal if the end in view were otherwise
just and good. It is admitted on all hands that the

134 FEUDAL HIERARCHY
famous Charter of Clovis, renewed by Dagobert,
which bestowed on the Church of Rheims possessions
in Champagne, Austrasia, Burgundy, Auvergne,
Touraine, Poitou, and Marseilles, cannot have been
genuine. The larger Donation of Pepin exhibited to
Charlemagne by Hadrian I. is open to serious doubts.
We might continue the list. Now, at the Synod of
Quercy (857), a whole volume is suddenly produced
which, under the venerated name of Isidore, Canonist
and Bishop of Seville, claims a place in the Church's
legislation, and while defending the hierarchy against
every attack from below, leaves it in the Pope's
unquestioned and unlimited jurisdiction.
It is what Milman calls it, " an elaborate and most
audacious fraud." Dionysius had collected the Pope's
Decretals, which began, as we have seen, with Siricius
to the Archbishop of Tarragona (385). Sixty new
epistles, from Clement to Melchiades, and the
Donation of Constantine, now are published as
authentic in addition. The old Isidorian collection
included the Councils from Silvester onwards ;
thirty-five false decrees, and the acts of spurious
synods, were introduced by the unknown forger.
Who was he? Experts and critics are divided on
the question.
Not a Roman, certainly. Perhaps we should dis
tinguish a shorter and a longer form of the fiction,
which cannot have been devised in a day. The
Church of Mayence, Otgar its Archbishop who died
in 847, and his Deacon Benedictus Levita, have
been singled out as the place, the patron, the instru
ment by earlier writers ; their connection with the

CONTENTS OF FALSE DECRETALS 1 35
imposture seems undeniable. When many of the
higher clergy stood between Louis le Debonnaire
and his rebel sons, it is thought that Ebbo, the con
federate of these, and Otgar, might have invented
Decretals which would shield them from the
Emperor's vengeance by cutting the ground from
under his jurisdiction and that of his Metropolitans.
On the other hand, West-Frankish or Neustrian
elements are discerned in them ; and Hincmar began
by accepting the collection as genuine. Spanish it
was not, nor Roman, nor yet Italian. And with its
manufacture the Popes had nothing whatever to do.
The compiler's aim was, first, to set up an entire
spiritual immunity ; no secular power should call
a Council or condemn a Bishop without the Pope's
consent. Lay courts were not to adjudicate upon
ecclesiastical causes ; nor might laymen appear as
accusers or witnesses against the clergy. But from
secular tribunals to spiritual there was always the
right of appeal. No Bishop was to be tried by the
Metropolitan alone. He must be cited before a
Provincial Synod, summoned at the instance of the
Apostolic See. When thus on trial, the only
witnesses allowable against him are his peers, of
whom seventy-two are the lowest number whose
testimony can be received. From this office the
law excludes not only laymen but priests ; and
the culprit is free to appeal to Rome, enjoying
meanwhile, though deprived by conciliar sentence,
his property and privileges. Between the Pope as
Supreme appellant Judge, and the Bishops as his
" men " in a strict feudal signification, the ancient

I36 FEUDAL HIERARCHY
rights of synods, Metropolitans, clergy, and laity
were, by this reading of Church history, swept into
oblivion. By those who would apologize for Benedict the
Levite (if such was the forger's name), it has been
pointed out that he did not ascribe to the Holy
See rights which were without example. Of the
Decretals a considerable number are authentic,
though antedated ; others embody the contents of
lost documents. Julius I. (342) had protested
against holding Councils where the Pope was not
invited ; he called it an unheard-of thing. To
this Pontiff the greatest of Eastern Saints and
Patriarchs, Athanasius, had appealed from local
synods. Chrysostom had been protected by Pope
Innocent ; and at Chalcedon Dioscorus was deposed
on the ground that he convoked and held an assembly
of Bishops against the Papal ordinance. St. Leo had
deprived the Metropolitan of Aries, and rearranged
his province. With Milman these apologists might
observe that " the new code was enshrined in a frame
work of deeply religious thought and language " ; that
" the whole is composed with an air of profound piety
and reverence ; , a specious purity, and occasional
beauty, in the moral and religious tone " ; and that
"there are many axioms of seemingly sincere and
vital religion." In this key wrote the pious Mohler,
who bids us make allowance for a child-like age,
not precise or literal, which did no more than
magnify an idea of the Papacy that could still be
derived, though these false documents were not
extant, from what is legible in Fathers and Councils

THEIR SOURCES AND DETECTION 1 37
But a forgery they were ; and Hincmar, who relied
upon their authority in his Synod of Rheims, could
not demur to it, — though he roundly called it a trap
for Bishops, — when Nicholas turned it against him,
received the appeal of his suffragan, Rothrad, and
restored him as above described. Could, then, the
Lateran Chancery bear witness to this grand array of
Apostolic letters and legislation ? That has never
been pretended. The insignificance of the Papal
archives we learn beyond dispute from Gregory the
Great. What were the sources to which False Isidore
betook himself? It is conjectured that the work
has been pieced out in mosaic fashion from Rufinus,
Cassiodorus, the West Gothic Breviary of Alaric, the
Liber Pontificalis, and other materials, wrought up into
a definite pattern. Yet Nicholas and those who came
after him cited the spurious Decretals no less freely
than the genuine. They made their way into the
official collections; they became a part of Gratian's
Decretum, and were embodied in the Canon Law
under Gregory IX. At the Renaissance, Nicholas
of Cusa suspected them f the centuriators of Magde
burg, De Moulin, and Blondel convicted them of
falsehood. They are now universally given up. But
with the Donation of Constantine they formed a
juridical romance which in the Middle Ages took the
place of law and history.
Hadrian II., who came after Nicholas (867-872),
was a man of venerable age, austere morals, and the
highest Papal doctrine. Before taking orders, he had
been married. His wife was living, probably in a
convent ; his daughter seemed now, though not in

I38 FEUDAL HIERARCHY
her first youth, a tempting match to the Romans, who
were beginning to court the alliance of the Lateran.
For there was always a strong Church interest, and
these elections betray signs of clanship among the
chosen. Arsenius, the greedy legate and Home
Secretary, had two sons; one, Anastasius, whom we
have known as a defeated candidate for the tiara,
and the other Eleutherius, not in holy orders. The
lady in question was betrothed to some one else
when Eleutherius, in the violent Roman fashion,
carried her off with her mother and compelled her
to marry him. Hereupon, Arsenius fled with all
his treasure to the Emperor Louis. Hadrian
demanded back his wife and daughter; Eleutherius
murdered them both. He was caught and executed;
his rapacious father died suddenly. Anastasius fell
under Hadrian's wrath, but perhaps could vindicate .
his innocence, and died in power.
Soon after these tragedies, Lothair II. came to
Rome as a pilgrim. He was ill received. But at
length Hadrian consented to his reconciliation, and
under the most fearful warnings, administered com
munion to him and his attendants. They took the
pledges required. Within a month the perjured King
died at Piacenza of the plague ; the others, it is said,
did not outlive that year. Charles the Bald seized
Lorraine which, by all rights, belonged to the
Emperor Louis ; and Hadrian, in language as
haughty as Nicholas had ever used, maintained the
Frankish-Italian claims. He threatened the nobles
and bishops of France and Rhineland ; nor shrank
from- holding the sword of interdict (a word hitherto

THE TWO H1NCMARS 1 39
not pronounced on kingdoms) over Charles's head.
There was one man who could have secured the
triumph of Hadrian and Louis — the Archbishop
Hincmar. But Hincmar came boldly forward with a
Gallican demand that the Pope should not meddle
in State affairs. He refused to leave Charles's Court ;
nor, he said, should the Franks of Austrasia be slaves,
encumbered with an absentee King unable to defend
them from the Pagans. Charles and Louis the
German shared the spoil of Lorraine between them.
Louis the Italian had none of it.
By way of retaliation, the Pope supported against
Charles his youngest son Carloman, who had been
monk, abbot, highway robber, and in open warfare
with him, but who appealed to Rome from his
deserved chastisement. The Bishops, in spite of
Hadrian, proceeded to degrade him. Hincmar of
Laon, whom his uncle at Rheims had advanced,
would not sign the document. He, too, was a con
tumacious cleric. The great man at Rheims had
many quarrels with him ; so had the King. The
climax was reached when young Hincmar, to protect
himself, laid under interdict his own diocese. His
uncle, the Metropolitan, took off what the Ordinary
had laid on ; the Ordinary quoted False Isidore ;
defied Hincmar of Rheims and three provincial
Councils ; and asserted the immediate unqualified
jurisdiction of the Pope. Hadrian summoned him
to Rome. But conceive the situation of the
other Hincmar. He now fenced with the False
Decretals, and argued that the Holy See was used
to pass laws only by conciliar authority ; that it

I4O FEUDAL HIERARCHY
ought to respect the Canons (as Bossuet spoke long
afterwards) and not to rely upon compilations or
forgeries. In a vehement letter drawn up by the
Primate of Rheims, Charles was made to affirm that
the King of France is no vicegerent of Bishops but
lord over his own land. He quoted none save the
genuine Decretals. Hadrian lost the battle. Carlo-
man was tried, condemned, deprived of eyesight ; his
accomplice, Hincmar of Laon, suffered the same fate.
But the Decretals of Benedict Levita had acquired
fresh force. Meanwhile, Rome and Italy were
plunging into a mad confusion which would spread
its waves over the next two hundred years.
John VIII., a Roman (872-882), has been described
with some truth as a lofty spirit ; but he was born
out of due time. The Italian Louis II. died without
children (875). By right of birth, Louis the German
should have succeeded. But neither the Pope nor
his subjects desired to see the wild Teutons in Rome.
Then and always what they preferred was a French
Emperor as the head of Latin civilisation. " France,"
says Muratori, "has been the refuge of persecuted
Popes." The German language, customs, harshness,
perhaps honesty, did not win the Southern heart.
Now, accordingly, John held out a sign to Charles
the Bald, who came in haste, and at Christmas,
seventy-five years after Charlemagne, Vvas crowned in
St. Peter's. " We have elected and confirmed, with
the consent of our brothers the Bishops, the Ministers
of the Roman Church, the Senate and People of
Rome, King Charles as Emperor of the West," — such
was the Papal intimation, not welcome in France, as

ADVENTURES OF JOHN VIII. I4I
substituting an absolute for a limited monarchy ; nor
to the Bavarian Counts and Bishops, who held that
Louis the German could not thus be put on one side.
It mattered little. In two years both competitors
were gone. Charles the Bald expired in an Alpine
village. Carloman of Bavaria marched down into
Italy. His ally or lieutenant, Lambert Duke of
Spoleto, seized the Leonine City ; threw the Pope
into prison ; and exacted from the Romans an oath
to the Teuton. But he could not hold this dangerous
Capital, in which every house had become a fortress.
When Lambert retreated, John VIII., after paying a
round sum to the Hagarenes or Saracens to keep
them away from St. Peter's, fled to Genoa, to Aries,
and to Troyes.
Every town in Southern Italy at this time was
menaced by the infidels, or had entered into alliance
with them, except Bari and Tarentum, now held by
the Greeks. Naples, under its Duke or Bishop,
admitted a Moslem garrison. Gaeta did the same.
Marauding bands infested Campania. Pope John, in
874, had fitted out a fleet on the Tiber with Greek
sailors ; he engaged the Saracens, captured eighteen
of their vessels, and released six hundred Christian
slaves. He built likewise an enclosure round St.
Paul's ; obtained some advantages at Amalfi and
Salerno ; but could not break the alliance between
Naples and the pirates of the South.
His flight to Louis the Stammerer did not mend
matters. The Church was in dire need of a strong
secular arm, but where to find one? Charles the
Great was perishing in his imbecile descendants.

142

FEUDAL HIERARCHY

Their names, which historians feel bound to recite,
had better be forgotten. In 884 the mighty house
was represented in France by an infant, Charles
the Simple; across the Rhine by Charles the Fat;
— these nicknames well denote the contempt into
which royalty had fallen. At Ravenna, in 880, the

\ • |

sant' apollinare, ravenna. (Exterior.)

German was accepted as Emperor by John VIII.,
and for a short three years seemed master of the
Western Empire. Then he was flung aside. The
Pope went back to Rome, after launching in his
ten years' reign some three hundred letters of
anathema, and attempting to depose the sovereign
Archbishops of Milan, Ravenna, and Naples. He

ECLIPSE OF THE POPEDOM I43
had acknowledged Photius ; confirmed the Council
of Constantinople ; and driven from the Lateran
Formosus, Bishop of Porto, with his adherents.
But enemies were never wanting to John VIII. If
we may believe the Annals of Fulda, the con
spirators belonged to his own household. They
endeavoured to poison him ; this not succeeding, one
of them beat out his brains with a hammer. Many
Popes had suffered martyrdom ; of John VIII. it is
customary to say that he was the first assassinated
(December 15, 882). Unhappily he was not the last.
From this hour we shall see the Papacy going down
as into the Valley of the Shadow of Death, to ascend
by miracle from its deeps, and exercise a yet wider
dominion, when the worst had been endured.

X
THE HOUSE OF THEOPHYLACT
(882-964)
Until Otho the Great appeared in Rome (961)
it is impossible to deal with the Empire as any
longer a reality ; and the Papal succession bears
almost as ghostly an appearance. " Come like
shadows, so depart," is the summons at which these
spectres, often dabbled in blood, pass over the
stage in a lugubrious masque of anarchy. Yet the
new world was slowly forming ; to the tenth or
eleventh century we must ascribe that greatest of
all transformations by which the Normans, Danes,
Prussians, Hungarians, and Muscovites bowed their
necks under the Christian yoke ; put from them a
Paganism steeped in superstition and cruelty ; began
their studies in the Gospel, which are not yet ended ;
and chose Christ instead of Mohammed. This, so
far as we can learn, was an apostolate never inter
rupted, though Popes, Bishops, and Kings fell into
the wildest disorders. As a spiritual movement, it
seemed to go on of itself, or in the words which
144

TYRANTS OF SPOLETO 1 45
we still read on the Arch of Constantine, Instinctu
Divinitatis ; Providence was its only guide.
But the Carlovingians had disappeared. In France,
Odo, Count of Paris, descended from an obscure
family in Anjou, which had been rallying the centre
against the Normans, opened a succession of thirty-
three Kings, and an era that lasted nine hundred years.
Arnulf, the base-born son of Carloman, who actually
closed the Carlovingian dynasty, received the Empire
in 896, and fled from Italy fifteen days after, never
to return. The Popes, such as they were, had now
to deal with an Italian power at Spoleto ; with
another, more distant and less hostile, in Friuli ; but
above all, with a Roman aristocracy, the most un
bridled that even those centuries knew. With Guy
of Spoleto master in Milan, the Lombard kingdom
had risen to life again. It was a line of Machia
vellian princes, leagued by marriage with Tuscany
or Beneventum ; not shy of the Saracen alliance,
much less of the Greek ; calmly desecrating the
churches in Rome ; but affecting, when it suited
them, the pious ways of Charlemagne, though pre
pared to dethrone the Pope as if their meanest vassal.
Into such hands did the fall of the Empire commit
the venerable Father of the Faithful. Almost every
year beheld that ideal defaced and trampled on
which, in Titus Andronicus, is so happily bodied forth
as the Rome of devout imaginations : —
"Suffer not dishonour to approach
The Imperial seat, to virtue consecrate,
To justice, continence, and nobility ;
But let desert in pure election shine,
And, Romans, fight for freedom in your choice."
II

146 THE HOUSE OF THEOPHYLACT
Two score years were taken up with the lamentable
tragedy of Formosus, " the Pope Beautiful," who was
persecuted living and dead ; and with the shameless
records of Theodora and Marozia, in whose feminine
usurpation of the Holy See Gibbon's fancy detected
the origin of Pope Joan. Then comes young
Alberic, Senator and perhaps Saint, a lay impro
priator of the Papacy, under whose rule the Pontiffs .
are chaplains, and who might have founded a suc
cession in St. Peter's Chair, could public opinion
have looked with favour on a married clergy. But
his foolish son, Octavian, who was Prince and Pope
at sixteen, outraged every rule of his order, and when
he called in the German King Otho, he was pre
paring his own act of deposition. The lay dynasty
yielded, though sure to revolt again, before Northern
good sense and simple piety. Such is the igno
minious period we have now to sketch as rapidly
as possible. Intrigue, unreason, violence, and murder
furnish its dominant notes.
Formosus, if we may believe the scanty evidence,
was of blameless and even austere character. As
Bishop of Porto, his diocese was little more than a
name ; but he had been consecrated, and Nicholas I.
sent him as legate to the Bulgarian King. Boris, or
Michael, was a convert to Christianity through his
wife and the illustrious missionary Cyril, who evan
gelised the Slavs. He desired to see his Church
independent, with an Archbishop at its head. He
asked of the Pope to appoint Formosus, much loved
of the Bulgarians. Hadrian II. refused on what
seems to us the idle pretext — it proved a spark to

FORMOSUS AND HIS FORTUNES ltf
set the world in a blaze — that Formosus was a
Bishop already and could not be translated. This
ancient rule, now set aside, was intended to curb the
ambition of prelates, aspiring to rich or metropolitan
Sees. Formosus came back, was a candidate in the
election of 872, and was regarded by John VIII. with
an evil eye. There is no proof that he favoured the
German as against the French interest. But he
belonged to an opposition which included Gregory
the Nomenclator as well as other high persons, who
fled from Rome lest a worse thing should happen to
them, on the death of Louis II., their protector.
John summoned them to no purpose ; and all, in
cluding the Bishop of Porto, were excommunicated
in a synod held at the Pantheon (875).
But when Marinus came to the throne in 882,
he restored the exiles, and among them Formosus.
The latter had sunk into lay communion. He
was under an oath to Pope John that he never
would reclaim his episcopal dignity. Marinus,
however, absolved him from these engagements, as
he surely could according to Canon Law. In 891,
this much enduring prelate himself became Pope,
not without tumult and popular acclamations.
His immediate predecessor, Stephen V., had
crowned Guy of Spoleto in this very year as
Emperor, but under constraint. Formosus, in
like extremity, crowned his son Lambert the
next year. Meanwhile he implored Arnulf of
Bavaria in private letters to come to the deliverance
of the Holy See. Arnulf did come in 894 ; he was
also crowned, and set out to besiege Lambert and

148 THE HOUSE OF THEOPHYLACT
his mother Agiltrude in their castle above Spoleto,
A stroke of paralysis ruined all his plans. He was
carried in a litter across the Alps ; and Formosus died
of grief and vexation in 896.
His death gave rise to the most astonishing dis
orders. Boniface VI., an excommunicate, and
Stephen VI., already Bishop of Anagni, consecrated
by Formosus, passed away before the year was out.
Stephen, however, in his brief Pontificate, served as
the instrument of the Italian faction and of Agiltrude,
now in Rome, whose advisers must have been suffi
ciently at their ease in Canon Law to deduce a
warrant from it for the dreadful scene that followed.
On Arnulf had been poured by Formosus unctio ilia
barbarica, which robbed of Empire the Spoletan
family. Though dead, he must be made to expiate
his crime, A Council was held in St. John Lateran.
Stephen VI. — himself a translated Bishop on whom
Formosus had laid hands — ascended the judgment
seat ; and the corpse of the . late Pontiff, dragged
from its tomb in St. Peter's, was solemnly set up as
prisoner at the bar before the assembled Fathers.
Charged with violation of the Canons, it made no
reply ; neither did the deacon, assigned as counsel
for the defence, dare to open his lips. Sentence
of guilty was pronounced ; the Roman ordinations of
Formosus were annulled ; his body was stripped of
its vestments, down to the hair shirt which this austere
man wore next to his skin. The corpse, thrust into
a nameless tomb, was taken thence by the populace,
who sided with their Italian masters against the
German Arnulf, and flung into the Tiber. Some

TRIAL OF THE DEAD POPE I49
fishermen brought it to shore in their net, and after
many wanderings it was at length laid to rest in the
atrium from which it had been torn.
Within no long time, the Lateran Basilica, polluted
by this horrid sacrilege, fell to the ground. Friends
or partisans of Formosus, when Agiltrude had gone
home, lay in wait for Stephen VI., caught and
stripped him of his garments, and strangled him in
prison, fifteen years after John VIII. had been
murdered. We have no means of tracing in detail
the next events. Romanus occupied the throne four
months, Theodore twenty days. Then two Popes
were elected — Sergius III. and John IX. Young
Lambert declared for John ; his rival escaped into
Tuscany. The succession to the priesthood was in
danger if ordinations could be annulled on grounds
so precarious ; and John held several large synods,
attended from every part of Italy, in which Stephen's
monstrous acts were done away. It was felt (and no
wonder) that some public security should be taken
against disorderly elections. Henceforth none were
to be valid except in presence of the Imperial legates,
as had been ordained by Lothair in 824. Lambert,
who would have united the nation, died and left
his kingdom at the mercy of Berengar, who in 898
occupied Pavia. Then John IX. quitted the scene.
He was followed in four years by three Pontiffs, two
of whom, Leo V. and Christopher, were murdered
in their prison by the ever-memorable Sergius III.
With him enters the house of Theophylact.
Sergius, like Stephen, had received the consecrating
oil from the hands of Formosus ; at whatever date

150 THE HOUSE OF THEOPHYLACT
elected by his faction to the Papacy, he was then
Bishop of Cervetri in Etruria ; and we run little risk
of falsehood in describing him as " malignant, fero
cious, and unclean." For seven years he had eaten
the bread of exile at the Tuscan Court, where
Marquis Adalbert II. the Rich, married to Lothair's
illegitimate daughter Bertha, reigned as the ally or
the enemy of Louis of Provence. With Tuscan
soldiers the self-styled Pontiff returned in 904 to
Rome, had his two predecessors murdered, and held
out for another seven years. In Liutprand, Bishop
of Cremona, he has found an inferior and possibly
ill-natured Tacitus. But fragments remain from the
lost documents of this dark age, that bear out his
allegations touching the vices and servility of
Sergius III.
Over the Papal treasury presided a " vestiarius,"
who in this period was Theophylact, Duke and Master
of the Horse, sole Consul and Senator — in modern
language, Prime Minister, as well as Commander-in-
chief. His wife, Theodora, led Roman society, and
their two daughters, Marozia and Theodora the
younger, seem to have inherited the haughty licen
tious qualities which are so frequently observable in
great Italian houses early and late. Theophylact
held a charge over Ravenna, where his imperious
wife attached to her party the Archbishop, afterwards
John X. Thus it may be said that all the powers of
Central Italy were combined, first, against intruders
from the North like Berengar of Friuli, and second
against that section among the Roman clerics who
leaned to a German Emperor.

HOUSE OF THE VESTALS IN THE FORUM (ROME).

152 THE HOUSE OF THEOPHYLACT
We now perceive what was likely to happen
under such a Pontiff as the miscreant Sergius.
Theodora ruled supreme. " She won the Roman
princedom," says .Liutprand between rage and
admiration, "and like a man she wore it." For
mosus had drawn upon him the wrath of Agiltrude;
he did not escape that of Theodora, whose
favourite Sergius, if the rule against translations of
bishops were enforced, could never have been Pope.
How to evade this law was the question. Casuistry
of a scandalous sort had been invoked by Stephen VI.,
and was adopted by Sergius III. If when he conse
crated them Formosus were not lawful Pontiff, they
had never been true bishops ; as unfledged eccle
siastics they might be promoted to the Supreme
Chair. This reasoning will give us the measure of
their genius and their probity. Again a Council ;
again degradations, anathemas, re-ordinations, the
Hierarchy thrown into confusion, the Apostolic Suc
cession threatened. Naples and Beneventum resisted ;
Auxilius and Eugenius Vulgarius (the latter less
constantly) wrote in defence of Formosus. If Canon
Law fell into contradiction or absurdity, what would
be the fate of those high prelates who governed the
West? No more shameful, no more perilous moment
had occurred in the Latin Church, where heresies,
seldom or never of an abstract kind, concerned them
selves at once with action and led straight to secular
divisions. But Sergius held his ground. Rumour declared
him the paramour of Marozia, though twice her age,
and the father of John, afterwards Pope John XI. — a

SARACENS DEFEATED 1 53
tale which Muratori challenges but the Papal cata
logues accept. On his death in 911, Anastasius III.
and Lando pass over the scene. If they belonged to
the foreign faction their speedy removal would be
explained. It is certain that John X., who came
next and lasted fourteen years (914-928), endured
or welcomed the patronage of this quasi-royal house.
A translated Bishop by the grace of Theodora, he
would not recognise the Formosan ordinations ; the
Tnvectiva in Romam, a manifesto from Naples, treats
him as a usurper ; but in any case John X. displayed
remarkable though not priestly qualities. The Sara
cens, strong on the Garigliano, had spoiled and
occupied the noble Abbey of Farfa in the Sabines.
They put a zone of fire and pillage round the
Apostles' tomb. Pope John called to his aid
Berengar, whom he crowned Emperor in 915, and
the Imperial vassals of Tuscany and Spoleto, com
manded by Alberic Marquis of Camerino. A league
was formed ; the Pope marched with his captains,
charged at their head (an exploit in which he glories),
and himself or his generals beat the infidels at
Baccano and Trevi. With certain Apostolic lands
he bought off Naples and Gaeta from their unholy
alliance. The Greeks joined in ; a fleet was con
tributed from along the coast ; battles ensued by sea
and land under Theophylact, Alberic, the Lombard
princes. In two months the last of the Saracens was
killed or taken (August, 916). And Alberic received
the hand of Marozia.
The world was changing again. Berengar had
called in the savage Hungarians to help him in his

154 THE HOUSE OF THEOPHYLACT
quarrels. He was murdered in 924 at Verona.
Landing at Pisa, Hugh, King of Provence,, accom
plished, dissolute, but full of respect for the clergy,
hastened to Pavia, and found the Archbishop of
Milan and the Pope himself eager for his ad
vancement to the Imperial throne. The great
Vestiarius and his wife lay in their gilded tombs.
Marozia had lost her husband ; but perhaps the
splendid widow, wealthy, popular, energetic, and
only thirty-four, was more powerful than in ¦ his
lifetime. Hadrian's gigantic Mole, a miracle of
strength, formerly adorned with marble statues,
which the besieged garrison hurled on the head
of Vitiges and his soldiers, was now the Castle of
St. Angelo and the den or refuge of every Roman
tyrant. This enterprising woman seized upon it, and
from the Emperor's tomb offered herself with her
treasures to Guy, Duke of Tuscany, son to Adalbert
the Rich and half-brother to Hugh of Provence. If
John X. had been Theodora's cavalier' servente we
perceive that a family quarrel was at hand, its prize
Italy, the Popedom, the Empire. To such base
uses may great things come !
John had a brother named Peter, Count of Orte
and his mainstay in the contest, a very unequal one,
which he attempted with Marozia. But she, for-
tissima Tyndaridarum, an un conquered virago, was
a match for both of them. Rebellion, at a sign from
her, invaded the Lateran ; the brothers were seized,
Peter slain before the Pope's face, John flung into
a dungeon and smothered (928). Europe and the
Papacy, it may not be unfairly observed, could have

156 THE HOUSE OF THEOPHYLACT
better spared a better man. The chronicler of
Soracte writes in his doleful Latin, Subjugatus est
Rontam potestative in manu feminae. It is ludicrous
and horrible, as the times themselves were. Marozia's
son was probably thought too young for the tiara,
His mother set up Leo VI. that same year, Stephen
VII. the next. How did they cease to be Popes?
We are not informed. But in March, 931, Guy of
Tuscany had disappeared, and the alleged offspring
of Marozia and Sergius III. was John XI. Rome
acquiesced or was happy in the choice. The lay
power now did as seemed good in its eyes with St.
Peter's Chair.
Yet at such a moment deliverance came, and from
an unlooked-for quarter. Sultan Hugh at Pavia,
King of Italy since 926, had wives and concubines;
but his last ostensible Queen had just expired, and
Marozia dreamed of an Italian, or, with her son to
officiate in St. Peter's, an Imperial crown. Her vices
knew no shame ; Messalina proposed to King Hugh ;
and though impediments of close affinity forebade
the banns, he accepted, invented some disgraceful
story to get rid of the relationship, was challenged
by Lambert of Tuscany and his champion beaten;
but still the Provencal advanced towards Rome and
matrimony. His cautious bride shut the city gates.
They should be married in Hadrian's tomb — a fit
place for such a bridal. With noise and splendour
it was celebrated. But the Romans (let it be said
once for all) detest strangers who come to lord it
over them. A youthful son of the lady served as
page in these festivities, Alberic of the house of

END OF MAROZIA 157
Camerino; it is probable that he did not love his
new step-father, and his awkward ministration called
forth a blow from the King. At once the citizens
broke out. Alberic rallied them against these Bur-
gundians, of old their bondslaves ; St. Angelo was
besieged ; Hugh of Provence escaped with difficulty ;
and the young Patrician held his mother, the Pope,
and the city captive.
Marozia now vanishes ; John XI. died within four
years, not by violence ; and Alberic was willing to
marry the King's daughter, provided Hugh would
give up his claim to the Roman princedom, which,
after repeated failures, he did in 946, at the instance
of St. Odo, Abbot of Cluny. The voluptuous Pro-
vengal lost, or surrendered, his Italian domains ; he
could never grasp the sceptre of Charles the Great.
His son Lothair, dying in youth, left a widow
Adelaide, heiress to all his rights, whom Berengar
of Ivrea seized and imprisoned in a castle on the
Lago di Garda. She escaped to Reggio ; and Otho,
King of Germany, came at her call (950, 951).
There is henceforth during twenty-two years a
" glorious " or " humble " Prince and Senator of all
the Romans. Exarchate, Pentapolis, have fallen
away or been absorbed in the Lombard Kingdom.
The Saracens have ceased from troubling ; but bands
of Hungarians infest the desolate Campagna. With
Byzantium Alberic is on such friendly terms that he
proposes to marry a Greek Princess or offers his
sister to a son of the Emperor Lecapenus. The only
recorded act of John XI. is to send four bishops, in
933> witn powers to dispense and consecrate another

158 THE HOUSE OF THEOPHYLACT
son of the Imperial family, Theophylact, who at the
age of thirteen was inducted Patriarch of Constanti
nople. An enormous and shocking derogation from
law ; but boy-bishops, boy-abbots, and boy-popes,
were to be the scandal of more than one century.
However, what these interchanges of friendship
betoken is that the Consul of Rome had turned
from North to East again ; he would not suffer
himself to be entangled in the affairs of Provengal,
Lombard, or Teuton. His design was to set up a
royal House on the Palatine, while his son or cousin,
the Pope, ordained, preached, and sang his solemn
Hours in the Lateran which Sergius III. had built
up again.
For his own part Alberic was a just ruler, deeply
religious, and guided, as we have seen, by the counsels
of an illustrious monk and reformer, Odo of Cluny.
If the Popes were his creation, they did not disgrace
the Papal Chair. No evil is reported of Leo VII.,
Stephen IX., Marinus II., or Agapitus II., although
we cannot explain by what series of accidents four
Pontiffs reigned in twenty years. We read of
monasteries built or brought to stricter observance —
on the Aventine, in Via Lata, at St. Gregory, St.
Paul, St. Laurence, St. Agnes. Farfa became a large
establishment ; Subiaco was raised from its ruins.
The contrast between Alberic's piety and King
Hugh's lawless dealing with bishops and bishoprics
was striking indeed. Simony and concubinage laid
waste the North of Italy. Lambert purchased from
Berengar the great See of Milan, which became a
centre of relaxation, with its dynasty of married

ALBERIC SENATOR 159
bishops, down to the days of Gregory VII. Manasses,
Archbishop of Aries, was a pluralist who bought or
appropriated Trent, Verona, Mantua. Hugh's own
base-born sons were bestowed at Piacenza, or thrust
into the Sacred College. Abbey lands, nay, the
abbeys themselves, went to Court favourites. The
rank and file of the clergy no longer observed those
Canons which forbade them to marry ; the prelates
were soldiers, sycophants, traitors by turns to Hugh
and Berengar, keeping their wives in state, alienating
Church property to their children. Actual robbers,
as Waldo at Como, held the Sees of Christendom.
And Manasses, who had won Trent from King
Hugh, opened the passes of the Alps to his enemy,
the German Otho.
In comparison with such unholy men of God,
«Alberic was a saint. But he had usurped the
Patrimony of the Apostle, and retribution lay in wait
for the crimes which have given his House a dreary
fame in Roman annals. His son bore the name,
almost the title, of Octavian. Might he one day be
Augustus? The lad was hardly ten years of age,
when Otho, like a sudden re-appearance of Charle
magne, glittered on the Alpine horizon, swooped
down to Canossa, where Queen Adelaide was under
going a siege from Berengar of Ivrea, and set the
garrison free. It was a warning of change to all Italy.
Alberic had his boy tonsured ; the fatal instance
of young Theophylact was there to urge him on ;
gathering the Romans in St. Peter's, he made them
swear that, on the death of Agapitus, they would
choose Octavian. Perhaps the lay nobles did so

l6o THE HOUSE OF THEOPHYLACT
willingly ; the clerics, held down for fifty years, can
not have ceased to whisper Otho's name. Alberic
was in the prime of life, but the Middle Ages
were times of scant vitality, when no one except
hermits in the wilderness came to three score and
ten. At forty the Patrician was dead (954) ; Agapitus
followed him in less than a twelvemonth. Octavian,
now John XII., at sixteen was Imperator, Consul,
Pontifex Maximus. In his scarlet mantle Elagabalus
occupied St. Peter's Chair.
A medieval Elagabalus, who donned his armour
against the Southern Lombards and was put to flight;
who hunted, drank, gambled, and converted the
Lateran into a lupanar ; who sold abbeys and bishop
rics, ordained lads for, money, mutilated prelates,
and mingled jests and cruelty with his wanton
sacrileges. Several years passed before the monstrous
career of an ungovernable youth was interrupted.
Italian affairs had thrown up froth and confusion like
the sea. Otho ruled in Germany ; Berengar of Ivrea
and his son Adalbert were detested, but still they could
deprive the Archbishop of Milan, and menace Pope
John. We do not know the particulars of an obscure
transaction ; yet who can doubt that sooner or later
the German King would have taken on himself to
regulate the condition of Rome and Italy? John XII.
perhaps forestalled his indignant subjects. He and
the deposed Bishops, with many Princes, entreated
the royalaid. In 961 Otho received the Iron Crown
at Pavia. Next February (962) saw him in St.
Peter's; " by his valour," says Otho of Freising, "he
had translated the Roman Empire to the Eastern

JOHN XII. DEPOSED l6l
Franks." They were to hold it, under many vicis
situdes, for eight hundred and forty-four years, down
to 1806. Otho was the first, as he was among the
greatest, of German Kaisers.
John XII. anointed him, and the Emperor swore to
protect the Roman Church, give back her possessions,
and make no change in her government without the
Pope's leave. The people and their Pontiff then took
the oath of allegiance to him. On the body of St.
Peter they swore to abandon all connection with
Berengar and his son. When Otho retired, the mad
young man entered into immediate correspondence
with Adalbert, who fled soon after to the Saracens,
and then took refuge in Rome. Otho left the siege
of Monte Leone where Berengar was straitly shut
up, marched to the city, and was told that Pope and
King, despairing of support, had taken to the open
country. A Council was at once called. The charges
at which we have hinted were brought against the
absent Pontiff. Liutprand of Cremona, in the
Emperor's name (Otho could not speak Latin) warned
the Bishops that clear proofs must be forthcoming.
John was summoned, an Imperial safe-conduct offered
him. The youth replied in a crude Latin message that
provoked shame and laughter when it was read out,
"We hear that you mean to elect a new Pope. If you
do, in the name of Almighty God I excommunicate
you, and forbid you to ordain or say Mass." Instead
of coming to the Council, he went out shooting at
Tivoli. What should be done according to the Canons? It
was a perplexed situation. But the Emperor's pre-
12

l62 THE HOUSE OF THEOPHYLACT
lates perplexed it more. They deposed John (Dec. 4,
963), and elected Leo, who was not in orders, but who
held the position of Chief Secretary to the Holy See.
Within a month the Romans were up in arms. They
fell on Otho's diminished troops, barricaded the
bridge of St. Angelo, and had to be put down with'
immense slaughter by the Germans, now thoroughly
exasperated. The Emperor, compelled to resume his
blockade of Berengar, marched away to Montefeltro,
leaving his Pope behind him. Immediately, there
was an insurrection of women, said to be high born,
in favour of their Alberic's son and heir. Leo con
trived to get off in time ; John returned, mutilated the
leaders whom he could catch of the Imperial party,
and in a Council which was doubtless popular asserted
his rights. This took place in February, 964. In
May, while pursuing some intrigue, he died suddenly,
by the judgment of Heaven or the dagger of an injured
husband. His decease cut an entangled knot. The
Romans, however, disdaining to. wait, for Otho, and
not recognising Leo VIII., elected a Pope of their
own, who was called during the next unhappy days
by the ironical designation of Benedict V.

XI
ROMANCE OF THE OTHOS
(964-IOO3)
Meanwhile, Otho had taken Berengar and Willa,
his wife, at Monte Leone — a couple stained with every
crime, who had played Macbeth and Lady Macbeth
to the Queen-widow Adelaide, by this time married to
her German hero, now in consequence Italian King and
Emperor. When these miscreants were despatched
over the Alps, Otho drove straight at the Romans,
struck them helpless, and saw their Benedict V. in his
robes crouching on the ground before him, — a spectacle
which drew iron tears down that Pluto's cheek.
Degraded, exiled to remote Hamburg, the true or
false Pope is seen by us no more. Leo VIII. con
firmed anew the diploma which, in some uncertain
shape, John XII. had granted. This " Privilegium
Othonis '' compels the Romans to swear that they
will never elect a Pope except with the Emperor's
consent, and the candidate is himself to take an oath
of allegiance. In fact, as Liutprand says, they
163

164 ROMANCE OF THE OTHOS
surrendered their right of election to Otho and his
successors. But had they not done as much during
the sixty years before ? The House of Theophylact
was the Great Elector, yet with this difference, that
Theodora, Marozia, Alberic were flesh of their flesh,
bone of their bone. If they submitted to a stranger
they did so unwillingly, and not a moment longer
than they could help.
When the Barons, Counts, or whatever they styled
themselves, — these brigands of a mixed pedigree now
encamped all over Rome, — wanted a pretext to rise,
they put forward the banner of the Republic, and
S.P.Q.R. became their superb device. Against Otho
in person they dared not rebel ; when Leo VIII. died
in 965 — it seemed impossible that any Pope should
reign long — they humbly begged a Pontiff from the
German soldier. He sent them a kinsman of their
late Elagabalus, in the hope to keep them quiet, the
Bishop of Narni, John XIII. Yet in three months
they blazed up once more, took the miserable puppet,
mishandled him, drove him from the city. John
collected troops in the Campagna, returned, and. was
admitted with hymns of rejoicing. The Barons
had heard that Otho was approaching for the fourth
time to his restless capital.
Christmas came (966) ; Pope and Emperor
dealt a fearful vengeance on the rebels. Their
twelve Tribunes were hanged ; their dead Prse-
fectus Urbis was dug out of his grave and dis
membered ; their living one hanged by the hair to
the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, then set
upon an ass, scourged, and cast into prison. Even

EXECUTION ON THE ROMANS

l65

the Greek Emperor cried out at such enormities.
Liutprand answered for Otho that it was the law,
Theodosian, Justininian : fugulavit, suspendit, exilio
relegavit; what else should be done to sacrilegious
wretches? John XIII. was now in the saddle again.
He went with his patron to Ravenna in 967, and got

OTHO I. EMPEROR "THE GREAT," A.D. 973.
(From a print in the British Museum.)
from him the lands, cities, and lordships of these
Adriatic regions, so long withdrawn from the Holy See.
In acknowledgment he crowned Otho II. After
seven years Pontificate his place was empty. Otho
named Benedict VI. in January, 973, and himself
expired in May of the same year.
He is termed the Great ; with reason if we take

1 66 ROMANCE OF THE OTHOS
into account his marches, fightings, victories over
many combatants, his honours achieved, and extent
of sovereignty nominal or effective. Once more there
was an Emperor of the West. Hugh Capet, Duke of
France, and Lothair its faineant King, were Otho's
nephews on his sisters' side, Hedwiga and Gerberga.
His brother, St. Bruno, Archbishop of Cologne, was
also Duke of Lorraine and the Low Countries ; with
him for lieutenant, Otho governed as far west as
Brittany. The Saxon House which had risen upon
the ruin of the Carlovingians was predominant in the
Latin, German, and Gallic territories. Such a reward
had fallen in less than sixty years to Henry the
Fowler and his lion-hearted offspring. Henry (919-
936), says Carlyle, was " a very high King, an authen
tically noble human figure, visible still in clear outline
in the grey dawn of Modern History. The Father of
whatever good has since been in Germany."' Twice
he beat the Huns, at Sondershausen and Merseburg ;
twice the Wends ; besides these, the Misnians, the
Czechs from whom he captured Prague ; and the
Danes under King Gorm the Hard. He set down
the Dukes of Suabia and Bavaria ; appointed six
Wardens of the Marches ; saw that his burghs had
walls round them ; instituted a town militia; founded
Quedlenburg Abbey and many others; and carried St.
Michael the Archangel on his standard. " A right
gallant King and Fowler," says Carlyle.
Undoubtedly ; nor did Otho quite come up to his
level. We have seen how fierce and vindictive he
could be ; yet, as Thietmar affirms, " never since
Charlemagne did so mighty a ruler and guardian of

TENTH CENTURY CHARLEMAGNE 1 67
his country hold the Imperial seat." For thirty-six
years he battled strongly to put down rebellions
in Franconia ; conspiracies of great Bishops with
Lorraine ; incursions and alarums of Bohemians,
Wends, Danes ; and the House of Ivrea, which might
have grown into the dynasty of Savoy and Italy.
Then his son Ludolph revolted with many prelates ;
Duke Conrad beckoned to the Magyars ; and they
fell upon the German lands savagely. Otho had to
pacify his people, and to beat the Magyars till they
went away for good, leaving him with that Italian
coil to disentangle which kept him so many years
south of the Alps. He was buried at home in
Magdeburg, an Archbishop's seat of his creation.
The Emperor did as he pleased with Bishops and
their estates ; but his policy aimed at making the
Church wealthy, as a counterpoise to his revolting
Dukes and Margraves. He is well named the tenth-
century Charlemagne (936-973).
After his decease the sanguinary Roman records
yield "no light but only darkness visible," in the
gloom of which we perceive Crescenzio, son of
Theodora, and brother of John XIII., rising up to
snatch Benedict VI. into St. Angelo and there
strangle him. Under such auspices Franco, the
Archdeacon, a national or anti-German choice, calls
himself Boniface VII., is overturned by the Imperial
Resident Sicco, and flies to Constantinople, carrying
with him the sacred vessels frpm St. Peter's. A
grandson of Alberic was appointed, surely to content
the partisans of that still indomitable race. Benedict
VII. lasted nine years. Otho II., a man of war, not

1 68 ROMANCE OF THE OTHOS
always fortunate, refined and somewhat unsteady,
had come to Rome in 980. His marriage with a
Greek Princess, Theophano, gave him rights over
Apulia and the Far South. But in 982, the Saracens,
encamped in those parts, defeated him with terrible
slaughter, and he escaped them only by flight. His
heart, we may suppose, was broken. Four years earlier
he had beaten his French cousin Lothair, led sixty
thousand Saxons and Flemings to Paris, and chanted
Te Deum on the heights of Montmartre. Now he
retired to Rome, where a new Pope of his making
awaited him — John XIV, late Italian Chancellor and
Bishop of Pavia — almost, the Romans would have
muttered, a German. He assisted the youthful
Emperor to die. Otho was not yet thirty when the
atrium of St. Peter's received his worn-out frame.
A child of three represented the Saxon Kings.
Theophano, his mother, took him to Germany ; until
he grew up, she would be Emperor. John XIV.
must have shivered when he was left alone in his
palace. Crescenzio had kept up a correspondence with the
absconding Franco, protected by Court influence at
Byzantium ; for the Easterns would not give up their
claims on Magna Gra?cia. His return was speedy;
his acts according to the usual pattern. He had
soon thrust John XIV. into the oubliettes of St.
Angelo, where the wretched North Italian perished,
it is said, by hunger. Then Crescenzio died, and his
epitaph, dated 984, may still be read in Sant' Alessio
on the Aventine, where he lies till the Judgment Day.
Franco followed him next year. But his body was

A MEDIEVAL EUPHORION 1 69
outraged and left naked in front of " Constantine's
horse," that is to say, of Marcus Aurelius and his
steed, then set up in the Lateran piazza. Young
Crescenzio II. stepped forward as Patrician ; he did
not contest the Imperial authority. There was a
Pope John XV. ; perhaps also an Antipope ; we feel
about in the dark of history for persons and events
at this time. It would appear that John underwent
sufferings which compelled him to retire into Tuscany.
It is certain that when Otho had reached his sixteenth
year the Pontiff invoked his aid. But in April, 996,
this poor shadow slipped away, and the German
youth of genius, halting at Ravenna, was called to
Rome by Crescenzio, acting as head of the Republic.
No story in the Middle Ages wears upon its
brow more beauty and sadness than this royal
boy's descent to the South. His pure young
enthusiasm, his accomplishments, friendships, mis
fortunes, and piteous death) fill us with an interest
which belongs to Ijrical tragedy. One pictures him
as Euphorion — half Greek, half German — with his
fair features and golden locks, his eyes alternately
piercing and dreamy ; under that almost feminine
tenderness the wild Teutonic rage looks out ; he is
dowered with the love of love, the scorn of scorn ;
he is adventurous, detached, a pursuer of fame and
learning, always in quest of greatness. We shall not
look upon his like again till Frederick II. reminds
us, in his perfect moments, of the youth he could
never have excelled and would have done well to
imitate in that fervent devotion to ideals, which not
even the smoke and horror of certain cruel or in
fatuated deeds have been able to tarnish.

170 ROMANCE OF THE OTHOS
Time it was that an end should come to the Roman
anarchy, now more than a hundred years prevailing
— a scandal in the eyes of Christians so huge
that it has never ceased to loom upon the page of
history like a thundercloud. Otho, brought up by
an admirable mother, felt as young men do when
they set out on their adventures, capable of the
noblest things. At Ratisbon he gathered the Bishops
round him — among them Gerbert, lately deposed
from Rheims. A crowd of high German prelates
led him on his way ; he confessed and was
absolved by St. Romuald, Abbot of Emmeran. The
Lombard Princes did homage at Pavia ; for who
could resist the armed host descending from the
Alps? Soon after he learned that John XV. was
no more ; in accordance with his grandfather's
" Privilege," the Emperor must choose the Pope ;
but a thrill of astonishment passed over Europe
when news came that Otho, a lad of sixteen, had
named his cousin Bruno, who was but twenty-three,
to the Chair of St. Peter. The Romans, were ousted ;
in Church and State a German held the sovereign
power. Bruno, son to the Duke of Carinthia, and Otho's
bosom friend, had the intense purity, and not a little
of the stern temper, which we remark in young Saints.
He took the name of Gregory V. Rome threw wide
its gates ; the two noble kinsmen were enthroned,
one at the Lateran as Pope, the other at St. Peter's
as Augustus. Then Otho held a Court before which
Crescenzio II. appeared to expiate the misdeeds of
his ancestors, the Theophylacts, and his own. He

POPE LOVEGOOD 171
was found guilty ; the Pope begged him off, not
aware that Italians never forgive. Crescenzio left
the dock to spread sedition in the castellated dens
where his fellow-nobles lurked. Otho dreamt that
his quest had been accomplished ; he set out for
Germany and war with the Slavonians. But Rome
was not reformed in a day.
Three months had scarcely elapsed when the weary
old scenes of blood and massacre were enacted again.
Crescenzio struck an attitude which some might
imagine sincere — freedom, the Republic, and no
doubt Junius Brutus, furnished his eloquent themes.
That Rome, if the capital of Christendom, owed any
duty to the world which acknowledged it, none of
the Crescenzi have ever supposed. But mark the
first appearance of the Tribune, who was to culminate
three hundred and fifty years after in Rienzi. The
severe young Saint, Gregory V, had made few
friends. He saved his life in the tumult ; but when
he fled to Pavia he was destitute and almost alone.
He could simply excommunicate the Patrician, which
he did in February, 997. Crescenzio replied with
an Antipope, Philagathus or Lovegood, a Calabrian
Greek, just then on his way home from Constantinople.
The Empress Theophano had made him Bishop of
Piacenza ; this was his gratitude. He called himself
John XVI. — John had grown to be the rallying-cry
of a party which descended from Marozia and her
son, and which gloried in its Roman patriotism.
Large schemes, it is said, occupied the wealthy
Antipope and his Consul when Otho, having broken
the Slavs, turned down to Rome, entered without

172 ROMANCE OF THE OTHOS
resistance (the cowardice in battle of these street-
rioters is remarkable), and set up Gregory V. again.
We would fain blot out the next page in his life.
German wrath had now got the upper hand of Christian
meekness. Pope Lovegood, seized in the Campagna,
was frightfully mutilated, his eyes and his tongue
pulled out, as Thietmar declares, by Gregory's own
orders. The gentle St. Nilus, Archimandrite of the
Greek convent at Grotta Ferrata, interceded for his
countryman in vain. Philagathus, a horrible sight,
was paraded through the streets of Rome, and then
banished to a monastery. Yet he survived until 1013,
when he ended his days at Fulda.
St. Angelo was still a refuge for Crescenzio ; and,
as it seemed impregnable, the story ran that Otho,
by a feigned proposal of easy terms, lured the
Patrician to his doom. We will hope, as another
account tells us, that it was taken by assault. The
Republican hero suffered death by decapitation on
the battlements ; twelve othe perished with him ;
their bodies were hung, head downwards, on gibbets
erected above Monte Mario. These are not German
customs ; but in Italy traitors have been so dealt
with, in fact or in effigy. St. Nilus warned Pope
and Emperor that their deeds would come in judg
ment against them. Crescenzio, with his golden
halo of martyrdom, had left a son to avenge him.
And though the Emperor made Rome his residence,
he could not defend his cousin's life in that world of
subtlety, treason, and dark dissimulation. Gregory
was poisoned, or somehow done to death, on February
18, 999.

GERBERT THE PHILOSOPHER 1 73
Romans would now, they probably thought, behold
a Pope of their kith and kin, after an intimation so
decisive. The musing Emperor thought otherwise.
He could light upon no Cardinal in the Lateran
precincts who would do such honour to Rome, the
world's golden head, as befitted a new Augustan era ;
but there was one whom he had in view, a miracle
of learning, his virtues unimpeachable, his piety
sincere and fervent. After the German Pope, a
French philosopher, a man of letters, acquainted
with Saracenic universities and European Courts,
was to mount the Apostolic throne. Gerbert, a
name which reminds us of ^Eneas Silvius Piccolo-
mini and even of Erasmus, became Pope Silvester II.
by an Imperial decree. " Rome," said Otho, "was
the world's capital, the Roman Church mother of all
Churches ; but her Bishops, ignorant and careless,
had pulled her down, made her riches over to the
basest of mankind, stripped the altars, given up their
lawful rights to usurp those of the Empire. Con
stantine and Charlemagne had been foolishly prodigal
in their Donations. A moderate patrimony was now
bestowed ; a worthy Pope created."
This language, these visions, the youth had learnt
from a man whom he was exalting to dangerous
eminence. Gerbert started so low down and mounted
so high that he was called a necromancer by his con
temporaries, accustomed to see Popes and Bishops of
noble or kingly pedigree. A poor lad of Auvergne,
he was bred up in the Cluniac house at Aurillac.
Chance made him known to the Count of Barcelona ;
he travelled into Spain ; learned mathematics from

174 ROMANCE OF THE OTHOS
Arab texts or teachers ; visited Cordova and saw
the Caliph, Hakim II. It was the splendid noon
of Moorish erudition, philosophy, poetry, and chival
rous knighthood — a contrast in brilliant colours to
the Latin world, which seemed to lie on its death-bed
in frenzies of convulsion, weak, moon-struck, imbecile.
Gerbert felt the charm ; when he went up to his
high place the illiterate Westerns asked if he were
not a Manichaean, in league with powers of darkness.
Count Borel took him to Rome in the last days of
John XII. ; he was remarked by Otho I., and sent
to the Archbishop of Rheims, Adalbero. From the
second Otho he received the once edifying but
now degenerate Irish-Italian monastery of Bobbio.
Its corrupt monks and litigious lay usurpers drove
him thence to Rome, where he could get no satis
faction, and to Rheims, where he taught with success
during ten years. He wrote the Archbishop's letters,
corresponded with Adelaide and Theophano. His
patron, Adalbero, dying, left him the See. It was
not likely that an obscure student could make good
his claim while Arnulf, a side-slip of the fallen French
royalty, stood by to be elected. Hugh Capet had
seized the crown. Perhaps by way of conscience-
money his vote was' given to the Carlovingian, who,
as soon as he held Hincmar's crozier, plunged into
treason ; he was betrayed by another miscreant, Bishop .
of Laon, to Capet ; and was tried in solemn council
of prelates and nobles, with a view to his deprival
(July, 991).
Gerbert laid down the law to these by no means
reluctant Bishops. They brought Arnulf ,- to a

HIS RISE AND FALL 175
public confession, deposed him, and, lest he should
appeal to Rome and John XV., declared by anticipa
tion their attitude towards Popes who were " full of
all infamy, void of all knowledge ; " in bold words
they threatened to break away, as Africa, Asia, Con
stantinople, had done. They would not hear of a
popular election ; and Gerbert, their master or mouth
piece, was chosen by them for Archbishop.
Thus the Manichee, necromancer, half- Moslem,
had shown his ambiguous colours, and was a Gallican
— nay, should we not call him a Protestant and
Reformer, some centuries too soon ? The traitor
of Laon envied his eloquent friend's good fortune ;
he persuaded the German Court to back up the Pope,
who was nettled and alarmed by such severe denuncia
tions, the more stinging because they could not be
refuted. To the French prelates again in meeting
came Abbot Leo, as Legate a latere. His first charge
was to undo the Synod of Rheims ; his second to
deprive and interdict Gerbert. Hugh Capet had no
desire to provoke the clergy," at home or abroad, by
whose connivance and favour the crown passed from
Louis le Faineant to his own almost sacerdotal
dynasty. He suffered the great scholar to be put
down at Moisson. Gerbert's household forsook
their fallen chief, and he set out alone for the Court
of Adelaide and young Otho, from which had come
his misfortune.
He possessed the art of making friends, and, it
would seem, of fascinating even his enemies. At
all events he conquered the hero -youth, and
filled him with dreams of a miraculous Roman

176 ROMANCE OF THE OTHOS
Renaissance so soon as the first Millennium of
Christianity should be accomplished. The Auvergnat
became Archbishop of Ravenna and Supreme Pontiff.
His pupil had built a palace in Rome on the Aven
tine ; there he saw in vision the Fifth Monarchy
ruling a peaceful world, Pope and Emperor united
as the hope of mankind. Silvester II., who could
subdue every one he addressed, did not, however,
subdue the Romans. They shared none of his
apocalyptic dreams ; they abhorred the wise French
Pontiff; they conspired against the German Emperor.
We may imagine Rome as the hungry, untameable
wolf, chained but defiant, whose effigy then, as in our
own days, the citizens regarded with a love which
was hatred to everything not Roman. In two years
they had rid themselves of Gerbert and Otho.
How it was done remains a mystery of iniquity,
for we cannot doubt the wickedness, although its
agents, like their victims, died and made no sign.
Legends were plentiful in so credulous a world.
This one which tells how young Otho met his
doom has been disputed, yet survives with stories
of the House of Atreus and is of a strain as
melancholy. When Crescenzio II. was beheaded on
the St. Angelo terrace, his beautiful wife, Stephania,
it is said, fell into the hands of the wild Germans.
She suffered like Lucretia ; unlike Lucretia she
would not die, but waited with preterhuman endur
ance till she could get her revenge. In the tale she
is always surpassingly fair, a witch in cunning, and
able to move with her young son, Crescenzio III.,
among the Court ladies and gentlemen whom Otho

STEPHANIA 177
entertained. She is Delilah and catches him in her
silken nets, though he is a spirit of fire and purity,'!
pilgrim to shrines far and near, but at last " effemi- '
nately vanquished," as greater men had been. At
some banquet the woman, true type of Vittoria
Accorombona and other Roman " white devils," to
speak with our English, tragedian, gave her lover
a poison which did hot kill him instantly, but which
acted in slow corroding effects upon a system never
too strong. He drank and knew not that death was
in his veins.
Thus far the legend, which Milman believed to
rest on convincing evidence. What history tells, yet
as a confused babble, may agree with it. Tivoli,
in the gorge of the Anio above Hadrian's classic villa,
was a town belonging to cadets of the Marozian
dynasty. It had become a rival to shrunken
Rome, and was now in revolt against Otho. He
marched, in 1001, with soldiers from the city, to
make an end of it, taking with him Pope Silvester,
who never would be left alone in his unguarded
Lateran. The Tivolese, persuaded by a foreign
Pontiff, laid down their arms and accepted the
pardon which Otho held out to them. But where
were the spoils which the Romans had hoped for at
starting? On his return with empty hands, the
Emperor, as he sat in his house on the Aventine,
saw a furious mob attempting to batter in his doors.
He escaped by a postern ; carried away the Pope to
Ravenna ; and never set foot again in Rome. Yet
he passed its inexorable gates more than once on
his expeditions to Calabria. He had gone on
13

178 ROMANCE OF THE OTHOS
pilgrimage to expiate his former deeds of violence^
not only to Monte Cassino, but to far-off Gnesenjih
the Polish land, where his friend St. Adalbert lay in a
celebrated shrine. He did a thing yet. more dial
racteristic of the age and himself: he opened f the
crypt in Aix-la-Chapelle where dead Charlemagnef
sat in his chair of state, bearing his crown' and**
sceptre ; from the dead man's neck he detached it
cross of gold and wore it as a relic or Imperial;
charm. His days, it is said, were now spent-: in
prayer and almsgiving. But nothing could : save
Otho, and we seem to hear a muffled sob as; the
chronicler of that unpitying time records howi|he|
died at Paterno, in sight of Rome, and was bornf!
back over the Alps, until he came to Charles the!
Great once more, to be laid at rest by the side of his
heroic predecessor. He was only twenty-two. ' '
Gerbert followed him in three months. Poisoned^
says the Saxon monk, by Stephania ; in any casejl
struck dumb; broken by his long wanderings; nofcf
suffered to reform the Church he had so magnifi-
cently exalted in his prophesyings, or to lead thes
Crusade and recover Jerusalem, over whose captivity
his letters seem to weep. Crescenzio III. is Consul|
half a century of Tusculan oppression throws;
Hildebrand's reform into far perspective.

THE GOOD SHEPHERD — EARLY ISYZANTINE MOSAIC AT RAVENNA.

XII
TUSCULAN SUCCESSION — PAPACY BOUGHT AND
SOLD
(1003-1048)
TUSCULUM is a spur of the Alban or Latin Hills,
about sixteen miles south-east of Rome. It had
still Greek remains scattered in its glades and
thickets when Gregory, Captain of the Fleet under
Otho III., restored its ancient citadel, ascribed to
Telegonus, and made of it a strong castle. He was
connected with Tivoli ; but now that the Crescentine
branch of his ancestors had blossomed, envy, the
Italian vice, prompted him to cut it down ; he
affected a devotion to the Empire ; and from his
rocky nest we may see the Ghibellines descending
over Latium, Tuscany, the whole unhappy land.
Crescenzio III., his cousin of the elder stem, lasted
only nine years, in which time he had appointed
three Popes, John XVII. and XVIII., and Sergius IV.,
son of a cordwainer. These and the Consul being
dead, who should succeed ?
18a

SAINTS ON THE THRONE l8l
There was an Emperor of the Saxon House, a
Saint and warrior, Henry II., who had to fight
for his Iron Crown with Arduin, Marquis of Ivrea —
the Alpine mountaineers wanted no Germans in
Lombardy — and he was busy winning the great
prelate-princes ; he could not previously attend to
Roman affairs. Gregory the Tusculan had three
sons, Alberic, Romanus, Theophylact ; the last a
Cardinal. By gold or intrigue he contrived the
election of his clerical son, though not without
opposition ; and, in fact, Benedict VIII., as he was
styled, had to take refuge at the Emperor's feet in
Germany, nor did he come back until peace was
made with Crescenzio IV., the city Prefect, who held
St. Angelo for his family. In 1013 Henry defeated
Arduin ; with his Queen, Cunegunda, he arrived in
Rome, where the usual ceremonies of coronation
took place. Whether Benedict VIII. lived up to his
sacred character we do not know ; what we do know
is that he cut to pieces a Saracen army which had
disembarked at Luni in Maremma, and sent to the
Republics of Genoa and Pisa vehement letters,
urging a naval Crusade for the recovery of Sardinia,
which was accomplished. The Pisans maintained
that he had given them the island. No dignity
seemed secure unless ratified, even in those de
generate days, by a Papal grant, which carried with
it, as Hergenrother observes, not so much depend
ence on the Holy See as independence of all other
lords. Gerbert had raised Poland to the rank of a
kingdom and consecrated the Hungarian crown of

l82 TUSCULAN SUCCESSION
St. Stephen. The eleventh century was beginning
with a group of Saints on the throne — Otho, repentant
and a pilgrim ; Robert of France, who lived far more
strictly than his own Bishops ; this Henry II., a
monk in all but name ; and the Apostolic Stephen,
who converted his Magyars with sword and crucifix.
The restoration of monasticism had been under
taken long ago at Cluny. Rome was the dark spot
in a brightening sky. Yet of Benedict VIII. we
hear no evil, but rather good ; and his friendship
with Henry, whom he visited in Bamberg, accom
panied to Monte Cassino, and joined in an expedition
against the Greeks of Capua, must count in his
favour. Note that Henry II. made a grant of the
city and bishopric of Bamberg to the Holy See ; this
was afterwards exchanged for Beneventum, a treaty
which appeared to invest the Popes with dominion of
an Imperial sort over Naples. It was an unlucky
transaction, prologue to an Iliad of woes in times not
far distant.
Twelve years passed ; Benedict and Henry went
to their graves in peace ; and Romanus the Senator
took or bought the vacant Chair. In one day he
was Prefect and Pope. The old abuses flourished ;
John XIX., bred a layman and a Tusculan, was not
likely to end them. In 1027 he crowned the
Emperor Conrad, in presence of Rudolph, Duke
of Burgundy, and the Anglo-Dane, Knut, otherwise
well known to English readers. Knut, a pious
traveller to St. Peter's shrine, cannot have been
edified when a tumult broke out in the very church
between Milanese and Ravennates on the question

ABUSES AMONG THE CLERGY 1 83
of precedence. That was not the only fighting which
disgraced a high festival. " Undisciplined Germans,
turbulent Romans," both were to blame, we will say.
But the sure thing is that whenever a Teuton came
to be crowned, blows and bloodshed drew a crimson
arabesque about the glowing page. Always the
citizens attacked the soldiers and got beaten for
their insolence, this time with great slaughter.
Conrad insisted on their leaders appearing before
him with naked feet and cords round their necks,
which would be remembered, not to his advantage,
when he was gone. Neither did he reform the
Church in head or members. The clergy in almost
every part of Europe were marrying or giving in
marriage, against the Canons which Nicholas I.
had promulgated, which Silvester II. and Bene
dict VIII. had tried to enforce. But the evils were
felt; they were named; simony and concubinage
must be rooted out ; if the clergy would not cleanse
the holy place, then their rivals and adversaries the
monks would do it. A scandal yet more gross than
the reign of John XII. precipitated the reformation.
Still the House of Tusculum. John XIX. went to
his account in 1032. His brother, Alberic, made
one son " Consul Romanorum," another, the last
Theophylact, Pope. This was a lad ten or twelve
years old, who had the title thrust on him of
Benedict IX. An hereditary but irregular succession
had thus kept the cross keys for well-nigh a hundred
and fifty years in the hands of Theodora's descendants.
¦ At a distance the Papacy was ringed about with
a halo in which the individual Pope, good or bad,

1 84 TUSCULAN SUCCESSION
seemed lost. So rapid a transit of unknown men
left the faithful indifferent. Pilgrims, indeed, were
plundered ; monks groaned in their prayers over the
Church's captivity ; but official routine never quite
ceased ; and the average Italian learnt to distinguish
between the man whom he despised and the priest
who was minister of the Sacraments. When Abbot
Leo replied to Gerbert's terrible indictment at
Rheims, he admitted all the charges — corruption,
venality,, uncleanness, bloodshedding — nor was he a
miscreant personally ; but still he quoted, Tu es
Petrus, still he warned his audience against the
impiety of cursed Ham. We can hardly suppose
that Henry II., had he been living, would have found
no flaw in the election as CEcumenical Pastor and
teacher of a child who did not know his catechism,"
Unhappily, Conrad was engaged in deadly strife
with Heribert, the married and magnificent Arch
bishop of Milan — another real Antipope, forerunner
of King-Cardinals and Protestant Hermanns of
Cologne. He let the nomination pass, though contrary
in letter and spirit to the Canon Law. When Benedict
was old enough to travel alone, at seventeen or there
abouts, he joined the Emperor, and on two occasions,
at Cremona and Spello, pronounced the ban of the
Church against Heribert — not, we may be sure,
because he lived as a disorderly Bishop, but to
chastise the rebel or the patriot. However, a
change was at hand.
For, in Rome itself, Benedict lived up to his pre
decessor John's example ; he was a bandit, not a
priest, stained with adulteries, homicides, the vices

BENEDICT SELLS THE PAPACY 1 85
of his bringing up and his youth, but unopposed
while Gregory his brother held the Consulate. A
tumult at length, in 1044, which we need not ascribe
to religious indignation, drove him from the city and
St. Peter's. His Tusculan guards held Trastevere ;
street-fighting led to no decisive results ; but the
opposite, which may have been the Crescentine,
party met in St. Peter's, assembled in conclave and,
not without bribery, elected John of Sabina, who
became on these terms Silvester III. Seven weeks
of confusion followed, and Silvester was compelled to
flee into his native mountains.
Triumphant Benedict was again lord of Rome.
But on May Day an event to which no parallel can
be found in Christian records, startled the city and
the Curia. Benedict had sold the Papacy, for money
down, to the wealthy Arch-priest of St. John at the
Latin Gate. The document was signed and sealed
by which Apostolic succession, keys of St. Peter, and
all thereunto belonging, were conveyed to John
Gratian, henceforth to be Gregory VI. in virtue of
hard cash. Every one writing since on this unspeak
able bargain has alluded to Didius Julianus who
bought the Roman Empire. Simony had achieved
its masterpiece. A Pope selling the Papacy, a Pope
buying it, that, as the French say, had yet to be seen.
Electors (if in the chaos of law we could tell who
were, and who were not, entitled to the office) had
taken their bribes many a time, and were to do so
again ; in such wise that the eminent modern
historian Pastor is compelled, with a blush, to remind
some critics that, until Julius II. ordained otherwise,

1 86 TUSCULAN SUCCESSION
simony did not vitiate an election to the supreme
seat in Christendom. But could a Pope dispose of
it like a worn-out cloak or a pair of old shoes ? That
was a new point for Canonists. One might parody
St. Jerome, Ingemuit totus orbis et se esse simoniacum
miratus est : Simon Magus had conquered.
Motives have been guessed at on either side,
Benedict, like the Cardinal Cassar Borgia in days to
come, was meditating a splendid marriage, and
wanted to be secularised. John Gratian was a simple,
pious man, who devoted his riches to buying out a

INSCRIPTION IN SANTA SABINA ON THE AVENTINE.
(Fifth Century.)
scandalous intruder, not otherwise removable ; or he
intended a larger profit, for it seems certain that the
moment he was master he attempted at the sword's
point to get possession of estates held by lay usurpers
in the Campagna, and undertook the safeguard of
pilgrims bringing gifts to St. Peter. Be that as it
may, Gregory VI.'s reputation owes no small debt
to a monk then residing on the Aventine in Alberic's
monastery del Priorato, whose name was Hildebrand,
and who became his chaplain and chief counsellor.
A second monk, Damiani, wrote to him with un-

EMPEROR DEPOSES THREE POPES 1 87
conscious sarcasm from Fonte Avellana (where Dante
would one day brood over his unearthly visions), that
now the reign of simony had come to an end.
These were his friends ; but he was still Didius
Julianus. And now Henry III., another saintly Emperor
(one cannot forbear a blessing on these good Teutons)
arrived. In 1046, at a numerous Synod in Pavia,
his voice was lifted up against the traffic which
bought and sold, not only in the Temple, but the
Temple itself. Gregory VI. hastened to meet him
at Piacenza. Benedict, who seems to have missed
his intended bride, lay behind the Cyclopean walls
of Tusculum. Silvester had got back St. Peter's:
There had been a moment when all three Popes
held their court in Rome — at the Vatican, St. Mary
Major's, and St. John's. The Emperor advanced to
Sutri. Historical parallels have their use. We
are reminded here of the Council of Constance,
Sigismund the Emperor, and the trio of doubtful
Popes in 1415. Was any one of these valid?
Henry began by deposing Silvester, who retreated
into a monastery. John Gratian acknowledged his
"shameful and simoniacal heresy, which was the
work of the devil," and decreed his own deposition.
Benedict would not come down from his fastness.
Yet, as he seemed legitimate, Henry went through
a more solemn procedure against him in St. Peter's,
and only then appointed his man, Suidger, Bishop
of Bamberg, by whom in turn he and the Empress
Agnes were crowned. The Romans looked on in
sulky silence. They would have preferred even a

Mi'M^BS

1 88 TUSCULAN SUCCESSION
Tuscuuan to Clement II. It might have been wiser
to maintain Gregory VI., which was no doubt
Hildebrand's judgment.
When the Emperor is crowned, it is time for him
to go. Henry went south, broke the rising power
of Salerno, took under his protection Melfi and
Aversa, Norman colonies with a great future before
them, and returned by the Eastern coast, where
Clement expired at Pesaro, October, 1047. Benedict
IX., it was whispered, had given him a deadly drink,
and the dissolute young man was in Rome again.
He had won help from Boniface, Marquis of Tuscany ;
he meant to be Pope after all. Such an act of
rebellion to the Empire, of dishonour to the Church,
did that noble Boniface share in, whose grandfather
Azzo, Lord of Canossa, sheltered Queen Adelaide,
while his father Tedaldo had received large benefices '
from the Saxon house, including Mantua and Modena.
Boniface himself held possession of Tuscany by a
like privilege. Hereafter, his only child, the Countess
Matilda, would make up for this disloyal dealing, and
spend her life in service of the Roman Chair.
John Gratian was in far-off exile with his chaplain,
Hildebrand. The last of the Tusculans held his
court of misrule nine months ; but on hearing that
Marquis • Boniface would not support him against
Henry, he fled and was seen no more. The Bishop
of Brixen, who took the name of Damasus II., had
been appointed without so much as the form of
election, by the Emperor. He came in the midst of
German soldiers, and in twenty-three days was dead
(August, 1048). Again the sceptre designated a

LEO IX. 189
Roman Pontiff, cousin to the royal house, of stately
bearing, famed for virtues and miracles, who had
stooped to the lowly Bishopric ofToul. Bruno called
himself Leo IX., and when he set out for Italy
Hildebrand went with him. From that moment
down to 1085 — -some thirty-seven years— the monk
from Cluny and the Aventine governed the Church.

XIII
HILDEBRAND (I O48- I 073)
LOWER than Benedict IX. it was impossible that
the Papacy should fall ; and higher than Hildebrand
in fact, hardly perhaps in idea, it could never soar.
Humanly speaking, three different ways of escape
from degradation might be imagined for it in the
eleventh century. One was that opened by Gerbert,
but which death hindered him from advancing upon
- — the way of an intellectual new-birth, not without
Arabian influences, or even Greek and classic
revivals, such as, long after, the Renaissance under
Nicholas V. was to bring forth. A second was the
road of the Emperors, which some would call
Ghibelline, Erastian, or merely secular ; but Otho
III. is the most convincing proof that it need not
have fluttered a plume in the crest of religion, while
upholding the rights and dignities of a Christian
State. The last, which turned out to be the destined
course of things, divided itself for nearly two centuries
190

REFORM AT CLUNY I9I
from Gerbert's philosophic ascent ; and it came
almost immediately into conflict with the Imperial
power. It was the way of monastic reform.
Monasticism had separated from the world. If it
cherished learning, or did not put science under a
ban, yet its own aim was not knowledge, but the
perfect life — summa Quies — as expressed in vows of
poverty, purity, obedience. It could not transform
society at large into a cloister, but it could and did
make a cloister of the Church. It reformed the
Papacy by seating in the Chair at Rome a succession
of monks. During the best part of a hundred years
the Capital of Christendom was Cluny. St. Benedict
avenged himself on Benedict IX. by ruling the
faithful in his stead.
That is no figure of speech. When Rome, under
baleful enchantments, had lost the very shadow of
holiness, wisdom, and spiritual greatness ; when her
fine gold was dim, her sanctuaries held by brigands
or adulterers, far away on the banks of Saone and
Loire a movement was beginning, to live the life
which Christ had lived, in silence, labour, detach
ment. The Benedictine Rule, made by Witiza of
Aniane (817), too sharp and vexatious for daily use,
had long been forgotten. Monasteries, like bishoprics,
fell into the hands of lay lords, their concubines,
children, and retainers. Soldiers clank about their
courtyards ; hunting dogs give tongue in sacred
solitudes. Monks and nuns break their vows ; infants
receive the abbot's crook ; lands are alienated,
buildings fall to ruin ; learning, of course, is
neglected. Not universally, for exceptions might be

192 HILDEBRAND
found in the worst of times ; but monastic wealth was
tempting, and the feudal convert scarcely more than
half a Christian. Between him and the Norman
pirate how little was there to choose ?
At this dark period, in 910, William, Duke of
Aquitaine, set Berno to rule over his foundation of
Cluny. Now had monastic life its second spring.
The gentle and comprehensive method of St. Benedict
prevailed once more in a multitude of houses, old
and new. Many were derived from the great French
centre, others independent. Dunstan, Abbot of
Glastonbury — statesman, artist, recluse, reformer of
abuses — took his inspiration from it in the Concordia
Regularis. Hanno, Archbishop of Cologne, saw it
enforced. Wiirzburg, Einsiedlen, Hirschau — abbeys
all over Europe — discovered in the Great Rule a
code of civilisation as well as of piety. Three
hundred churches, colleges, and monasteries looked
to Cluny as their mother-house. Its abbots, in a
long line, were men renowned for the austerest
virtues. Peter the Venerable is worthy of his name.
St. Hugh, the friend and ally who never forsook
Gregory VII., built himself a monument in the
church at Cluny, which remained the largest and
most imposing in Christendom till St. Peter's excelled
it. Lands, revenues, privileges of every kind were
showered upon the monks, who for a good while
used them as they were meant, to the public benefit.
But now a contest was breaking out of a kind
hitherto scarcely known. The parties in Hildebrand's
first period, down to Henry IV.'s manhood, were on
one side a corrupt Hierarchy which would not be

A PAPAL JULIUS CAESAR I93
reformed, and which could rely on its kinsfolk among
the nobles and all the clergy tainted with concu
binage ; and, on the other, Pope, Emperor, and
monks, animated by the genius of a single captain.
For Hildebrand's "imperial mind," as Newman
justly terms it, directed the whole series of campaigns
which at last issued in the victory of monasticism.
This remarkable man, the Julius Caesar of the
Papacy, was, like Gerbert, a plebeian ; his birthplace
is not positively ascertained. His father is said to
have been a carpenter of Saona in Tuscany, and
that he had German blood in his veins we may well
believe, since there were few of his country that had
not. His uncle Laurence had become Abbot of Sta.
Maria on the Aventine, and called the lad to him.
In self-restraint,, watching, and study he passed his
youth. Some uncertain years he spent at Cluny,
under Odilo, the illustrious reformer. He loved
solitude, but duty recalled him to Rome before
Gregory VI. had purchased the tiara ; and if he
consented to be this Pope's minister we can only
suppose him ignorant of the transaction, or persuaded
that a subsequent election had made it good.
Historians will always perhaps take different sides
when they write of Hildebrand ; none would charge
him with hypocrisy or time-serving. He followed
Gregory across the Alps. When his patron died he
went back to Cluny ; there Pope Leo IX. found
him and carried him to Rome. Henceforth he is
Gregory VII. in all but name.
The most Petrine of Popes bore a striking resem
blance to St. Paul. His letters, of which we possess
H

194 HILDEBRAND
nine books, were weighty and powerful, but his bodily
presence was weak, his stature small, his delicatej
frame racked by frequent sickness. In friendship
he showed himself passionate and exacting. He-
needed sympathy, yet exercised imperious control over
every one ; learning and elegance he disclaimed,
and spoke slightingly of his "rustic style"; but who
could be more daring or adventure upon a new line
of action with more confidence than Gregory VII. ?
Again, like St. Paul, he brought into the religion
_ which he exalted a revolutionary idea ; the Apostle
freed it from Judaism, the Pope from Feudalism ; in
their hands it became something universal, not
bounded by race, kingdom, colour, prerogative.
What has been called the essential Democracy of
monasticism appears in both these .master-spirits, to
whom rank was an outward show, the powers of the
world vain or transitory. But in natures so vehe
ment thought is flame rather than light ; nor have
they ever ceased to stir up enemies as fierce as their
partisans have been devoted.
It was afterwards told that, on meeting Leo IX.,
Hildebrand counselled him to put off his Papal
insignia, enter Rome on foot, and solicit the votes;
of a genuine election. We cannot be sure ; and it
signifies little. The new Pontiff had been chosen.
in Germany. He was a graceful, energetic presences
wherever he went — the first of those Apostolic pil-J
grims who travelled over Europe, holding Councils!
correcting abuses, receiving the homage of Kings
and crowds, Popes truly CEcumenical. He restored
St. Peter's, visited Monte Cassino, which was then

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I96 HILDEBRAND
growing to its height, and the picturesque St.
Michael's Mount in Calabria, from which those
others, French and Cornish, take their name. But
his task lay before him. Hildebrand summed it
up, "to take their wives from the clergy, their in
vestitures from the laity." A celibate ministration,
freedom of election, security of the Church estates,
such was the programme. Towards its fulfilment
hardly a few in the episcopal ranks would lend a
hand ; the highest were its resolved opponents. Leo
might count on St. Hugh of Cluny, on Hildebrand,
on St. Peter Damiani ; and popular opinion, which
reveres a virtue it cannot equal, took part with the
monks against disedifying secular canons, married
priests, and high-born tyrannical prelates. In 1048
Leo began his visitation of the churches of Europe.
Rome must be reformed from the circumference. It
had lost its savour, though Hildebrand has in later
times been held up as a Roman. But he never
was a cleric, and the school of the Lateran could lay
no claim to him.
At Pavia Leo held a Council ; he crossed into
Germany, met the pious Archbishop Hermann of
Cologne and Henry the Emperor ; excommunicated,
subdued, converted Godfrey of Lorraine, a freebooter
who now lost his Dukedom, and, after public scourg
ing, humbly rebuilt with his own hands the Church
of Verdun, which he had burnt. So mighty was
religion when a Saint wielded its power in the ages
of faith ! Leo passed on into France. He dedi
cated Rheims Cathedral, not yet the exquisite and
sumptuous Gothic which we know ; he gathered

JOURNEYS OF LEO IX. 1 97
the Bishops next morning, and charged them as at
the Great Day to confess if they had bought their
consecration. Treves, Lyons, Besahcon, professed
their innocence. Four others allowed themselves
guilty. Flugo of Rheims, a notorious simoniac, kept
silence. But he could not escape a summons to
Rome. The Bishop of Langres, convicted, took
flight ; others were deposed ; absentees, who would
not join the Pope in council on French territory,
underwent a similar fate. The Papal primacy, en
dangered by all we have recited, was proved from
the Canons. Leo had undone the Gallican measures
of Gerbert.
Scenes not less decisive were witnessed in the
Council at Mayence ; the Metropolitans bowed before
the Pope ; Sibico of Spires underwent his trial ; and
Leo, as he returned towards Italy, visited F"ulda and
confirmed the privileges of many German convents,
acting as supreme Lord in spirituals. In five years
he crossed the Alps three times. He would not
endure that even German Bishops, who now filled
North Italian Sees, -should lift their heel against the
Papacy. Humfred of Ravenna was put down,
restored, and died suddenly. By Leo's appearance
in the camp at Presburg (105 1) and his persevering
efforts, the Emperor was induced to offer Andrew of
Hungary a peace which the latter refused. At
Worms, next year, he made an attempt to get back
for Rome thirty-one churches and forty-seven monas
teries north of the Alps which had been taken away,
including Bamberg; and nowitwas that in exchangefor
the latter Leo accepted Beneventum, the fatal heritage.

I98 HILDEBRAND
Antipapal enmities, smouldering beneath the
ashes of simony, burst into lava-floods, as he
seemed to grow more Italian and less German. The
troops which had been promised him were denied.
Still he marched from Mantua, with Suabian knights
and condottieri, a loose array, to combat the Normans
under Robert Guiscard. He received Capua, which
had thrown off its Prince. Pie dreamt of conquering
Sicily. Peter Damiani raised his voice in loud
reprobation of a militant Pontiff; such acts were no
better than the Apostle's denial and David's adultery.
Judgment soon followed them. June, 1053, saw the
Normans victorious at Civitella and Leo in their
hands a prisoner. He forgave them, returned to
Beneventum where he did penance for his late martial ,
exercises, arrived in Rome, and ordered his open
coffin to be set in front of St. Peter's shrine.
With deep solemnity, he uttered over it a dying
speech, not unlike those words of the Emperor
Severus, Omnia fui et nihil expedit. He had been a
monk in his cell, a Pope in his palace ; all had shrunk
to this narrow stone. Then he died in a transport
of religious exaltation, April 13, 1054.
Hildebrand, without a moment's delay, hastened
from France. Archdeacon of the Roman Church, he
had been sent to quell the subtle rationalising heresi-
arch, Berengar of Tours, who disputed or denied the
Catholic view, maintained by Lanfranc, and said to
have been imperilled by Scotus Erigena, of the
Eucharist. We are not to dwell on this controversy.
Enough that Hildebrand, assailing the lion in his den,
held a Council at Tours, which he would doubtless

ARCH OF TRAJAN AT BENEVENTUM.

200 HILDEBRAND
have carried to an orthodox conclusion did he -not
hear or suspect that Leo was dying. From Berengar
he took a declaration, ambiguous, seemingly sufficient,
which was afterwards made a charge against himself,
and broke up the Council. Then he assumed the
government of the vacant See. The interim lasted a
whole year.
Boniface of Tuscany had been murdered. His
large dominions, which embraced so much of Central
and Northern Italy, went to his wife, Beatrice, and she
chose to marry the brigand-Duke of Lorraine, now
under Henry III.'s Imperial ban. His. brother
Frederick had been made Cardinal by Pope Leo,
This combination of rival powers was unendurable
to the Germans ; and, it would appear, to Hildebrand.
Fie invited, nay compelled, Gebhard, Bishop of Eich-
stadt, to ascend the Papal Chair ; for Gebhard, though
hostile to Leo, was a reforming prelate, the Emperor's
trusty counsellor, and yet, in the language of later
times, a true Guelf. The Bishop accepted reluc
tantly ; he became Victor II.; and Henry followed
him with a formidable host. The usurping Duke
Godfrey fled — but into German quarters where he
could stir up rebellion. Beatrice and her daughter
Matilda the Emperor kept in his hands. A Council
at Florence forbade (how vainly !) the alienation of
Church lands to laymen. Victor, just or severe,
narrowly escaped poisoning at the altar. In 1056
Henry, worn out by insurrections, expired at Goslar,
leaving his son and the Empire to Victor's tutelage.
A strong Pope, by the confession of all, he
made peace among the Germans, did not offend

VICISSITUDES OF STEPEN IX. 201
Godfrey of Lorraine, and restored the Cardinal
Frederick who had been in exile as long as
Henry III. lived. He held his court at Ancona,
his synod in Florence ; he despatched Hilde
brand a second time to France that he might
depose, reform, reclaim on the lines of Ultramontane
policy. His least defensible act, the setting aside of
Abbot Peter, and installing Frederick of Lorraine at
Monte Cassino, is ascribed by Tosti to the bold Arch
deacon. It was hardly done when Victor passed away at
Arezzo (July, 1057). Godfrey and Beatrice ruled as Im
perial lieutenants in Italy. The Romans, their master
away in France, clamoured for Cardinal Frederick.
He yielded, whether from ambition who shall say?
No churchman could go beyond Stephen IX. in zeal
or austerity. As Legate in Byzantium he had excom
municated the Patriarch Michael and his Eastern
colleagues. He now raised Damiani to the purple ;
proposed immense schemes to Godfrey ; took for the
Crusade, but sent back again, the treasures of Monte
Cassino ; and in March, 1058, was dead at Vallom-
brosa, where St. John Gualbert attended his last
moments. Stephen IX. is a strange and splendid
apparition, enigmatic to us, but not easily forgotten
in the Papal gallery.
They say that he was poisoned. The familiar
Roman factions sprang on the stage ; Crescenzio, the
Tusculans, the Count of Galeria chose Benedict X. ;
clearly they felt no shame in calling to memory
Benedict IX. The Emperor was a child, the Arch
deacon still away ; and they wanted no reform.
Their candidate was a Crescentine, Bishop of Velletri.

202 HILDEBRAND
He made lavish donations to the people ; St. Peter's
ornaments were coined into money. Peter Damiani
protested ; Hildebrand made a league with the
Empress ; and, in virtue (it must be supposed) of
rights granted to Otho, Henry II., and Henry III.,
persuaded her to name the Archbishop of Florence, a
Burgundian, Gerard, who advanced under such sup
port to Rome, and was recognised as Nicholas II.
His rival, degraded, taken by Hildebrand — yes, with
Norman help — shut up in the convent of St. Agnes,
figures yet as Pope in the catalogues. A crisis had
arrived. Was not the Roman Archdeacon acting as
a Ghibelline? The Chancellor, Guibert, who repre
sented the Empire — could he legitimate this new
election ? Either Rome must henceforth sink to be,
in spirituals as in temporals, a fief, an investiture, on
a level with Mayence and Hamburg, or every secular
lord, including the Emperor, must withdraw. When
he lay dying at Salerno, in 1085, Gregory wrote that
his aim had ever been to make the Church, " free,
chaste, Catholic." And was this freedom ?
In the Lateran, meanwhile, under his guidance, a
Council proceeded to draw up rules which, allowing
the Emperor some shadowy right of approbation,
vested in the seven Cardinal Bishops and their fellow-
members of the Sacred College the real election. At
Rome, if circumstances would permit; otherwise, wher
ever a peaceable choice could be made. The Roman
laity, no less than the German Caesar, thus forfeited
powers which, as our history demonstrates, they had
seldom exercised with discrimination, never once in
view of the Church at large. Seventy Bishops signed.

NORMAN FIEFS 203
They also compelled Berengar, who was brought
before them, to abjure his doctrine, or, at least,
imagined that he had done so, in terms which he
afterwards explained away.
Robert Guiscard and his Normans, still excom
municate, had overrun Apulia ; the last Greek official
had sailed to Byzantium. Robert's policy had never
been inflexible — Guiscard means " the Cunning " —
and he now sent messengers begging of Nicholas II.
to take away the ban. In the synod of Melfi it was
done. Nay more, the Pope made Richard Prince of
Capua; to Robert he gave Apulia, Calabria, Sicily
(when the island could be got from its Moslem in
vaders), all to be held as fiefs of the Holy See. This
bargain ratified, he took a Norman guard with him to
Rome. Before long they were treading down the old
nobility ; they laid waste their lands and subdued
their castles as far as Sutri. Nicholas died in 1061.
To exclude Hildebrand, the barons named young
Henry IV. their Patrician, and were prepared to take
a Pope of his choosing. The Archdeacon looked on
scornfully. By way of compromise the Cardinals
elected an Italian, but a Lombard, Anselm of
Lucca, who was known as Alexander II.
We enter now on a period of Antipopes. The
secular Roman party, whom their enemies described
as Simonians and even worse, persuaded the German
Court to fix on Cadalus, Bishop of Parma, who was
at once acclaimed by the Lombards of Milan and the
neighbouring regions as Honorius II. What had
taken place in the ancient city of St. Ambrose to
render this feasible, shall be told by and by. In the

204 HILDEBRAND
spring Benzo of Albi, his agent, who likewise repre
sented the Emperor, arrived in Rome, scattered his
bribes right and left, drove out Alexander, and warned
the Senate that a Pope could not be elected by monks
and Normans — in a word, by Hildebrand. Soon after
Cadalus, with troops and treasure, came to Sutri ; he
was at Tusculum, and the Alexandrian forces cowered
inside the walls of Rome. Godfrey the Duke ap
peared as a Deus ex machina, with more soldiers
than either party. The candidates must retire and
submit their claims to examination. Scarcely had
they done so when news was brought of a revolution
in German affairs. Hanno of Cologne had dared to
kidnap Henry IV. from the Empress Agnes. Godfrey
joined him ; Damiani left his cloister, appeared at
Augsburg, pleaded in his quaint yet passionate way
for Alexander, and won the assembly. But still two
Popes divided the capital of Christendom ; at St.
Angelo, the Parmesan with his secular Barons ; at St.
John Lateran the Bishop of Lucca.
For two years (1063-1065) this unseemly spectacle
continued. That ill-fated lad, Henry IV., was tossed
from one hand to another ; the Archbishop of Cologne,
whom his monastic friends called a saint, had given
way to Adalbert of Bremen ; a war of churchmen
ensued, with abbeys plundered, monks despoiled — it
was the heyday of insolent and greedy feudal Bishops
intent on their own aggrandisement. At length a
conspiracy of princes and prelates in the Diet of
Tribur flung Adalbert down. Henry must abandon
him or yield his sceptre. He attempted flight, could
not manage it, and saw the Archbishop fall. That

ACCLAIMED POPE 205
was the signal of Hanno's triumph ; with him the
monastic party returned to power ; Cadalus heard the
news in St. Angelo, and paying his gaoler Cenci three
hundred pounds of silver, he escaped to the North.
At Mantua the Germans recognised Alexander in
1067 ; Cadalus assailed the city and was driven off by
the Tuscan Godfrey, after which he did nothing
memorable and died in obscurity. Meanwhile Gui-
bert accepted the wealthy See of Ravenna. In 1073,
after a stormy reign of twelve years, Anselm of Lucca
died. Hildebrand, who seemed to choose Popes and
to bury them, was performing the funeral obsequies
in St. John Lateran when the acclamations of the
people and Cardinal Hugo's eloquence summoned
him to the vacant place. The crimson mantle was
thrown about him, the tiara set on his head. He
wept, refused, fell ill. But he could not escape the
burden ; and he announced his election, it is said in
words of grave warning, to Henry IV.

XIV
HENRY IV. AT CANOSSA
(1073-IO76)
NEVER did man embark on a voyage so seemingly
desperate as that to which Gregory VII. was now
committed, body and soul. What did he propose?
To reform the Church, cleanse and renew the corrupt
Hierarchy, set it free from its bondage to kings and
nobles, and in doing so, to abase the Empire, which
until of late had been his stay. Such a policy, straight
as an arrow to his own apprehension, appeared
crooked, subtle, and devilish in the eyes of many,
and those not always depraved. Against him stood
up, rank after rank, the thousands of clergy who
would rather forego their livings than their wives.
On the Bishops, gorged with plunder and open law
breakers, he might count for a determined opposition.
Nor did the people, who like himself, were little
better than born serfs, rise to that view of Church or
Papacy, pure in its angelic brightness, with its gleam
ing sword unsheathed to smite even royal vice, which,

GREGORYS LETTERS 207
as his letters testify, was habitual with him. " To
forsake righteousness," he said, " is to make ship
wreck of the soul " ; and with ^Eschylean energy, "All
the attempts of mortals are but straw and stubble
against the rights of St. Peter and the power of the
Most High."
His Bible he knew by heart. In all his epistles it
overflows, as in St. Bernard's sermons and corre
spondence ; it shapes his thought, enforces his argu
ment ; no Puritan lived more habitually in the
atmosphere of Psalms, Prophets, Old Testament
Theocracy. He did not pretend to be a scholar ; but
the " rustic style " in which he gloried is a tesselation
of Scripture phrases ; he wrote and spoke as a
Prophet to the degenerate House of David. His
favourite word — it was the last he uttered — is
"righteousness." But he is often weary of the sun ;
in writing to his dearest friends, the Countess Beat
rice of Tuscany and her daughter Matilda, he lets
fall the strong expression, " I was desperately ill,
now I am well again, and sorry for it." Elsewhere,
he says to Hugh of Cluny, "An immense sadness,
sorrow without a break, encompasses me round
about. I have lived twenty years in Rome against
my will." He calls it, " this Rome, to which the
Almighty brought me back in chains " ; had Pro
vidence laid so heavy a burden on Moses or Peter,
they would have died under it; his own days are
a living death ; he is always fainting and crying,
"Lord, take me away from this world ; make no long
delay ! "
Those who would resolve Gregory or men of his

208

HENRY IV. AT CANOSSA

temper into ambitious hypocrites, make no allowance
for the strength of a reforming passion, kindled in the
cloister, fed upon deep and secure beliefs. Hilde
brand led a mighty movement which carried him

ST. GREGORY VII,, POPE, A.D. I085.
(From an old engraving.)

along at the same time. It was not of his creation.
When he proposed to abolish lay investiture and
clerical marriage, he was summing up an idea which
during the last hundred years had been silently

CELIBACY AND FREEDOM 20g
gathering force. His raptures, fasts, vigils, scourgings,
while they bore witness to the man's sincerity, dis
closed an ascetic, unworldly type of the Christian life,
in which thousands believed perfection to consist,
while none could less resemble the ways of the
beneficed priest or his patron and tyrant the military
Prince-Bishop. Could celibacy, instead of being the
rare exception, become the rule, it would reform the
clergy as by a magic stroke. And if laymen, includ
ing the Emperor, ceased to traffic in church-livings,
the scandal of a luxurious, negligent, feudal Hier
archy would come to an end. That this Reign of
the Saints might turn, as in other times, to an all-
embracing, irresistible despotism — to Florence under1
Savonarola,, to Geneva under Calvin, to Presbyterian
Scotland or Puritan New England — Gregory did
not imagine. He spoke always of the Church's
freedom. In the first authentic Decretal, Siricius had insisted
with the Archbishop of Tarragona, and through him
to the Spanish Church, that every bishop, priest, and
deacon must be celibate. A Council of Carthage in
397 calls this an Apostolic law ; and though Vigi-
lantius protested, Innocent I. (417) renewed the enact
ment ; St. Leo extended it (440) to sub-deacons ;
and such has ever been the discipline of the West.
, If a married man took orders, his wife entered a
convent or abode under his roof as a sister. Thus we
meet the curious names of presbytera and episcopa in
Church history, and we read of priests' or bishops'
children. In the East, however, custom, which had
always been acquainted with a married clergy, per-
15

2IO HENRY IV. Al CAN OSS A.
mitted matrimony to stand with orders in the lower
ranks. It would not suffer it in bishops, who were
to be chosen from the monasteries. And in the
West it should be observed that orders were not
conferred till the age of thirty and upwards; that
various Councils appealed to Nicaea on behalf of a
milder rule : and that, as the learned Thomassinus
expresses himself, the earlier practice had been
undecided or fluctuating. Even in the eighth
century Paul I. rebuked, and was on the point of
deposing, the Archbishop of Ravenna for living
publicly with his wife. Nicholas I. renewed the
laws of his predecessors, and was charged by Photius
with infringing the Nicene Canons on this very
account. Children born after their father's ordination
were reckoned illegitimate or even slaves ; but the
repeated injunctions of Popes and Councils prove that
the rule of celibacy had fallen into disfavour almost
everywhere during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh
centuries. When Gregory began his reform, says
Montalembert, " the whole clergy, with the exception
of the monks, and of certain bishops and priests
quoted as marvels, lived in permanent and systematic
concubinage." Such is the witness, such the language, of Peter
Damiani, who in this long and sanguinary contest
played the part of St. Jerome against Vigilantius,
with a strength of resolution, and, it must be added,
a coarseness of terms, not to be imagined by those;
who have never studied his writings. Himself rescued
and brought up by a priest's consort, the kindest
return he could make, after his monk's profession,

DISORDERS OF MARRIED CLERGY 211
was to set the clergy free from these dangerous help
meets. And with the marriage of ecclesiastics cer
tainly were bound up the sale, the transference, the
secularising of benefices. Priests and deacons, said
Desiderius, Abbot of Monte Cassino, are not ashamed
to marry and leave children as heirs in their wills.
What could they bequeath except what they had
plundered ? " These women," said Atto of Vercelli
in 956, " rule the house, and when master is dead,
inherit what the priest has left of the Church's goods
and the alms given by the faithful." The people sold
the election to livings, continues Desiderius, the priests
sold the consecration and the gift of the Holy Ghost.
It would be easier, exclaimed Damiani, to turn the
heart of Judas than to convert a Bishop — heretic
and robber as he is — from his poisonous heresy.
Bishops, even in Rome, kept their concubines and
called them openly their wives. In 1040, says
Bonizo, it would have been hard to find in the Eternal
City a priest that was neither illiterate, nor simoniacal,
nor living in disorder.
Monks had at first been laymen, solitaries or
united in a common life, but by rule they were " con
tinent," that is to say, unmarried. Since the resur
rection which began about the middle of the ninth
century, their great leaders had been ousting the
wedded secular canons and enforcing the strict
Western discipline, as we may read in the trials and
triumphs of Dunstan, the English Abbot. Never
theless, it is patent from the large area over which
opposition sprang up, from Apulia to Ireland, that
the clergy in general neither observed the law nor

/<¦

212 HENRY IV. AT CANOSSA
wished it to bind them. Under Leo IX., and in his
despite, French bishops were publicly married, pre
lates of great Sees like Rouen, of smaller ones, like
Le Mans and Quimper. In 1059, Damiani reproaches
Annibert of Turin for allowing his clergy to take
wives. Long before this, St. Boniface had brought a
similar charge against the Germans ; and Leo VII.
wrote to Gerard, Archbishop in Bavaria, " It is
deplorable that the priests in your country are'
openly married and ask to have their sons ordained."
St. Adalbert gave up his Bishopric of Prague because
he could not endure a clergy which declined to be
celibate and a nobility which was polygamous.
Evidence to the like effect could be multiplied ; but
there is no reasonable doubt that clergy and bishops,
left to their own devices, would have abrogated the
law and converted their benefices into hereditary
fiefs, on the pattern set them by their secular
neighbours. Of this movement the centre was Milan, never at
rest under the Roman supremacy, as proud of St,
Ambrose as though he had been an Apostle. Ruined
by Attila, greatly restored under Archbishop Anspert,
the city flourished when Pavia decayed, and in 1018
Heribert governed it with a magnificent liberality, a
show of learning, and a resolution of character, which
made him the foremost prelate in Italy. He crowned
Conrad II., and himself joined in the Emperor's
Burgundian campaign. But he was something of a
tyrant and his people rebelled ; Milan underwent a
siege at the hands of Conrad. The ^Archbishop de
feated his Emperor ; he set up the famous Carroccio ;

TUMULTS AT MILAN 21 3
he gave Milan freedom, but made it amenable to his
own government. The Milanese, when Heribert died,
invoked him as a Saint ; yet he had been married to
Useria ; and on the election of Guido, the long-
expected conflict broke out between reformers and
Epicureans (1057).
These turmoils in the Italian cities of the Middle
Age cannot fail to remind us of similar, but hardly
more violent, scenes in the small republics of Greece.
They did, in fact, spring from causes economic as well
as political, and religion was often a mere pretext.
Guido's rival, Anselm of Batioagia, could influence the
vavasours, or base tenants, the " Minores," as they were
termed elsewhere, whose debts burdened them, and
who felt keenly the impositions laid on their shoulders
by the Archbishop, his nobles, and his ministers.
The monks would side, with a discontented, suffering
multitude. Gregory VII. always speaks as the
champion of the down-trodden. And a sincere desire
to end abuses may have actuated Landulf, the eloquent,
high-born preacher, and Ariald, the man in the market
place, who were Anselm's lieutenants. The reformers
appealed to authority, the relaxed to ancient Canons ;
and both parties to St. Ambrose. But Ariald drove
the married clergy out of church. They were for
cibly separated from their partners. Guido, on
the other hand, held a Council at Novara, and
dared to excommunicate the leaders of reform.
He brought down on himself (1059) Peter
Damiani, now a Cardinal, with Anselm of Lucca,
commissioned by Nicholas II. to quell these dis
orders. Now the people turned again ; they would

214 HENRY IV. AT CANOSSA
not see their Archbishop humbled in presence of a
Legate. But Damiani faced them with supreme
daring ; he argued for the Roman claims, which they
were not prepared to deny ; and he compelled Guido
as well as his clergy to take a solemn oath against
simony and concubinage, which was equivalent in
the circumstances to a general confession of guilt.
Nor was that all. In 1059 Nicholas II. — we must
bear in mind that Hildebrand was his adviser —
renewed the decrees which condemned these evils,
and Guido signed them again. But neither he nor
any Lombard Bishop ventured on publishing them.
Anselm became Pope ; the episode of Cadalus fol
lowed ; Landulf died, and his brother Herlembal'd
stepped into the office of agitator. He was a demo
crat to whom Alexander II. sent a sacred banner,
Hildebrand urging this consecration of the popular
cause which implied the triumph of celibacy. Pass a
hundred years, and the Lombard League will vindi
cate his foreboding that the Free Cities would
uphold the Church, even unto blood. Herlembald ¦
governed Milan; Ariald got the Archbishop deposed ;
but he was imprudent enough to substitute Roman
uses for the Ambrosian, and it cost him his life.
Guido had returned. Ariald escaped to Legnano;
he was captured by the retainers of Oliva, the Arch
bishop's niece, taken to an island in the Lago Mag-
giore, tortured, mutilated, murdered (1066). Still
Herlembald held the city ; he kept Guido in prison,
defied the Imperial Court, and was under the pro
tection of Gregory VII. when a new insurrection
struck him dead and trampled on his sacred banner.

CELIBACY TRIUMPHS 215
Ariald and Herlembald were canonised ; Milan
yielded outwardly to the stringent discipline of
reform ; but in 1098 its clergy were handing down
as of old their benefices to children born in the
sanctuary ; and Cremona, Piacenza, Pavia, Padua, ex
hibited the fiercest dissensions between the defenders
of licence and the partisans of law.
This one sample may suffice. We need not dwell
on the strife at Florence, the virtues of St. John
Gualbert, the charges against Bishop Peter, the
victorious ordeal of his opponent, Peter Igneus.
Everywhere, law and piety, seconded by popular
zeal, overcame the opposition of prelates who did
not know what principles to rely upon when they
ran counter to the ideas of the age. All owned
monasticism to be the highest Christian aim ; how, then,
could bishops or clergy live as though merely ordained
laymen? Celibacy was now sure of its triumph.
Not so the war against simony, or the attempt to
wrest from secular hands privileges and properties, a
half or a third of whole kingdoms, which had been
time out of mind at their disposal.
Neither of the parties to this quarrel can have
dreamt that it would continue through vicissitudes
of shame, triumph, and defeat, a long three hundred
years, reckoning from Henry IV's accession to
Charles IV.'s Golden Bull, which at last divided
the Empire from the Papacy (1056-1 356). Still less
did they anticipate its consequences to themselves.
Both institutions, it must be remarked, stood above
or outside the nations of Europe considered in a
tribal or territorial sense. If the Papacy controlled

2l6 HENRY IV. AT CANOSSA
a spiritual society, the Empire was often little
more than a political fiction. In both the ruling
power was influence, not the force of arms, but an
acknowledged yet always resisted law, and the
personal authority of the ruler. Both again were
elective monarchies, liable to revolution at every
demise of. crown or tiara. They were not only
exposed to the intrigues, the corruption, the
sordid or ambitious views of possible candidates,
but, as we have seen in the French and American
systems which resemble them, were almost certain
to be wielded by average men chosen to keep out
the more daring spirits. By a singular coinci
dence, indeed, the Empire was now to become a
sort of family possession, the Papacy to move on
definite lines under its monastic Pontiffs, for a
hundred years and more. Nevertheless, no Emperor
succeeded in making the crown hereditary until the
brunt of this battle was over. And the immediate
successors of Gregory VII. inherited his policy
rather than his genius.
Gregory felt unbounded confidence in the " Divine
Idea " of Church and Hierarchy, of monks' vOws and
religious profession, which from youth up he had
cherished. As legate in France, under Victor II., he
confronted the hostile multitude of prelates ; wrought
upon their conscience by miracle, as William of
Malmesbury tells us ; and saw forty-five bishops and
twenty-seven other dignitaries confess their guilt and
lay down the sacred trusts which they had bought.
In Damiani's language, he had been " Lord of the
Pope " ; or as Bishop Benzon, a Simonian, cried

PORTRAIT OF HENRY 217
aloud, he "kept Pope Nicholas like an ass in a stable,"
binding the wretched man by oath to do his will — a
will, remarks Chavard, of marble and iron, which
could not be broken. In all things, says the bio
grapher of St. John Gualbert, he heard and defended
the monks. Thus on one side stood the Pope, almost
alone in the Hierarchy, relying upon the monastic
, orders and the popular enthusiasm ; on the other,
bishops, nobles, courtiers, and married clergy looked
to young Henry IV. as their champion. To him in
exchange for freedom as against the Hildebrandine
laws, they surrendered the Church estates, the right
of election to benefices great and small, the immunities
of cloister, fief, and Imperial city. In a contest so
unequal it did not seem possible that Gregory should
win, Henry IV., as described by historians, was a
Teuton, with the large limbs, blue eyes, flaxen hair,
and truculent temper of his race ; bold, enterprising,
and subject to fits of passion ; " a man," says Bonizo,
"of deep counsel and remarkable sagacity." His
bringing up had not been wise. The Empress Agnes
spoilt him. Hanno, if a Saint, frightened and brow
beat the lad whom he had kidnapped. Adalbert of
Bremen, according to his enemies, suffered Henry to
run wild at a critical period among evil companions,
who gave to the Court at Goslar a scandalous name.
These, however, were the " King's friends," to be
rewarded with great bishoprics and the wealthiest
abbeys in German lands. When the Saxons revolted
they charged upon Henry crimes too enormous for
belief; yet he neVer broke loose from the religious

2l8 HENRY IV. AT CAN OSS A
creed of his childhood. Among the? strange
characteristics of this man we must reckon his moods
of repentance, his remorse after violent and out
rageous behaviour, his tears and submission to those
whom he had been persecuting to the death. Pie is
called passionate, cunning, treacherous ; the story
will prove either that he was unstable, or that in the
conditions of the time no basis of purely secular
independence could be discovered, on which to with
stand the authority exercised by a Pope in God's
name. June, 1073, the very day after Gregory had been
chosen, saw the Saxon chieftains revolt. Their cry
went, " For God's Church, Christian Faith, our own
Freedom ! " Henry was asked to send away his
youthful counsellors, to quit his concubines, to take
back the wife whom he had repudiated, to dismantle
the forts by which he quelled these princes. Among
his friends were the Archbishop of Bremen, Liemar,
and the Bishops of Zeitz and Osnaburg. They were
driven into exile. Thuringia broke into open war.
Henry lost his treasures, fled into hiding ; then with
the help of his prelates and the Rhine Princes he
gained a battle at Hohenburg (1075). In adversity,
when Gregory admonished him, the Emperor con
fessed to every charge — incontinence, simony, invasion
of Church property; he would repent and amend.
Messengers came from Rome demanding the fulfil
ment of his promise. Let him call a Council, degrade
the simoniacal prelates. He consented. There was
a frightful tumult at Cologne, perhaps in consequence;
Hanno just escaped with his life, the city underwent

GREGORY ABOLISHES INVESTITURE 219
horrible disorders. Germany was rent into factions
At Erfurt where Siegfried of Mayence presided
when he displayed the Roman enactments, the clergy,
almost all married, rose against him, and threatened
the legate in such terms that he fled, escorted by his
own troop of soldiers. Hereupon followed a synod
at Rome, and the Pope, in one peremptory decree,
abolished the whole right of investiture ; to grant or
to accept it was the sin of idolatry, its punishment
was interdict (February, 1075).
This might be reform ; it was certainly revolution.
While no one pretended that the sale of livings could
be anything but a sin, investiture with ring and staff
had been practised by the holiest laymen with the
Church's consent or toleration. Gregory abrogated a(
long-standing usage ; he did not substitute any cere
mony by which the Civil Power was recognised. Not
only the person, but the property, of every cleric thus
became exempt from secular burdens. While the Pope
could dispose of bishoprics and their wealth, of
parishes and their endowments, nay of abbeys and
their treasures — as was shown by Stephen IX. in
regard to Monte Cassino, by the crusading Pontiffs
in regard to all Christendom — it might be asked in
what manner King or Emperor could deal with con-
¦ tumacious prelates, or with ecclesiastical bodies which
declined to share in the dangers and liabilities of the
common government. This question, under various
crude or debatable forms, was to give rise to Consti
tutions of Clarendon, Statutes of Mortmain, Premunire
and Provisors, and to precipitate a crisis in the days of
Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII., in the course of

220 HENRY IV. AT CANOSSA
which the Medieval Papacy, inaugurated by Gregory
at this moment, should complete one great cycle of
its development and a new era begin. It is not too
much to affirm that this double dispute, touching the
marriage of the clergy and the immunities of their
estate, which Henry IV took up in defiance of the
monk Hildebrand, is the same as that which in 15 17
was baptized with the name of the Reformation. At
Erfurt a yet unconscious Protestant Germany had
risen up against Rome. No sooner had Gregory
thrown down the gauntlet in his Lateran Synod, than
this entire party went over to the Emperor.
Had Gregory been no more than a politician,
he would have devised some way of hindering that
alliance. But he was what men of the world call
a fanatic, and his Church has declared him to be
a Saint. He struck at high and low, prince and
prelate, with undaunted resolution. The whole
German Church was leagued against him. In
December, 1075, Hanno of Cologne vanished from
the scene. The Saxon Bishops, his partisans, had
been conquered with their brother-nobles. Siegfried
of Mayence was a reed shaken by the wind. In his
Roman Council Gregory had suspended from office
a crowd of bishops, including Liemar of Bremen, and
the occupants of Strasburg, Spires, Bamberg, Pavia,
Turin, and Lausanne. When Altman of Passau read
from the pulpit Gregory's decree against clerical
marriage, he was almost torn in pieces by the furious
rabble. At Mayence the like tumults were renewed ;
neither Siegfried nor the Papal Legate could persuade
the clergy to obey. The law remained a dead letter.

CENCI SEIZES THE POPE 221
Except very few — it is the Pope's lament — none of
the Bishops exerted themselves to stamp out the evil
of simony, or to insist on their priests leading a single
life. Henry might assume that in defying the
Roman authority he would have the world at his
back. And he was a victor in arms at twenty-three,
while the Pope seemed defenceless, worn down with
age and trouble. The Normans, for sins of their own,
lay under interdict. Nor was Rome itself — the
patrician, turbulent Rome, which never loved the
clergy — favourable to the monk from the Aventine.
Guibert, soon to be Antipope, may have stirred up
old feuds, if they did not blaze out unprovoked.
What we know is that on Christmas Eve, 1075, in
wild weather, as the Pope was celebrating Mass in
St. Mary Major's, Cenci, of the House of Tusculum,
a pardoned traitor, seized Gregory, wounded him,
and thrust him into the tower on the Via Sacra,
bleeding and stripped of his sacred vestments. The
mingling of sacrilege and murder was then, as long
afterwards, peculiarly Italian. When day broke, the
people assaulted Cenci's stronghold and rescued
Gregory, who forgave this atrocious ruffian in mild
terms. Such were the " weapons of lowliness " with
which, as he told the Venetians, he meant to conquer.
But to Henry he turned a sharper edge ; his words
were very swords. Within a few days he issuetP
(January, 1076) a declaration of the Papal right to '
judge kings for their offences ; he rebuked the royal '
appointments to Milan and Spoleto ; he insisted on '
the discipline of celibacy, and he cited the Emperor,

222

HENRY IV. AT CAN OSS A

under threat of excommunication, to appear on
February 22nd in Rome before a Church tribunal.
Henry dared not risk his crown on the adventure.
At once he summoned his Bishops to meet at Worms
on the Sunday of Septuagesima. His intention was
to depose Gregory before he should himself be
deposed. The timorous Siegfried was president;

HENRY IV., EMPEROR A.D. 1076.
(From a print in the British Museum)

Cardinal Hugo, a sycophant and simoniac, who had
been the first to acclaim Hildebrand as Pope, now
stepped forward and charged him with crimes of the
deepest dye, but offered no evidence. A form of
renunciation was drawn up, and every Bishop com
pelled to sign it. Plenry sent the decree to Rome
with a letter of studied insult, in which he maintained

GREGORY DEPOSES THE EMPEROR 223
that the Emperor could be unmade for no crime save
apostasy. He did not perceive in his admission that
the Pope alone could judge who was, or was not, an
apostate. His letter concluded : " I, Henry, by the
grace of God King, with all the Bishops of my king
dom, cry to thee, ' Down, down ! ' "
This message was carried to Gregory sitting among
his ministers in the Lateran, by a priest of Parma,
Roland. Tumult followed its delivery ; but the Pope
read it aloud in his self-controlled way, pronounced
a skilful defence of his action, and next morning
launched the great anathema. In his audience sat
the Empress Agnes, Henry's mother. He had
already received letters of retractation from many who
took part in the Synods of Worms and Piacenza._
Now, by the authority of St. Peter, in the name of '
the Almighty, he proceeded to deprive Henry of the
whole government over Germany and Italy. He
released all Christians from the oaths they had sworn '
or might hereafter swear to him, and forbade them to
yield him obedience henceforth. He bound the King
in spiritual chains that all nations might know and
acknowledge Peter to be the rock on which the
Church was built by Christ, the Son of the living
God. It was a deed without example," but a master
stroke. Thirty years had passed since Henry's
father at Sutri put down three Popes at once from
their pride of place. Now the world looked on at a
counter-revolution in which the spiritual power did
as it chose with the temporal ; not only did the law
of the Roman Pontiffs obtain wider sway than the

224 HENRY IV. AT CANOSSA
law of ancient Emperors — which was Gregory's boast
to the King of Denmark — but the successor of
Charlemagne must become its humble minister, or
his crown was forfeit. Henry heard the sentence
and felt dismay. One of his chief advisers, William
of Utrecht, perished miserably. Defection had begun
among the bishops ; Suabia, Bavaria, could not be
trusted ; some of the Saxon leaders had gained their
freedom ; at Mayence opposition raised its voice ;
Udo, Archbishop of Treves, broke away to Gregory ;
and the King, losing himself in wild enterprises, failed
in Saxony and retreated with disgrace to the Rhine.
Six months had sufficed to ruin all his devices.
Meanwhile, Gregory exhorted him to repentance,
but did not cease to remind the Germans that if he
were contumacious, on them lay the burden of choos
ing an Emperor. At Tribur, near Darmstadt, a Diet,
or as we now say, the Reichstag, was held. Three
candidates appeared. Henry, with a handful of
followers, lingered at Oppenheim across the river.
During seven days the Diet took cognisance of his
high crimes and misdemeanours, his private vices, his
elevation of base-born men to responsible station, his
distrust of the nobles, and his assaults upon churches
and monasteries — these were counts of an indictment
from which we gather that the feudal chiefs, lay or
ecclesiastical, would have resisted a Patriot King as
fiercely as they did a tyrannical Emperor. And he,
quitting the semblance of dignity, flung himself on
the ground before them. He offered any terms short
of abdication. His offer was rejected. The wretched
Siegfried now thought of crossing the Rhine, attack-

PASSAGE OF MONT CENIS 225
ing Henry in person, and ending the war at a blow.
But the Imperial bands confronted him, and this
ignominy was spared the fallen Prince. Plard con
ditions, such as the Middle Ages had never heard
before, were exacted from him. At next Candlemas
Gregory intended to bold his court in Augsburg.
Let him decide the whole affair, said these German
oligarchs, who played off one authority against
another, and were only not fickle because they looked
always to their own advantage. Till then let the
King disband his troops, send away his excommuni
cated .Privy Council, withdraw to Spires, and live
there with no state of royalty. To this extra
ordinary demand Henry submitted. Gregory was
virtual sovereign of the Holy Roman Empire.
A terrible winter set in ; from November to April
the Rhine was frozen; his enemies, the Dukes of
Bavaria and Carinthia, watched the passes of the
Alps lest Henry should steal a march on them and
make his own terms with the Pope, who was moving
towards Mantua. With his wife and child, attended
by one servant, the unhappy young man turned into
Burgundy, bought from his kindred of Savoy the
passage over Mont Cenis, and through ways cut
by hatchets out of the frozen snow, not without
accidents, he came down headlong into Lombardy.
He was on the road to Canossa.
Among friends now of the Imperial cause he found
himself; a great army sprang up to meet him ; the
deprived prelates, the married clergy asked, Would
he not depose Hildebrand ? That undaunted yet
wary pilgrim had turned back from Mantua on
16

226 HENRY IV. AT CANOSSA
hearing this news and taken up his quarters in
Canossa, twenty miles south-east of Parma, the
strong fortress where Adelaide, Queen of Italy, once
found shelter. It belonged now to Matilda, the
saintly Amazon who ruled over Tuscany and was
the devoted friend of the Pope. Thither came a
host of penitents, German bishops, German nobles.
barefoot, in mourning, to beg absolution. It was
given with consummate . kindness. Matilda and
Hugh of Cluny interceded for the chief criminal.
Gregory referred him to the approaching Diet of
Augsburg. They pleaded for a speedier reconcilia
tion. "Then," said the Pontiff, "let him put into
my hands his crown and sceptre, and confess himself
an unworthy King." On January 25, 1076, Feast of
the Conversion of St. Paul, Henry was admitted
within the precincts of the Castle. In deep snow he
stood there, the tall, fair German, stripped to his
shirt, fasting and barefoot. That day passed, and a
second, in this ghostly silence, but Gregory from
within gave no sign that he knew of Henry's humilia
tion. A third ended in like manner. Was it the
severity of an Apostle or the arrogance of a tyrant
which the Pope displayed ? At length, in the chapel
of St. Nicholas, Henry fell down at Matilda's feet
and implored her intercession. Then Gregory
suffered him to draw near. They met — a strange
contrast, youth and age, the Emperor in his single
white garment trembling, the Pope with his red
mantle about him, slight, small, grey-haired, inflexible
as death. The Emperor was conquered.
Terms as stringent as they could be made, with

GREGORY TRIUMPHS 227
compurgators to show that Henry was not to be
trusted ; and to crown all, the fearful adjuration which
Gregory put upon him, holding the Host in his right
hand, "May God strike me if I am guilty of the'
crimes alleged against me ! Do thou, my son, do
as I have done. Avouch thy innocence on the Lord's
body." Conscious of many crimes, he shrank in
terror ; but the absolution had been given ; Henry
was Emperor again. His Lombards at the gates
heard this announcement with angry contempt ; they
cried out that his son should be their King, that
Gregory was a son of Belial. When the humbled
Teuton quitted Canossa none would greet him or
so much as look his way, and he passed on to Reggio
in a cloud of grief, disowned by friends, a laughing
stock to enemies. Such a day as Canossa the world
would never see a second time.

XV
NORMANS, CRUSADES, INVESTITURES
(1076-II23)
It is the year 1083. From his snow-penance
Henry had taken an undying hatred to Hildebrand.
Though absolved, he had not been able to prevent
the election of an Anti-emperor, Rudolph of Suabia,
whom let not the careless reader confound with
Rudolph of Hapsburg two centuries later. War was
raging, with devastation on a grand scale and blood
shed less than we might imagine, but a horrible
mixture of civil and religious broils. Rudolph was
nearly finished, and Gregory's new thunderbolts
against the Franconian Emperor did not help the
Suabian, to whom he perhaps sent a crown from St.
Peter. At Mayence and Brixen the Pope was
deposed. Guibert, Italian Chancellor, Archbishop
of Ravenna, usurped his place and for a long twenty
years fought and wandered as Clement III. No
serious historian believes the calumnies which were
spread abroad against Gregory. That he was true

CONFLAGRATION OF ROME 229
Pope every one knew. But in the battle of the
Elster, while Henry suffered a reverse at the hands
of the Saxons, Rudolph was killed. In the spring of
1081 Henry crossed the Alps, encamped under the
walls of Rome, and began a siege that lasted amid
fevers, alarms, and desultory fighting some three
years off and on. Accident at length gave him the
Leonine City, but Gregory was secure in St. Angelo.
Negotiations led to no result. The Emperor pressed
on the siege ; at Christmas, thanks to bribery, the
Romans opened their gates. Henry held the Lateran
as well as St. Peter's. His Antipope was consecrated,
himself crowned on Easter' Day, 1083, by Clement.
Canossa might seem to be revenged.
Now came Desiderius, Abbot of Monte Cassino,
like the messenger in a Greek tragedy, to announce
that Robert Guiscard was approaching with six
thousand knights and thirty thousand foot. Henry
could not stay to meet him. Taking hostages and
breaking down some of the walls, he fled towards
Citta Castellana. Three days afterwards, up marched
the motley but formidable host, not only Normans
but Saracens, all freebooters, on fire with lust of
plunder and excitement. They carried the gate of
San Lorenzo ; they released the Pope and conducted
him to the Lateran. But in two days the Roman
populace broke upon the barbarians, as they were
feasting, and attempted a massacre. Into these
narrow streets the Normans urged their cavalry ; it-
was a fight from house to house, and the natives were
getting the advantage, when Guiscard uttered the
ominous word " Fire ! " Instantly, from Lateran to

230 NORMANS, CRUSADES, INVESTITURES
Capitol, over the regions which Nero had once seen
in conflagration, the flames rose up. Houses of wood,
churches and temples of marble, were consumed under
a red cloud of night. Inhabited Rome, Palatine,
Esquiline, Quirinal took fire, blazed up, and was
laid in ashes to an accompaniment of murder, rape,
robbery, and all the unspeakable pollutions which
heathen Saracen, and scarcely less heathen Norman,
now brought on the Capital of the Christian World.
From that day the region of Monti — the Hills —
has been a desolation. When the people began to
build again they moved down into the Field of Mars.
Modern Rome dates from Robert Guiscard and
Gregory VII. and this great fire.
Thousands of Romans were sold in open market;
the city, however, was not safe ; and Gregory, broken*
hearted, went in company of Robert to Monte Cassino,
from which he retired to the stern seaside fortress of
Salerno. His last letter to Beatrice and Matilda
breathes an unconquered spirit. His last words have
a proud yet sincere ring in them : " I have loved
1 justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile."
Roman, with 'a Virgilian pathos, they were answered
by one of his Cardinals in a more splendid strain :
'" In exile, Holy Father, thou canst not die ; behold I
have given thee the heathen for thine inheritance and
the uttermost .parts of the earth for thy possession."
Such was medieval Rome, a blending of Imperial
haughtiness with the prophetic visions of the Hebrew
Testament. Then Hildebrand bowed his head and
died. He lies in a seldom-visited shrine, not far from
the crypt of the Apostle Matthew, looking over the

TEMPLE OF ANTONINUS AND FAUSTINA IN THE FORUM (ROME),
SHOWING TRACES OF FIRE, A.D. 10S3.

232 NORMANS, CRUSADES, INVESTITURES
blue Tyrrhenian waves. In death as in life we admire
his solitary grandeur, his devotion to an ideal which
consumed him as it subdued the conscience of his
century. But he perished while the battle was raging
(May 25, 1085).
Four men he had pointed out among whom to
choose a worthy successor ; they were all monks.
The Abbot' of Monte Cassino, after a year of flight
and protest, became Victor III. Robert Guiscard
had followed Gregory to the tomb in a few months.
Desiderius was the friend of his son, and known
already as an adherent of the Norman policy which
would keep Emperors at a distance. " No German
King," he said, " should institute another Pope." But
his reluctance to wear the triple crown was unfeigned.
With Jordan's aid Guibert had been chased from St.
Peter's, Victor installed ; but the monk-Pope returned
to Cassino, renewed at Beneventum the interdict on
Henry, and died in 1087. After six months another
Gregorian candidate, Odo, Bishop of Ostia, was
chosen. A Benedictine, noble by birth, French by
extraction, once a prisoner in the hands of Henry IV.,
he announced his election by declaring that he would
walk in Gregory's footsteps. He was destined to an
everlasting name as Urban II., the Pope who preached
and consecrated the First Crusade (1088-1099).
The nations were grouping themselves afresh, and
large domains were falling to the Roman See. On
the day when Gregory died, Alfonso VI. of Castile
captured Toledo from the Moors. Urban restored
to it the Metropolitan dignity over Spain, which it
had long lost. He was likewise called upon to

URBAN II., FRENCH POPE 233
mediate between the heirs of Guiscard as suzerain ;
to Roger he gave Apulia, to Bohemond Tarentum.
A daughter of Robert's was married to Raymond,
Count of Barcelona ; in 1090 this Prince declared
himself and his possessions tributary of St. Peter,
which, as the diploma proves, had become a recog
nised style of independence from secular powers.
Tarragona was to be held as its peculiar property
by the Apostolic See. Yet, at this very hour, Guibert
occupied one half of Rome ; and while France
acknowledged Urban with joy, the Empire was
divided and England hesitating. Urban' naturally
proposed to imitate the earlier Pontiffs who had
found in the Franks allies or champions when the
Germanic races pressed upon them. In proclaiming
a Crusade he was setting Rome free and holding up
Henry with his Antipope to the scorn of those
myriads who took the cross.
Before this came to pass fortune had favoured
only to abandon Henry. By way of helping the
Papal interest, Matilda, now past forty, consented
to marry Guelph of Bavaria, who was eighteen and a
husband only in name ; but this confederacy brought
down the Emperor into Tuscan parts. He captured
Mantua ; he was on the- point of exacting an almost
dishonourable peace, when defeat and his son
Conrad's rebellion drove him home again. Conrad,
deeply religious, but a dreamer, believed or imagined
things too monstrous for recital which he charged
upon his father, and escaping to Matilda's partisans,
was crowned King of Italy in Monza and Milan.
The Pope, meanwhile, lived as a wanderer on the

234 NORMANS, CRUSADES, INVESTITURES
face of the earth in the Norman dominions. When
this intelligence reached him, he came back to Rome
and kept Christmas there in 1093. Henry was
shattered by his favourite son's defection. Guibert
expressed his willingness to abdicate. At Piacenza
in 1095 Urban gathered an assembly of thousands,
eager to take the Cross ; and before them all he
gave ear to the frightful accusations which were
brought against her husband by the Empress and
declared them well-founded. These events broke
the Imperial influence in Lombardy ; and after some
vicissitudes, during which Matilda separated from
her foolish husband, a party of Crusaders took Rome
on their way to Palestine. In 1097 Guibert was
finally dislodged from St. Angelo.
But Urban had entered France in triumph. He
acted with all the pomp and authority of a King.
Philip I., weak and dissolute, not taking from his
predecessors the severe warning administered to
them by Nicholas I. and other Popes, had put away
his Queen Bertha, and seized Beltrada, wife of the
Count of Anjou. This pretended marriage was
allowed by the Bishop of Senlis, denounced by
Yvo of Chartres, who suffered imprisonment in
consequence, and reluctantly condemned by Hugh
of Lyons in a Council at Autun, which, however,
excommunicated both the King of France and the
German Emperor. Urban now arrived at Cluny,
where another Hugh, forty-six years Abbot, welcomed'
him as an old disciple. The famous Council at
Clermont followed (1095), and most remarkable it
is that a French Pope should command all Europe

CROSS AND TIARA 235
to enter on a distant, a hazardous expedition, while
his capital was in the hands of an Antipope, the
Emperor lay under interdict, and the successor of
Hugh Capet was excommunicate. In his own
person Urban combined the temporal and spiritual
sovereignty of the West ; neither did this amazing
double character of the Papacy provoke remonstrance
on the part of nobles or kings, though it dated no
farther back than Gregory VII. Philip apologized,
shuffled, was absolved, and after a wretched comedy
which lasted fifteen years, died in peace with the
Church. To complete our picture of times so unlike the
present, we need only remember how Anselm of
Canterbury was entering at the same period on
his long quarrel* with William Rufus and Henry
Beauclerc, which fills a tumultuous chapter in our
native history.
But the schismatic, the anti-clerical party as we
should now term it, was no match for Saints or
Crusaders. When Siivester II. conceived the daring
idea of overcoming Islam in the Holy Land — a
design taken up by Pope Gregory and carried out
by Urban — he cannot have anticipated that the
rights and privileges accruing thence to the Roman
Church, would make it the mightiest of visible
kingdoms, suzerain over Europe, rich with the
tribute of clergy, laity, monks, and military orders,
of which no account was asked or given. The
Crusades dealt to Franconians and Hohenstauffen
the deadliest blows, while investing the Papacy with
a moral splendour as the defender of Christendom,

236 NORMANS, CRUSADES, INVESTITURES
and awakening the consciousness, never afterwards
dormant, that in spite of local or national differences
Englishmen, Germans, Spaniards, arid Italians were
members of one great Confederation.
This movement, so wide and deep, resembled the
outburst cf new ideas which we call the French
Revolution in its immediate effects on lesser quarrels
and the internal dissensions of Europe. Where it
did not submerge, it tended to absorb them. Even
Henry IV. spoke of taking the Cross ; if he drew
back it was because he could not join the orthodox
hosts without acknowledging Gregory's Ultramontane
successor. Yet the enthusiasm awakened at Cler
mont gave him four years' peace ; and, in common
with other Princes, he proclaimed the Truce of God.
His Antipope Guibert died in 1 100. Urban had
gone shortly before him ; a year later Conrad, the
pious rebel, died at Florence. There was a fresh
Pope, Paschal II. ; a new King of the Romans, or
heir-apparent to the Empire, in the person of young
Henry, whom his father saw crowned at Aix-la-
Chapelle in 1099. Reconciliation seemed in sight.
But the old Emperor would not sue even to a Pontiff
so mild and considerate as Paschal, who was forced
unwillingly to keep him outside the Church's pale.
In 1 104 began the last act of an historical drama
which had gone on for fifty years. Prince Henry,
ambitious, subtle, seductive, quite innocent of a
conscience, revolted. With protestations of fervent
piety this bold youth took his father captive, im
prisoned and deposed him — the Bishops and the
army applauding — while filial manifestoes in the

HENRY V. EMPEROR 237
harshest language declared the Emperor unworthy
to reign, not fit to live. Henry's cup was full ; he
died an outcast at Liege in if 06 ; his remains, in
a stone sarcophagus, waited many years for the
decencies of burial.
And now, says Montalembert, Churchmen were
bitterly to atone for having accepted, even against
a guilty father, the aid of an unnatural son. Henry V.
was acknowledged by Paschal, the monk of Cluny,
who had seen three Antipopes raised up and cast
down in his presence at Rome. At once he claimed
by his ambassadors the privilege conceded to Charle
magne of electing Bishops, and overawed the small
number of Papal ecclesiastics in Germany. He
strengthened his hands by an alliance with Maud,
Henry Beauclerc's daughter. And the same year,
August, 1 1 10, the Emperor-elect, with thirty thousand
horse, went down into the plains of Lombardy. As
ever, the Italian cities were in deadly feud. Henry
smote them into peace by the sack of Novara ;
received the homage of all, except the great Tuscan
Countess, on the plain of Roncaglia ; burnt Arezzo,
and came to Sutri. The Roman Empire had
suddenly revived in this active, formidable, keen
witted Prince, who was no less skilful in chicane
than in war. Like his father he could be violent ;
but he understood, as Henry IV. never did, how
to display his Imperial pretensions on a ground
of law and custom.
He now reiterated his demands to Peter Leone,
the Hebrew delegate who had been sent to him
by Paschal. Investiture of the ring and the staff

238 Normans, crusades, investitures
did not exist in France. Thanks to Anselm of
Canterbury, it had just been surrendered by the
King of England. But Henry insisted on a practice
without which his German sovereignty was a mere
name — a practice, he argued, dating from Charles
the Great, and approved by sixty-three Popes.
Towns, castles, marches, tolls — perhaps two-thirds
of Germany — said the Archbishop of Treves before
Suger and the Pope at Chalons in 1107, went to
swell the regalia which clerics enjoyed, and how,
except by investiture, could the King maintain his
rights over them ? But argument was not the
weapon of a lawless age. Paschal had beckoned to
the Norman knights of Apulia ; they would not
stir. His Cardinals and the Romans themseves fell
into dire perplexity. Then the Pope made an offer
at which Europe stood aghast. Acting as supreme
administrator of Church property, Paschal consented
to give up the whole of the regalia — we must scan
it with the mind's eye : territories, cities, monasteries,
innumerable rights and revenues, the gifts of nearly
four hundred years — in exchange for freedom of
election to spiritual dignities. The Hierarchy was
to be disendowed, if Henry would suffer it to be
disestablished. On tithes and voluntary subscrip
tions the clergy should subsist henceforth. By such
a measure the Church would pass out of the entire
feudal system ; prelates would no longer yield
military service ; the sceptre and the crazier would
be sundered ; and the Emperor would find him
self powerful enough to cope with his mightiest
peers, their sovereign not only in title but in fact.

PASCHALS SURRENDER 239
' Seven hundred years afterwards this dream of
a Pope in extremity was fulfilled by the " mediatising ''
of all the German ecclesiastical princes, or their
absorption into the secular dominions of Prussia,
Austria, and Bavaria in 1815. When Paschal and
Henry exchanged signatures, neither can have
supposed that the compact would stand. Other
parties to so momentous a transaction must be
consulted. Henry, after hostages given on either
side, and his guarantee of the Apostolic Patrimony,
including all the South which he did not hold,
entered Rome, took the customary oaths, and met
Paschal in the portico of St. Peter's. He was declared
Emperor ; but now, when the terms of this astonishing
compromise were read over, the Pope's followers
broke out in tumult ; the German himself would not
ratify what he had signed. For a whole day Paschal
sat a prisoner in front of the Apostle's shrine ; the
population rose, massacred stray Teutons, assailed
St. Peter's, and wounded the Emperor. They paid
for their temerity by a great slaughter. Yet Henry
was compelled to withdraw uncrowned. He took
with him Pope and Cardinals ; wasted the Campagna
for two whole months ; and kept Paschal shut up
in the fort of Treviso. At length, on the field of
Sette Frati, the Pontiff .gave in. He yielded up,
without equivalent, the right of investiture. Henry
was crowned and went back to Germany. The
defeated Pope crept into the Lateran, and there hid
his shame.
Paschal had sworn never to excommunicate PlenryV.
(Bruno of Segni arid the Cardinals argued that such

24O NORMANS, CRUSADES, INVESTITURES
a treaty was null and void ; they obliged their spiritual
lord to renew the decrees of Gregory and Urban.
In March, 11 12, the Italian prelates held a Lateran
Council, at which the Pope made full and ample
amends for his concession to human weakness. He
would not molest Henry ; the Fathers might do
as seemed right in their eyes. Without hesitation
they cancelled the odious privilege. At Vienne,
Guido, afterwards Calixtus II., cut off Henry from
Catholic communion ; and though Yvo of Chartres
stood up for moderate courses, opinion among Church
men declared more and more violently against the
Emperor. The German bishops, the monks of
Hirschau, the people of Mayence with their Arch
bishop Albert, revolted. Matilda of Tuscany, dying
in 1 1 15, bequeathed her immense possessions, though
fiefs depending on the Imperial crown, to Paschal and
his successors. Again Henry must cross the Alps.
In March, 11 16, another Lateran Council, another
confession from Paschal, " I am dust and ashes.
Anathema to the unrighteous decree." His Cardinals
treated him still with indignant contempt. The
Romans, on their own account, were in rebellion.
The Emperor took possession of Matilda's inheri
tance, and in 11 17 he entered the city. Paschal fled
south ; when Henry retired he came back, surprised
and took the Vatican, but almost immediately after
expired in St. Angelo (11 18).
Straightway the Cardinals elected John of Gaeta,
monk from Monte Cassino, friend and minister of
Paschal, an erudite but not a strong person.
Gelasius II. was hardly chosen when, Frangipani

COUNTESS MATILDA IN THE VATICAN BASILICA.
(Bernini.)

17

242 NORMANS, CRUSADES, INVESTITURES
(a Cencio) invaded the church, seized and struck
the Pope, and chained him up like a dog in his
citadel below the* Palatine. These Tusculans were
Imperialist, that is to say, antipapal ; and their fierce
and brutal violence breaks in even on the rude
theatre of the Middle Ages like a thunderclap.
Other nobles took sides with the monks ; Gelasius
found the door open and escaped in a tempest,
during which he was borne on the shoulders of
Cardinal Hugo to Ardea. Henry lay outside the
Leonine walls. While the Pope in Gaeta bestowed on
William the Norman Naples and Sicily, the Emperor
had Maurice Burdin of Braga made Antipope.
Gelasius, after fresh perils in Rome, fled to Pisa, where
he consecrated the majestic cathedral, and thence to
Marseilles. He made a solemn progress through the
cities on the Rhone and died at Cluny ( 1 1 1 9), after a
disastrous reign of one year.
Guido of Vienne, Calixtus II., succeeded ; and now
France, rising slowly to its great medieval honours,
held as a rule by the authentic Papacy, while the
Germans created or sustained Antipopes in the
Emperor's interest. Like Urban II., Calixtus, though
inflexible in defence of his order, showed no slight
diplomatic skill ; his French common sense enabled
hiin to bring this weary business of investitures to
a reasonable conclusion. Henry was not unwilling
to acknowledge a Pontiff allied with himself as with
the reigning houses of Europe, and already owned
by his German Bishops. At Rheims (November,
1 1 19), in one of the most imposing Councils ever
held, Calixtus renewed the Truce of God ; listened

CONCORDAT OF WORMS 243
to the Kings of France and England pleading at
his tribunal ; and after fruitless negotiations, solemnly
• put to the ban Emperor and simonjacal prelates with
Burdin the Antipope, calling himself Gregory VIII.
¦ He had boldly undertaken to meet Henry ; now he
went a triumphal progress through Southern France ;
he entered Italy, received the homage of Milan, was
welcomed in Rome itself with transport, and ended his
long pilgrimage at Benevento. In 1121 he captured
Burdin at Sutri, exposed him to public derision in the
streets of the city, and flung him into a forgotten
dungeon, where he died.
No German had come to his rescue. Albert of
Mayence and the Emperor stood up as to do battle
with one another ; but the Treaty of Wiirzburg and
r the Concordat of Worms proved that an agreement
was desired by the whole Empire on terms which
might leave the Bishops in possession of their fiefs,
provided they-were not absolutely independent of the
secular over-lord. In 1122 the Bishop of Ostia
relieved Henry and his partisans from the censures of
the Church; the LateranJCouncil of 11 23, with its
six hundred abbots and three hundred Bishops,
sealed up what had been accomplished at Worms.
Something was yielded on both sides. The Emperor
gave up his episcopal functions of the ring and the
staff; he granted free election, and restored his
- conquests made during the war. And the Pope
admitted that for the regalia there should be homage
made by Bishops and Abbots chosen in the Imperial
presence, who were to touch the golden sceptre and
discharge all duties incident to their feudal tenures.

244 NORMANS, CRUSADES, INVESTITURES
It was a fair adjustment of complex interests.
Gregory VII. had gained the spiritual freedom for
which he strove so manfully, and without which
Bishops would have lost their sacred character,
degraded into lieutenants of an earthly king.
Henry V., though posterity does not admire him,
gained the no less important admission that every
kind of property carries with it social or political
obligations, from which it can never be exempt. The
Concordat of Worms respected in clergy and laity
rights that are seldom violated without detriment to
society as a whole.

SALERNO WHERE GREGORY VII. DIED AND IS ENTOMHF.n.

XVI
ST. BERNARD OVERTHROWS ABELARD AND
ARNOLD
(II23-IIS5)
To the great Burgundian Pope, Calixtus, a
Burgundian Saint far more illustrious was destined
to succeed, not in the Papal Chair, but in his influence
over the hearts and actions of men, now awakening
to chivalry, to culture, and to a romantic sense of the
beauty and grace which Oriental lands had opened
before the vision of Crusaders. It is a stirring, yet
not altogether uncouth age, this first half of the
twelfth century ; and its prophet, its king, is St.
Bernard of Clairvaux. He reforms monasticism,
nominates to the Papacy, preaches the Second
Crusade, puts down Abelard, is more than a match
for Arnold of Brescia. During well-nigh forty years
he is the spiritual dictator of the West, and that in a
period when men of strong character abounded, and
genius was not wanting. The busy picturesque
interval between Henry V.'s triumph at Worms and
246

NEW ERA BEGINS 247
the long troubles of Frederick Barbarossa, seems to
be filled with the person, the deeds, the sermons, the
miracles of this white-robed monk, whose pale and
refined- features, consumptive in their fairness, leave
the impression of a detached, yet fiery soul. Far
more winning than Gregory VII. he is not a whit less
imperious. In spirit as in name he is the last of the
Fathers. For with Abelard begins the strife of the Schools
which led up to Albert the Great and Thomas
Aquinas, and down to Luther and Calvin. With
the Republican Arnold, the national, Italian sentiment
springs to life which has created modern Italy. With
Barbarossa the German Empire emancipates itself
from the earlier conception familiar to Charlemagne
or Nicholas I., and sets up jurist against canonist,
the Civil against the Ecclesiastical Law, Ca:sar against
the Pope as supreme in the secular sphere, and that
by right divine. Henry V. and Calixtus II. for a
moment held the balance even ; henceforth it swings
violently up and down, sometimes in the Pope's
favour, sometimes the reverse ; but it descends at last
laden with the Pandects of lawyers and the sword of
Julius. Individual Emperors might suffer defeat ; a
dynasty like the Hohenstauffen be sacrificed ; but
the movement which began blindly under Henry IV.
never was really arrested or thrown back until it had
bereft the Popes of their feudal overlordship, pre
pared the way for absolute monarchs, converted the
oligarchy of the Barons to a House of Peers, and by
an unconscious, yet irresistible, trend of events made
Parliamentary institutions possible, and gave the Free

248 ST. BERNARD, ABELARD, ARNOLD
Cities a share in government. To these far-off issues
all parties contributed in turn. But we may trace
their beginnings to the twelfth century.
Not Rome but Paris appears as the world's capital
during this time. And Monasticism was entering on
its last shining transformation, before it gave place to
Francis and Dominic with their mendicant friars.
Cluny had seen its best days. After St. Hugh's sixty
years of stern Apostolic, rule, came Pontius the feeble,
came wealth and relaxation. The centralising
government which brought dominion made a fresh
start in fervour difficult, if not impossible. New
forms of the higher life were demanded. Fontevraud
had its singular story. Molesme was founded by two
penitent brothers ; Citeaux, yet more severe, by an
Englishman, Stephen Harding, from Dorsetshire.
This great man was Abbot when Bernard, the noble
Burgundian youth, fled out of the world to
Citeaux ; and thus the Cistercian Order reached its
high fame.
Once more monastic solitudes drew crowds of
votaries ; Bernard lived a life hard beyond descrip
tion, but when he preached of its joys men, both
single and married, left all things to follow him.
This, too, was a form of crusading which attracted
thousands. He was sent with a few companions to
the Valley of Wormwood in Champagne ; he called
it Clairvaux, and it ceased to be a wilderness ; but
the simple fare and strict rule astonished those who
came thither from Cluny. Bernard was not learned
except in the Scriptures ; he preached a figured and
passionate mysticism with an eloquence as com-

SCHISM OF PETER LEONE 249
manding as that of his later countryman Bossuet,
whose untroubled point of view, averse to subtleties,
dogmatic and decided, Bernard might seem to
anticipate. William of Champeaux, Bishop of
Chalons, gave him a commission to teach ; his
colonies of white monks spread their Abbot's
reputation throughout Europe. A schism at Rome
made him the arbiter of the Papacy.
Henry V., last Franconian Caesar, was gone.
Lothair the Saxon reigned in his stead. Honorius
II., after a contested election, had filled the Apostolic
throne six years, and dying in 1 1 30 opened the way
to fresh Roman quarrels of the kind we have studied
so often. Sixteen Cardinals chose without delay
Innocent II. Thirty-two, after a pause, voted for
Peter Leone, of Jewish descent, vast wealth, and
undoubted popularity. On Peter's side were the
Frangipani, Roger the Sicilian Duke, and a majority
of the Sacred College. Innocent took flight to Pisa
and sought the protection of Louis, the French King,
who summoned a Council at Etampes. Many
Bishops attended, but the Abbot of Clairvaux was
called upon to direct them as another Samuel. He
pronounced for the fugitive. Innocent arrived at
Cluny, met King Louis at Orleans, and Henry I. of
England, whom Bernard had brought over to his
side, at Chartres. The Emperor followed suit.
Frederick of Hohenstauffen", and Conrad, King of
Italy, were included in the anathema hurled against
Peter Leone, called Anacletus II.
But when Pope and Emperor met at Liege it was
only Bernard's arguments that prevented the old

250 ST. BERNARD, ABELARD, ARNOLD
quarrel of investitures from being ripped up again.
Innocent passed a night at Clairvaux ; it was too
austere for his Roman Cardinals. Still the Saint and
Prophet addressed vehement letters to Bishops, to
Genoa and Milan ; he went with the Pope to Italy ; ,-',$
with him and Lothair he entered Rome. "The
Jewish schismatic," supported by Normans, held
St. Angelo, even against the Germans ; and Bernard's
Pontiff spent four years at Pisa, until Lothair con
quered all Italy down to Apulia (which he claimed)
and Anacletus died in his castle. Victor II. becaishe
the next Antipope. Bernard persuaded him to
renounce his pretensions and the family of Peter
Leone to cease from troubling. Not even the Roman
stubbornness could remain deaf to his persuasive
words. He had brought the world round to
Innocent II. The Lateran Council of 1139 sat under
his inspiration ; its decrees witness that Church
authority had attained almost all it demanded, but ,
that resistance to dogma as well as to discipline had '
begun in the cities of Lombardy and the valleys of
the Alps.
If we assign the modern movement in politics,
philosophy, and letters to the twelfth century, it is to
Paris or France that we must look for its origin.
France was then a world in itself, with its rhymers in
Provence who fixed the measures of song and verse ;
its ardent, ascetic monks in Burgundy, destined ere a
hundred years had passed to lift the Cross in battle
against these amorous poets ; its thinkers from
Brittany, who found a voice in Peter Abelard, the
kinsman of Pelagius, the ancestor, not only of

252 ST. BERNARD, ABELARD, ARNOLD
Descartes, but of Chateaubriand. France was the
brain, the eye, the armed right hand of medieval
Europe. Its delicate genius invented the Gothic
style, the troubadour minstrelsy, the romance of love
and adventure ; its- clear thought strives in the
technique of scholastic forms to arrive at a system
which shall leave no question unanswered ; its gay
spirit, mingling with the Norman strength, the Celtic
impetuosity, carried to all the coasts of Asia, to
Euphrates and the Nile, a people so enamoured of
fighting that to this day in the Moslem countries
Frank and European are synonymous. In our time
Paris calls itself the City of Light. During the latter
twelfth century and all the thirteenth, it was even
more the Capital of Intelligence than it is to-day.
From Abelard to St. Thomas Aquinas, the Doctor
Angelical, such is the glorious ascent of its University.
But it could reckon some earlier names, the promise
of all that came afterwards. Charlemagne, no scholar
himself, had founded seminaries in every bishop's
house, and the Palatine School under his own roof.
Thither he summoned Alcuin from Northumbria,
whose training takes us back to Bede and Egbert ;
to the Greek Archbishop of Canterbury Theodore,
sent to England by Pope Vitalian ; to Bennet Biscop
and John, precentor of the Vatican Basilica. It does
not appear that Alcuin possessed an original mind ;
yet his talent for teaching entitles him to the dignity
of first Rector over those institutions in Paris which
later on developed into a genuine University. Paris,
Pavia, Bologna were centres of learning associated
henceforth with Charlemagne as their patron or

PARIS UNIVERSITY 253
founder. Thus on three distinct lines such culture
as survived during the chaos of the tenth century may
be traced out ; in the Benedictine monasteries, the
Bishops' Courts or Seminaries, and the Palatine, that
is to say, the royal schools. At Paris, when the
University came to riper years, four nations were
distinguished, the French, English, Picard, and
Norman. At Bologna, Irnerius, the legal adviser of
Henry IV., opened his school of Civil Law, which
produced effects so momentous and lasting in
European politics, towards the close of the eleventh
century. And if, at the timewe are now considering,
Bologna might reckon its ten thousand students,
Paris had at least its thirty thousand. The age of
Greek speculation, with sophists, heretics, disputes of
the market-place, sceptics and orthodox, pamphlets,
Inquisitions, executions for condemned opinions, and
universal unrest kept in order by the secular arm,
was revived in the meadows of St. Germain, and drew
to the Latin Quarter students from the four winds.
But the School philosophy did not begin its career
on the banks of the Seine. At Bee in Normandy a
converted soldier, Herluin, set up his abode under the
rule of Benedict. He drew disciples from far and
wide, among them Lanfranc, who opened a school
of logic, wrote against Berengar, the rationalising
Canon of Tours, and died in the See of Canterbury to
which he had been called by William the Conqueror.
Next came Anselm of Aosta, the Lombard, whose
delight in learning and in friendship, whose trials
under Rufus and Christian triumph over Beauclerc,
adora as romantic a page of history as the Middle

254 ST- BERNARD, ABELARD, ARNOLD
Age could illuminate. Anselm was a logician
according to method ; but he was likewise a Saint
and a contemplative ; in him the Benedictine quiet
is not yet troubled by doubts or lost in wrangling,
although at the Council of Bari he met the Greeks
with their own weapons. He asked questions of
which the solution was already given him by
Revelation. But Roscelin took a farther step. His
follower was Abelard ; and soon the world went mad
over Being and Not-Being and the nature of universal
ideas. About the year noo William of Champeaux
was teaching in the Abbey of St. Victor. He
disclosed the method of arguing on both sides in
order to discover the truth. Thus he paved the way
towards accepting Aristotle as a Christian philosopher.
And he was the master of Abelard, an incipient
sceptic, a man of letters, yet a foe to classic authority.
If to Anselm we leave the honour of starting the
orthodox system on its march, to Abelard we cannot
but assign the beginnings of that rebellious movement
which prompted one after another to fall out of the
orthodox ranks, and to assail the Hierarchy that
opposed them or the monasteries which they had
quitted, with the arms of private judgment.
Peter Abelard (i 079-1 142) was born at Palais, in
Brittany, of parents who both afterwards took the
monastic vows. At sixteen he left home to study
in the most famous schools ; at twenty-one he became
the disciple of William of Champeaux. But he soon
began to vex him with subtle arguments, and he left
his master for Melun and Corbeil, where the enter
prising youth set up on his own account. By and by,

ALCIBIADES PROFESSOR 255
on his return after an illness, he found William had
put on the religious habit in St. Victor's, and they
were reconciled. But fresh combats ensued ; William,
if not defeated, fell into discouragement. He took
refuge in the See of Chalons ; and Abelard, brushing
contemptuously aside another old master, Anselm of
Laon, seized the vacant chair at Paris, began lecturing
with an eloquence and acumen which dazzled the
largest audiences, and soon attracted crowds from
beyond the Rhine, the Alps, the English Channel.
He made a fortune by his lectures ; he was handsome,
winning, accomplished in music, an Alcibiades who
reasoned like Plato, and a philosopher who was more
than half a troubadour. Among those that listened
to him were Peter Lombard, John of Salisbury,
Arnold of Brescia, lights or guides to the next
generation. But his chief scholar was a woman, of
extraordinary spirit and equal beauty, Helolse, niece
of Canon Fulbert — the victim, the wife, the widow of
unhappy Abelard. Their story cannot be told here.
Enough that when the fallen Alcibiades hid his face
in the monastery of St. Denis, Helolse took the veil
at Argenteuil. When we read her impassioned
letters and his fragment of autobiography, so unlike
St. Augustine's Confessions in its self-praise and
sadness, we seem to have stepped from the twelfth
to the eighteenth century, from St. Bernard to
Rousseau, from the medieval cloister to a modern
French drawing-room.
Hitherto Abelard had been a professor. Now he
became a monk, and would have reformed St. Denis.
The community thrust him out. He was accused of

256 52". BERNARD, ABELARD, ARNOLD
heresy, and had to burn his book. Then he retired
to the Paraclete, a wild solitude in Champagne, and
once more scholars flocked round him. But' they
obeyed no canonical rule ; they discussed the mys
teries of the Faith freely. St. Norbert, Archbishop
of Magdeburg, had reformed the Canons Regular,
and founded the widespread Order of Premontre.
He joined with St. Bernard in denouncing Abelard.
Abelard retorted by calling them "the new Apostles."
But he could not fence with champions so well fur
nished. In 1 125 he went home to Brittany; Heloi'se
and her nuns took possession of the Paraclete. There
followed an interval of comparative peace. Then,
in 1 1 40, when he was sixty years old, Abelard
appeared as a suspected heretic before the Council of
Sens. St. Bernard had stirred up the French prelates
against this unheard-of Gospel, these novel disputa
tions. The modern writings penetrated everywhere ;
but to overthrow them by syllogism could not be a
monk's business ; and Bernard accused their authors,
while declining to argue in form against them. At
the Council mystic and rationalist came face to face.
Abelard appealed to Rome. The prelates, in a session
which has been grotesquely caricatured, condemned
his propositions. In like manner did Pope Innocent
II. The philosopher set out on his journey to the
Lateran ; he was kindly entertained by Peter the
Venerable at Cluny; and he died at Chalons sur.
Saone, April 21, 1142. His remains were taken to
the Paraclete, where twenty-one years afterwards
Heloi'se was laid by his side.
Peter Lombard, in his book called the Sentences

THE DUOMO OF PISA, CONSECRATED BY GELASIUS II., A.D. IIlS.

258 ST. BERNARD, ABELARD, ARNOLD
of the Fathers, may be thought to have improved
on the method of Abslard's treatise, Sic et Non — or
" Yea and Nay " — which did suggest the recognised
form of scholastic teaching. But in Arnold of Brescia
he had trained not so much a philosopher as an
agitator. This bold man appears to be the demo
cratic soldier of Abelard, not less opposed to the
Abbot of Clairvaux, nor in his opposition more for
tunate. That his character was without blemish we
learn from St. Bernard himself, who allows his capti
vating eloquence, while regarding him as little better
than Antichrist. Brescia had revolted from the
Empire ; it banished its tyrant-bishop, and under
Arnold's direction reduced the clergy to their spiritual
functions. Accused of schism at the Lateran Council
(1139) he fled to Zurich. Five years after, the war of
Rome against Tivoli and the revolt against Innocent
II. of his intractable subjects, made Arnold for a
brief space dictator on the Capitol. His patron at
Zurich had become Ccelestine II. (1143). But in six
months Ccelestine was gone;' and when Lucius II.
took his place, the Roman Republic, by the lips of
its Patrician Giordano, warned the Pope that he must
exercise no temporal rule, but be content with tithes
and oblations. Lucius called to the Emperor Conrad ;
he armed his nobles, attempted to storm the Capitol,
and perished in the assault. Giordano razed to the
ground Cardinals' palaces and the forts of many high
chieftains. It is clear that the whole movement, as
directed by Arnold, was democratic. Friends of the
Voluntary System, and all that uphold with Cavour
" a free Church in a free State," will recognise in this

ROMAN REPUBLIC AGAIN 259
daring champion a spirit akin to their own. His
hand was not dyed in the blood of Lucius ; but his
doctrine shaped the policy on which Romans were
now prepared to act.
In their consternation the Cardinals turned their
eyes upon St. Bernard. Would he accept the triple
crown, or at least choose a Pope for them? He waved
aside the glittering bait ; and they nominated a poor,
unlettered brother of his convent at Pisa, Eugenius
III., in hopes that the Saint would persuade France
or Germany to succour his late subject. Eugenius
was crowned at Farfa. Rome saw Arnold with his
Swiss mountaineers about him in company of Gior
dano the Patrician, who proclaimed the Republic,
created new noble families and tribunes of the people,
fortified St. Peter's, rebuilt the Capitol, and made
pilgrims pay at the gates of the city. Bernard in a
threatening letter commanded him to desist ; in
another he called on the Emperor Conrad to put
down these rebels. Eugenius entered into a league
with the neighbouring cities — he understood well the
character of medieval Italians — and with the help of
Tivoli he compelled Giordano to abdicate. He kept
his Christmas in Rome (1146). But in March he
was fleeing across the Alps to Dijon ; for he would
not betray Tivoli. The Abbot of Clairvaux governed
the Church in his disciple's name. He deposed St.
William of York on grounds which could not be sus
tained ; he brought to his knees the Bishop of
Poitiers, charged with a subtle heresy ; and he
roused Europe to the Second Crusade. Edessa had
fallen ; the Kingdom of Jerusalem was doomed

260 ST. BERNARD, ABELARD, ARNOLD
Eugenius published his Bull on the model of Urban's,
and St. Bernard preached it in all the towns and
monasteries, and along the highways of France,
Flanders, and Germany (1146).
It is not easy to imagine this spiritual dictatorship ;
how the unarmed recluse gave their uniform to the
Knights Templars ; drew multitudes to Vezelay,
where Louis VII., in spite of his sagacious counsellor,
the Abbot Suger, took the Cross ; compelled from the
pulpit Conrad the Emperor to follow his example;
and, more astonishing than all, put an end to the
horrible massacre of Jews in the Rhine cities, where
Rudolph of Mayence raised the cry against them.
In the West, war could no longer be waged for lack
of combatants ; towns and castles were empty ; the
chivalry of Europe had gone to die at the fruitless
siege of Damascus. Louis and Conrad returned in
disgrace ; a deep shadow fell on St. Bernard's last
years ; but when he died in 1 1 5 3 he was instantly
canonised by acclamation.
Eugenius died the same year. Twice he came
back to Rome ; his policy, Christian in its mildness,
and successful because he made little or no pretence
to temporal dominion, was to win his haughty people
by generosity and magnificent display. He sent
back the offerings of German archbishops, which was
a new thing in Rome, wrote St. Bernard with more
than a touch of sarcasm. Arnold was losing ground.
In 1 1 54 an Englishman, a priest, and a scholar, was
elected, and Nicholas Breakspear became Hadrian IV.
He had been brought up at St. Alban's, but was not a
monk; he had served as legate in Norway; his expert

THE FIRST HOHENSTAUFFEN 26l
ence taught him to strike hard ; and he pronounced
sentence of exile against the Brescian reformer.
Arnold denied his competence ; one of the Cardinals
was murdered ; the sturdy Saxon laid Rome itself
under an interdict. This was to quench the very
lights at St. Peter's shrine. Towards Easter the
clergy, reinforced by their people, insisted on
obedience to Hadrian. Arnold had no choice but
to disappear ; and the broken Senate laid down its
arms. But a fresh danger loomed on the Northern horizon.
Frederick of Hohenstauffen had been called to
succeed his kinsman in the Empire ; he was now
coming over the Brenner to Roncaglia with a mighty
host. Since Calixtus II. rebellions and disorders had
weakened the Papacy ; while Henry V.'s judicious
exchange of the crozier for the sceptre had united
German prelates with German princes in a growing
national sentiment. The Roman Law would speedily
be pitted against the Roman Pontiff. Frederick felt
himself every inch a Caesar. Valiant, far-looking,
ambitious, just in a barbaric and cruel fashion, strong
in the conviction of his rights, and sure that he held
his crown from God alone, he entered Italy as a victor
who came to set the world straight. His prelate-
vassals carried their standards before him. The
Republics of Lombardy licked the dust. Tortona
was made an example. From Viterbo Hadrian sent
ambassadors to offer him the Imperial crown, and
demand that Arnold of Brescia should be given up.
Arnold must have seemed a mere rebel in Frederick's
eyes ; he consented. The democratic leader was

262 ST. BERNARD, ABELARD, ARNOLD
carried back to Rome, and delivered into the hands
of Peter the Prefect at St. Angelo.
What followed has been variously told. But we
may rely upon it that there was no trial of an excom
municated cleric ; and all accounts agree that the
execution was despatched with haste and secrecy.
Was Arnold hanged and burnt like Savonarola, of
whom we think as we read his melancholy fate?
" The rope strangles him, fire and water carry him
away," says the German story-teller — these pre
cautions were taken lest the Romans should worship
him as a martyr of their liberties. With his ashes
the Republic was swept into the Tiber. Priesthood
and Empire took up their never-ending quarrel.
Frederick, from this hour, was not to enjoy a
moment's peace for one and twenty years. The next
century was to ring with the calamities of Hohen
stauffen. " Look on my German nobles," cried
Frederick to the cowering republicans, who came
to meet him at Sutri ; "these are my Patricians of
Rome ; this is the perpetual Senate ; and I am your
sovereign." By way of proof, when he received the
diadem in St. Peter's shortly after, his soldiers mas
sacred above a thousand of the citizens who were
complaining that they had been excluded from every
part in the election. They now got their share. Bar
barossa would not hear of an independent Italy.
Neither Hadrian nor his Romans would bend under
the German yoke. It was a simple issue, to be decided
by the fortune of war.

XVII
FREDERICK REDBEARD AND HIS TIME
("55-i 177)
GUELFS and Ghibellines — names cast up from the
deeps of hell, cried honest Muratori — will now engage
our attention during a hundred years of embittered
strife. In such a contest religion had no direct
interest ; the Ghibelline was not a heretic, nor was
the Guelf a saint ; while, as regards the Papacy, its
line of action was determined by the motives which
long before had made it the enemy of a Lombard
Kingdom at its doors. To escape from Astolf or
Desiderius it was that the Popes had called in their
Frankish allies, and created the Holy Roman Empire.
But now the Empire had grown to be a peril.
Frederick the Redbeard, taking homage, not only
from the Northern cities, but from Capua, laying
claim to distant Apulia, and grasping with a mailed
hand the inheritance which Matilda had bequeathed to
St. Peter, would do - all, and more than all, that
Arnold of Brescia had dreamed of doing against
263

264 FREDERICK REDBEARD AND HIS TIME:
the Pope, confounding in one equal servitude Capitol
and Vatican, Senate and Pontiff. " The imprudence
of John XII., when he invited the Germans to Rome,"
observes an historical writer who was not exactly
a Guelf — we mean Voltaire — " was the source of
those calamities which weighed upon the city and
the Peninsula for hundreds of years." Perhaps it
would be fair to remark that Italy in the tenth cen
tury had fallen into barbarism, while in the twelfth
its commercial Republics were evoking a new and
glorious type of civilisation. The Othos had brought
with them peace and prosperity ; the Hohenstauffen
rained from their German clouds an iron hail that
laid the land waste. Neither on medieval nor on
modern principles could they benefit a race to which
they were inevitably opposed. Absentee lords, who
maintained their power by predatory incursions, have
been the ruin of Italy ; and a Teutonic Hannibal —
which is all that Frederick ever was in his five cam
paigns — had little right to judge the Pope or the
Lombards severely, if they preferred independence
to the Imperial chains.
Thus the Guelfs could march under a flag inscribed
with religion and freedom, mighty names with which
to conjure ; but to what standard did the Ghibellines
appeal ? Otho, the Bishop of Freising, shall teach us.
"Then you could behold," he exclaims, describing
Frederick's coronation, " our men striking, slaying the
Romans with huge strokes, as if they said, ' Take now,
Rome, for the gold of Arabia German steel. With
such coin our Prince buys his crown. Thus is the
Empire purchased by us Franks.' " The appeal was

BENEFICE OR BENEFIT? 265
to the strong hand, to an image of Caesar fashioned
by jurists out of their freshly opened law books, and,
as Michelet truly observes, their "science most favour
able to despotism."
Could there be a less even match ? Yet when
Hadrian IV, compelled to be Frederick's ostensible
ally, went with him to Tivoli, and the Germans had
caught their usual Roman fever, the Pope was look
ing for help towards Sicily and the Normans. This
isle of Paradise became the key to all subsequent
adventures in a war which depended as much on
chicane as on armed battalions. If the Emperor
might rule south and north of Rome at once, how
was the Papacy not enclosed in his meshes ? Hadrian
had excommunicated King William of the Guiscard
line. No sooner was Frederick gone, than at Bene-
vento he invested William with Naples and the whole
South, acting as suzerain, receiving tribute and fealty
from the Norman.
Frederick retorted by prohibiting appeals and
pilgrimages to Rome. At Besancon the Emperor
was holding a Diet, and annexing Burgundy. The
Papal legates, among them Cardinal Roland, after
wards Pope Alexander III., brought letters in
which Hadrian^ echoed the language of Hilde
brand, spoke of the Empire as a benefice, and
himself as conferring it. Frederick's rage knew no
bounds. Count Wittelsbach would have struck
Roland dead with his sword. An Imperial manifesto
came out, charging the Curia witla venality and
sacrilege ; it was answered with no less warmth ;
but , the Pope softened his Latin "benefice" to

266 FREDERICK REDBEARD AND HIS TIME
" benefit," for Barbarossa was hurling upon Italy a
host from all his dominions. The passes were choked.
Milan dared to withstand him ; Milan was compelled
to submit. A kind of Bearsark cruelty was natural
in Frederick, and his legislation seemed not less
passionate than his warfare. In 1158 the lawyers at
Roncaglia recorded as for everlasting remembrance
his claims over clergy and laity. He awarded the
vast inheritance of Matilda to his uncle, the Bavarian
Guelf. Negotiations went on with Hadrian, but they
degenerated into personalities, or assumed that Con
stantine was lord of Silvester. The undeniable
corruption, rapacity, and worldly pomp of Cardinals
or Bishops furnished the Emperor with a stinging
text. Hadrian threw off his guard ; demanded back
the Eternal City, the Matildan legacy, and tribute
even from Frederick for Ferrara. The reply was,
" By God's grace I am Emperor of Rome." Prelates
and princes, to say nothing of the Roman Senate,
were leagued with this new Charlemagne. Then
Hadrian from Anagni prepared to excommunicate
and depose him ; the Lombard League answered the
Imperial. But in 1 1 59 the English Pope had done
with fighting. He left it to his successor. Who now
would step into the hottest front of this battle, and
oppose in Barbarossa " the arts of a statesman, the
valour of a soldier, and the cruelty of a tyrant " ?
An old situation brings familiar tactics into play.
Hadrian had thought of deposing Frederick ;
Frederick might acknowledge, if he did not create,
an Antipope. Fourteen Cardinals chose the Guelf
Roland, and invested him with the " mighty mantle,"

LOMBARD LEAGUE 267
as Dante calls it. Octavian, the Ghibelline, plucked
it from his shoulders, was acclaimed by two other
Cardinals, and borne in state by a hired soldiery
with drawn swords. He called himself Victor IV.
The people appeared to welcome him, while Roland,
Alexander III., lay in hiding. Both candidates soon
left the city and were consecrated each as supreme
Pontiff. Frederick summoned them to Pavia ; but
when Alexander would not come he acknowledged
Victor. Excommunications were exchanged ; the
Emperor was posted up as a schismatic in every town
of the Lombard League, now bent on securing its
independence. Christendom fell in twain. While
the Empire held to Octavian, the Western Kings
naturally took their stand against him." Alexander
might sing Mass in the Lateran. But precedent must
be followed ; a Pontiff in distress could find no better
refuge than France. He arrived at Courcy on the
Loire, was greeted by Louis and our Henry II., and
stayed there three years.
Meanwhile, Frederick was once more on Italian
soil, and his arms made an end of Milan (1162).
" The buildings of that stately capital," says Gibbon,
" were razed to the ground; three hundred hostages
were sent into Germany ; and the inhabitants were
dispersed into four villages, under the yoke of the
inflexible conqueror." Victor passed away, Guido of
Crema clutched his falling mantle at which the Roman
boys had mocked. The stars in their courses were now
fighting for Alexander. For his Lombard allies were
to restore Milan, and Thomas a. Becket, Archbishop
of Canterbury, was to win by martydom the cause of

268 FREDERICK REDBEARD AND HIS TIME
Church immunities, which seemed to be at its last
gasp all over Europe.
Of Saxon England we may affirm that it never
had a quarrel with the Holy See, or with its clergy.
Kings and queens ruled over monasteries, but as
penitents, not by virtue of their sceptre. The
Normans, however, a shrewd, litigious, and hardly
devout race, were willing enough to draw their swords
in defence of the Church, but resolute in keeping it
subject to the Crown. Alexander II., no doubt by
Plildebrand's advice, had sent William the Conqueror
a consecrated banner and given him leave to invade
England. But William paid no acknowledgment to
Rome, and his intercourse with Gregory VII. was on
the loftiest terms. He remodelled the Church ; his
successors despoiled or corrupted it. St. Anselm fled
before the face of Rufus ; in dealing with Henry I.,
he was no less tormented but something more
fortunate. Henry II. accepted from Pope Hadrian
the commission, which reads like a crusading Bull, to
reduce Ireland beneath his own sway and that of the
Christian religion. But Hadrian must have been
aware that Henry, his Queen Eleanor, and his royal
house, were tainted with every vice, passion, and
crime. Henry's character is by no means doubtful —
furious, cunning, unstable, a compound of lust and
cruelty, he brought up children in his own image and
likeness. His Normans had all the vices of the
Greeks except cowardice, all the Teutonic rage with
out its intemperance. Not inferior to Barbarossa in
resources or ability, by far the most powerful King of
his time, Henry, like the Emperor, could not but

BECKET ARCHBISHOP 269
desire to make of the feudal system an absolute
monarchy ; and where one set up the Roman Law in
order to stand above it, the other founded himself on
our English Common Law, or the Customs of the
Realm. But liberty in any modern sense was un
known to the twelfth century ; and this memorable
contest had in view the privileges of an order, the
prerogatives of a King. In more specious language
Herbert of Bosham contrasts " the peace of our
sovereign lord " with the freedom which a clergy, not
always decent in behaviour, enjoyed to its own detri
ment. Acknowledged evils might demand a remedy ;
but the Plantagenets aimed at despotism.
To the virtues, energy, and accredited miracles of
such men as Hildebrand, Damiani, Anselm, Bernard,
the Church owed its victories in the century past.
These were Saints from their cradle. A converted
worldling was to be the instrument of Henry's defeat,
He had made his Chancellor an Archbishop, who
knows with what sinister design ? The Archbishop,
on whom Canterbury monks had looked with no
favour, suddenly put them to the blush by his
austerities, prayers, and almsgiving ; he was perfect,
according to the pattern of medieval sanctity, in his
life and conversation. Yet there had been something
to reform. Thomas a. Becket was of Norman descent,
singularly handsome, accomplished in chivalry and
courtesy, brought up in the house of Archbishop
Theobald, and thence despatched on errands of study
or diplomatic interest to Rome, Bologna, Auxerre.
He had gained legatine powers for his patron ; he
had induced Eugenius III. to reject King Stephen

27O FREDERICK REDBEARD AND HIS TIME
as a usurper. Though in deacon's orders only, he
was laden with preferments ; as Chancellor his
magnificence or prodigality, his pride and eagerness
to be admired, are dwelt upon by John of Salisbury
as blemishes in a man who still kept his clerical vows.
Now he resigned the Great Seal. At Tours, in 1163,
where Alexander welcomed him with distinction, he
concurred in putting down the schism and in assert
ing the privileges of his order and the sacredness of
its possessions. Next year he was excommunicating
a royal vassal ; he was in conflict with: the high line
of the De Clares ; to feudal encroachments he would
oppose the Church's censures ; nor was he a whit less
haughty and determined in his new office than he
had been in the old. Compromise between two such
antagonists as himself and the King might seem
impossible. They could but win and lose alternately.
A Parliament was held at Westminster in October,
1 163. Gross abuses were alleged as taking place in
the archdeacons' courts, and Henry required that clerics
charged with crime should be degraded from their
office and given up to the secular arm. The Bishops
refused. Would they, at least, observe the Customs
of the kingdom ? " Saving my order," replied the
Archbishop. This amounted to defiance. Parlia
ment was dissolved ; severe measures followed. At
the Bishops' entreaty Thomas relinquished the
obnoxious word. But when, at Clarendon, he saw
these Customs written down, he wavered. It was too
late. He took the oath and his episcopal brethren
did in like manner. Sixteen statutes reduced the
clergy under the Common Law ; forbade prelates to

CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON

271

quit the realm without leave from the King ; carried
all disputes touching benefices into his Courts ;
allowed no excommunication of his officers or tenants

Hi

HENRY II., KING OF ENGLAND
(From an engraving in the British Museum.)

in chief till information had been laid before him ;
and while encouraging appeals from the Archbishop
to the Crown, allowed none to Rome without the

272 FREDERICK REDBEARD AND HIS TIME
King's licence. If we compare with these enactments
the famous law of Henry VIII., which transferred to
him and his successors the supreme government of
the English Church, we shall be startled at the
resemblance. Thomas a Becket had surrendered
almost as much as Thomas Cranmer surrendered
afterwards, when the King became Pope in all his
dominions (1 164-1534).
He had sworn with no mental reservation — equally
without reserve he did penance fOr his oath and
sought the Pope's forgiveness. It was granted. Yet
Alexander would not offend Henry, and he allowed
Roger of York to exercise legatine powers in the
province of Canterbury. The Pope, all through, is
politic, never on the King's side, but tremulously
afraid lest he should make common cause with
Barbarossa. The English Bishops took part against
their Metropolitan. On that bitter day of North
ampton when he redeemed his fault heroically, Becket
was forsaken, reviled, condemned for perjury and
treason ; he sat alone in the open hall, and his
Bishops urged him to resign if he would not be
deposed. He appealed to Rome ; passed through a
storm of reproaches ; fled over the fens of the east ;
and at length crossed to Flanders. He was received
by Louis VII. at Compiegne. His messengers ob
tained an interview with the Pope at Sens before
Henry's were admitted.
Alexander must, in any case, have annulled the
Constitutions of Clarendon. He did so in public
Consistory. The Archbishop tendered to him his
resignation ; it was not accepted. Henry banished

BECKET IN EXILE 273
his dependents and kinsmen ; Thomas, in mortified
retirement at Pontigny, drew the eyes of Europe
on his sufferings. Barbarossa and the Plantagenet
agreed at Wiirzburg (1165) to join their forces and
setup Paschal III. in place of Alexander; but the
traditional policy of England could not be changed ;
all this proved to be summer lightning. Becket in
the same year cited the King's Ministers into his
court, condemned the sixteen statutes, and put their
defenders under interdict at Vezelay ; his action pro
voked Henry to madness, and Pontigny could no
longer serve as a refuge to the exile. He went to
live at Sens. Alexander had now returned to Rome ;
and John of Oxford with letters from the Bishops,
with vast sums for the Guelfs in Italian cities and for
the Frangipani in the Forum, persuaded the Pope's
advisers to curb this headlong Archbishop. That the
Pope himself was bribed has never been asserted.
But he suspended the acts of Becket by his direct
authority, and appointed two Cardinals to decide the
whole matter. Thomas exclaimed, " If this be true,
the Pope has strangled the Church." His words,
always strong, grew exceedingly bitter.
The issue was determined by great events now.
happening in Italy. Milan had been restored by the
Lombards in 1 165. Frederick, in his fatal year,
1 1 67, came on with a powerful army towards Rome.
The Romans imprudently chose this moment to
attack their neighbours of Tusculum. They were
defeated by the Archbishop of Mayence ; and
Barbarossa took St. Peter's after an obstinate
defence. He was crowned by his Antipope in a
19

274 FREDERICK REDBEARD AND HIS TIME
sanctuary reeking with blood ; his troops had cut their
way to the very altar, slaying as they went. Alex
ander escaped'' in disguise. Yet a fearful vengeance
fell upon these sacrilegious invaders ; their army
began to waste by some mysterious and rapid disease
which swept off the martial prelates and their men
between morning and evening. Barbarossa retreated ;
Lombardy in all its towns except Pavia cast away his
yoke. He fled over the Alps, and what was left of his
army followed him.
It was an awe-striking catastrophe. " The angel
of the Lord," exclaimed Thomas, " had smitten
Sennacherib and all his host." With confidence the
Archbishop went forward to meet the Cardinals near
Gisors. Never had he been more contemptuous of
the " Customs," more disdainful towards those " slaves
in the old comedy," the Bishops of England. Henry,
in tears, besought the Legates to rid him of this thorn
in his side. And they, bribed or diplomatic, suspended
his action till next Martinmas, a legal year (1167-
I168). Even the Pope from Benevento approved.
Becket wrote to him in terms of extreme violence,
sparing neither the Curia nor Alexander himself.
The King of France added that such inhibitions were
a betrayal of the Church. Still, the Roman policy
persuaded to an attempt, fruitless and exasperating,
at reconciliation in the meeting of Montmirail. As
fortune favoured the Guelfs, whom Henry kept alive
with subsidies even in Rome, the Pope issued a new
legatine Commission to Gratian, the stern Decretalist,
arid Vivian,: who was not so tainted with venality as
the: average official. They discussed whole days with

RETURNS TO CANTERBURY 275
Henry ; concerning whom said Vivian, " Never did
I know a man to be such a liar." The Interdict
threatened by Becket was telling on English public
opinion. In November, 1170, he published it
solemnly. The King met this tremendous charge
with proclamations of high treason, confiscation, for
bidding of appeals outside the kingdom, all to little
purpose. And yet Alexander would still absolve the
Bishops whom their Metropolitan laid under censure ;
he did not forbid the coronation of Prince Flenry by
Roger of York, who thus invaded the rights of the
Church of Canterbury. No one acquainted with the
facts can maintain that the Roman authorities sup
ported their Archbishop. He was indeed to triumph,
but not by interdicts.
After much confused negotiation, it was whispered
to the King that Thomas in his See at Canterbury
would be less formidable than Thomas an exile
scattering censures from abroad. Henry was capable
of the utmost duplicity in word and conduct ; he
made an ambiguous treaty at Fretteville with his
enemy, in which neither pronounced the name of
Clarendon. To one pledge of honour the King could
not bring himself ; he never would give Becket the
kiss of peace. On December I, 11 70, six years from
his flight, the Archbishop landed at Sandwich. He
rode in splendid procession to Canterbury and made
a progress to London. The people had been all
along ardent in his support. Not so the holders of
Church property, whom he was now going to press for
restitution ; and, while he seemed more of a sovereign
in the Kingdom than his master, the excommunicated

276

FREDERICK REDBEARD AND HIS TIME

prelates were at Bayeux, imploring Henry's protec
tion. " While Thomas lives, you will have no peace,"
said one of them. He broke out into the words of
doom, " Who will rid me of this insolent priest ? "
The four murderers, Fitzurse, Tracy, Moreville, Britto,
set out on their never-to-be-forgotten errand, crossed

ARMS OF THE SEE OF CANTERBURY, SHOWING THE PALLIUM.

the Channel, rode to Canterbury, and arrived at the
cathedral as Vespers were singing, on December 29,
1 170. The passion of Thomas a Becket, which scattered his
brains on the floor of his own Cathedral, is perhaps the
most dramatic episode in English history. After seven
hundred and thirty years we can see it all with our

ST. THOMAS THE MARTYR 277
eyes as it was enacted on that dark winter's evening.
This champion of his order and the people, a saint in
self-denial, an Athanasius against the world, who had
overcome his King by sheer tenacity of principle, and
conquered the venality, the waverings, of Cardinals
in Rome and Bishops in England ; at whose feet the
country lay prostrate in a trance of worship and
religious dread ; shone forth in one moment with a
martyr's crown. The vision filled every imagination,
the tragedy melted all hearts. Within three days
miracles of healing began to be reported from a
distance. They multiplied as years went on ; the
pilgrimage to Canterbury did not yield in renown to
Rome or Compostella ; and Alexander canonised,
not unwillingly, the defender of Church liberties who
had poured out on himself rebukes the most scathing
nor wholly undeserved. In his death Thomas had
subdued friends as well as enemies. But it is only
the historian who, looking back, can perceive that the
great popular saint and churchman had delayed the
Reformation in England by more than three hundred
years. On Henry the recoil was crushing and instan
taneous. He fell under the weight of a universal
execration ; he was Herod or Julian ; and Alexander
would not suffer his name to be pronounced in his
hearing. Interdict on all his dominions was averted
only by abject surrender at Avranches of his Customs
of Clarendon, and no less abject pretence of grief
over Becket's martyrdom. His Queen stirred up
revolt ; his sons conspired against their father. As
early as 1171 the proudest of Plantagenets was

278 FREDERICK REDBEARD AND HIS TIME
writing these words to Rome : " I and my eldest son,
King Henry, swear that we will receive and hold
the Kingdom of England from our Lord, Pope
Alexander, and his Catholic successors." The land
was to lie under the obligations of feudal law ; would
not the Pope, cried this broken despot, come to the
defence of England his fief? Yet even that humilia
tion did not suffice. Henry had recourse to the
Saint's intercession ; with bare, and bleeding feet he

MEETING OF ALEXANDER III. AND ZIANI, DOGE OF VENICE,
A.D. 1177. (Bassano.)
crept into Canterbury ; his back was scourged- by
the monks ; and St. Thomas appeared by the sudden
deliverance which followed, to be his surest friend.
Yet the conclusion of his reign was inglorious.
Richard drove his father in headlong flight from Le
Mans ; he sought mercy, and learned that his
favourite son John was false like the rest of them.
Henry cursed God and died. Doubtless the clergy
exulted, " So let all Thine enemies perish, O Lord ;

ITALY AGAINST BARBAROSSA

279

but let them that love Thee shine as the sun at his

rising

I"

Years before this catastrophe, the fierce and
terrible Barbarossa had been made to stoop, not in

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28O FREDERICK REDBEARD AND HIS TIME
Alps and the Apennines in a league of freedom, the
Pope saw his rival Antipopes die or sink in disgrace.
Though he dared not live in Rome, yet he was hailed
as the saviour of Italy ; to this day the strong
fortress of Alessandria which bears his name is a
memorial of the federation between Papal claims
and popular franchises. Frederick made overtures of
peace ; they could not be entertained. Milan rose
from its ashes. The Imperial squadrons were defeated
at Cassano, repulsed before Ancona. At last, after
an attempt upon Alessandria, came the fatal and
glorious combat of Legnano in which the Lombards
broke his chivalry and Frederick "himself disappeared
from the field in a cloud of fugitives (May 29,
1 1 76). He had delivered his hardest blow and was
beaten. Early next March, after secret stipulations on both
sides, Alexander sailed up the Adriatic in a Sicilian
fleet, entered the Lagoon and was received at St.
Mark's by Ziani, Doge of Venice. Legends hang
about this voyage and the incidents that followed
close upon it. In the Ducal Palace we may study
the supposed expedition of Ziani to attack the
Emperor's fleet at Salboro, the fight and the victory ;
but of these things no chronicle near the time bears
any record. Venice had the honour of ending this
twenty years' struggle. Frederick arrived at Chiog-
giaon July 23, 1177 ; he renounced the schism which
he had kept so long alive, and took his absolution from
Alexander's three Bishops sent to meet him. The
next morning he passed up to St. Mark's where, in
the splendid vestibule, Alexander himseif sat in

THE MEETING IN VENICE 28 1
state : around him stood the envoys of England,
France, Sicily, and the Free Cities, with a crowd of
nobles and dignified churchmen. The Emperor
drew near, flung aside his cloak, and bent his knee to
the porphyry slab which testifies yet to this great
act of homage. With tears and the kiss of peace
Alexander raised him. The legend puts a muttered
phrase on the lips of both. " Not to thee, but to
Peter ! " said Frederick. And the Pope, " To me as
to Peter!" An idle tale, not without significance.
Te Deum was chanted ; Frederick held the Pope's
stirrup ; truce, converted six years later to an abiding
peace, crowned the meeting. In 11 83 at Constance
twenty-four Lombard cities had won their freedom.

XVIII
ENTER INNOCENT III. AND FREDERICK OF SICILY
(II77-I2I4)
VICTORIOUS but worn out with exile, battles, and
marches, Alexander inscribed the results of his long
« day in the Third Lateran Council, n 79. Hohen-
• stauffen was down ; the Papacy had got back its
' capital and its Patrimony. But the Guelfs had not
' annihilated the Ghibellines who swarmed in Italian
cities ; and fresh denunciations of Cathari, Paterines,
usurers ; of Christians wicked enough to furnish
Saracens with arms ; and of proud prelates living in
secular pomp, warn us that if Feudalism had lost its
purchase on ecclesiastical rights, there was a yet
more fearful enemy in front who would not want for
auxiliaries. After an interval of barbarism the
human mind was stirring once more. And in con
trast or opposition to Bishops that reigned like
princes with hosts of retainers, with hawks and
hounds — to say nothing of worse extravagance —
simple men, weavers or merchants, began to preach
Apostolic poverty, to ask whether a dissolute minister

MEDIEVAL PROTESTANTS 283
could give true Sacraments, or the Mass of a bad
priest should be attended by the Lord's faithful ;
whether all good men and women were not priests ;
and whether Rome was not the Babylon of Revela
tions. Tanchelin of Antwerp had been quelled by
St. Norbert at Utrecht. Eudes from Bretagne had
been cast into prison by Suger, the Abbot-Chan
cellor of Louis VII. At Vezelay men called
Publicans were condemned, and seven of them
burnt for denying the Sacraments and the priest
hood. Along the Rhone a movement was spreading
which combined austerity of life with study of the
Bible ; its preachers were disciples or forerunners of
Peter Waldo, and as the Poor Men of Lyons must
not be confounded with the Manichees, or Paulicians,
who passed like a cloud of locusts from the mountains
of Armenia by the way of Thrace and Bulgaria into
Italy, and onwards to Languedoc, which they had
made their Judea.
When Alexander III. ended his course, Europe
was trembling under these spiritual convulsions,
which could not be quieted until measures of unex
ampled severity had been taken. Lucius III. repeated
the Lateran censures at Verona, but neither Mani
chees nor Waldensians were daunted. Medieval
Protestantism was now born. The Poor Men of
Lyons anticipated Wyclif. But for the moment all
eyes were turned to Palestine, divided among quarrel
some feudal barons, menaced by the rising power of
a Kurdish Knight, Saladin. He, after putting down
the Fatimite heretics in Egypt, had slain or captured
almost all the Christian peers of the Holy Land with

284 INNOCENT III. AND FREDERICK II.
their King at Tiberias and entered Jerusalem (1187).
The shameful event was ascribed, not without cause,
to Henry II. and Louis VII., who had taken the cross
but stayed at home to fight their own wretched
battles. A fresh Crusade was proclaimed. Richard,
the least English of heroes, was Angevin and Gascon.
He plundered, sold, and borrowed for this tempting
enterprise. He made an effort to get hold of Sicily
on the way ; he possessed himself of Cyprus ; and
at Acre he behaved with all the fury of an Orlando
and the insolence of a Norman Achilles. His rival
and comrade, the mean-spirited Philip Augustus, did
nothing and went home again. Hundreds of thousands
from every European nation flocked to the siege of
Acre, which has been well termed the medieval siege
of Troy. But not all these hosts with all their cruelty
and chivalry could tear Jerusalem from the grasp of
Saladin. He saw them quarrel in their tents, die of
the plague, or disappear into the West again. This
was the last genuine Crusade. It accomplished no
part of its design. Frederick Barbarossa, who had
set out before these Kings, displayed his ancient
courage when he met the Greeks, and still more the
Turks, whom he vanquished with Homeric slaughter
at Iconium. But in crossing a torrent of Pisidia, the
Emperor was drowned ; and his people, who could
never believe it, translated him in their mythology to
the subterranean vaults of Kyfhauser. There the
Redbeard slumbers with his Paladins until the
Armageddon battle, which they call the Day of the
Birch Tree, shall awaken him and his mail-clad
knights, to save the Fatherland.

HENRY VI. MARRIES CONSTANCE 285
Frederick had pacified Germany, but not given up
his claim to be lord of the Italians. He was on terms
of extreme tension with Urban III., a Milanese, who
held the Papacy without resigning the See of Milan.
But Barbarossa had taken a step which brought in its
train a war of seventy years, and entailed ruin upon his
house and dynasty. In a sixth expedition over the
Alps, he had his son Henry married to Constance, the
heiress of the Sicilian throne, whom he tore from a
convent and compelled to break her vows. This
meant nothing less than to make the Pope his ever
lasting vassal. Urban protested in vain. He would
not crown Henry at Monza ; violent disputes were
the consequence. Then Pope and Emperor died.
Clement III. made a precarious treaty with his always
turbulent Romans, and after a couple of years was
followed by Ccelestine III. In the neighbourhood of
Rome appeared Henry VI., with Queen Constance and
an army. The Pope consented to crown him, on con
dition, added the Roman populace, that Tusculum
should be destroyed and its inhabitants massacred.
Henry let them work their will ; Tusculum was no more.
It is only in such merciless feuds between city and
city, nay, between one quarter of a city and another,
that the Italian genius of the Middle Age can be
adequately studied. The Popes had conceived a
certain world-policy on a scale which was becoming
ever more magnificent. But the vision of Popular
Rome did not reach beyond Tusculum.
All accounts picture Henry VI. as a man of blood
and iron. Clement III. had dared to invest the
illegitimate Tancred with Queen Constance's do-

286 INNOCENT III. AND FREDERICK II.
minions. This Norman chief overran Sicily, invaded
Naples, took Constance at Salerno, but when
Ccelestine interceded he sent her with gifts to her
husband. The Pope might with as good ground
have written to the Emperor on behalf of Richard
Cceur de Lion whom he held a captive, bought from
Leopold of Austria; but he never did so. When
Richard was set free, excommunication struck
Leopold at length and he did penance; it was the
fashion of the time to plunge into deepest guilt with
the hope of repenting on the death-bed. Meanwhile,
Henry VI. traversed Italy with an invincible host.
He passed by Rome, went on to Messina, entered
Palermo, and took the homage of young William,
whose father, Tancred the Conqueror, was now dead.
On some pretext, true or false, Henry began a
terrible proscription at Christmas, 1194. The loftiest
heads in the Island were struck down. Prelates and
nobles were hanged, burnt, mutilated. Queen
Sibylla and her daughters were thrown into prison ;
William underwent dishonours worse than death.
It was remarked with shuddering horror that on the
day when Henry opened this sanguinary campaign,
his Queen gave birth at Jesi to a child, who should
be known as Frederick II.
We learn with rejoicing that Pope Ccelestine, feeble
old man as he felt himself, at once excommunicated
the Bearsark Emperor. He did not seem to mind.
Moving back through Italy, he gave to one of his
ruffians, Markwald, Ancona and Romagna ; on
Diephold he bestowed Apulia. He dragged Roger
the Norman through the streets of Capua at a horse's

CHARACTER OF INNOCENT 287
tail. To his brother Philip he made a present of
Tuscany. He proposed to the German Princes that
they should hold their fiefs by hereditary right, and
that the Imperial crown should be settled' on the
House of Hohenstauffen. It was almost agreed upon
when he returned to Sicily and set up the siege of
Castro Giovanni. There all his plans came to an
end. The Emperor went out hunting, caught a fever
and expired at Messina September 28, 11 97. In
January Ccelestine died, and Innocent III. was elected
by a unanimous vote.
It was now the turn of the Papacy. Cardinal
Lothair, a Roman with Northern blood in his veins,
was thirty-seven when he assumed the tiara. He had
studied law in Bologna, theology in Paris ; during
the reign of Ccelestine, being put on one side, he
had written a book on the Contempt of the World.
His morals were beyond suspicion ; in character he
displayed that strange mingling of severity and
sweetness, of resolute determination and humble self-
abasement, which we have remarked in Gregory VII.
His reign of eighteen years filled Europe with the
fame of his deeds, and has been called an autocracy ;
it was the rule of a strong man, not without blemishes
in word and conduct, on which partisans or enemies
will pronounce more decidedly than those who look
from an historical perspective over the time. When
we remember that the thirteenth century, at which
we have now arrived, produced in one age and in
the same Church Innocent III. and Frederick II.,
King John of England and St. Francis Of Assisi,
Simon de Montfort and Stephen Langton, we

288 INNOCENT III. AND FREDERICK II.
shall acknowledge that a Pope whose duty it was
to steer over these troubled waters might easily turn
the helm a few points out of the direct course.
Though sprung of a popular Roman house, the
Conti, Innocent was unable to suppress the violence
or avert the bloodshed which furnished daily occupa
tion to the Orsini, his enemies from of old, and the
Scotti, his mother's kindred. He undertook the
reform — always needed — of the spiritual courts,
insisting that they should not sell or barter justice.
He drew up the Canonical decrees himself. But he
suffered the Romans to humble Viterbo ; and after
demanding their allegiance was insulted, of course at
the altar, compelled to quit the Lateran and to
spend a winter in Anagni. No wonder he fell into a
dangerous illness. He came back and a democratic
Senate was appointed. In Rome the Pope could
but look on while the nobles built or demolished
the nine hundred towers from which they made war
upon one another. He had no means of keeping
the peace except persuasion, or by playing off one
set of miscreants against an equally infamous set,
their born adversaries. On this sombre background
Innocent's qualities as a world-ruler shine out with
redoubled splendour.
Some great advantages he possessed. Not even
Gregory VII. could enjoy a clearer view of the
prerogatives which, as Supreme Judge, he attributed
to the Papacy; nor was there any Barbarossa to
question them. Constance, in her widow's weeds,
had thrown herself and the infant Frederick under
his protection, declared Sicily a Papal fief, and

GUELF UPRISING

289

accepted a Bull which asserted these claims with the
utmost energy. The Queen got back her son and
had him crowned in Palermo. But this had not been
accomplished until an uprising, almost universal
throughout Italy, had overthrown the German tyrants

POPE INNOCENT III., A.D. II

who ravaged land and people. Innocent demanded
Romagna from Markwald. The Guelfs everywhere
sided with the Pope ; and now, at least, their cause,
observes a modern writer, was the cause of freedom
and humanity. The whole Exarchate was up ;
Markwald, after wasting it to the gates of Ravenna
20

29O INNOCENT III. AND FREDERICK II.
had to retreat. Conrad, Duke of Spoleto, submitted,
when fighting became impossible, and Innocent re
ceived in person the homage of the liberated cities and
renewed the alliance with Lombardy. The Tuscan
domain he vindicated to the Holy See.
Soon after this happy moment in Italian history,
Queen Constance died. Her little son became the
Pope's ward ; Innocent might almost be termed
Regent of the Peninsula. But Markwald, the excom
municate, raised his banner as Seneschal ; he was
defeated by Papal troops at Monte Cassino, and
later on near Palermo. In 1202 he also died;. but
his confederate Diephold pursued the same policy, in
which the Pope was forced to acquiesce. Charges
of duplicity were made on all sides ; and in such an
atmosphere of deceit and intrigue was Frederick II.
brought up.
His uncle Philip saw and seized the opportunity.
Philip had retired across the Alps, followed by Italian
maledictions, leaving Tuscany to be recovered by
and by from Innocent, but himself bent on wearing
the Iron and Imperial crown. He was elected at
Muhlhausen. But could the Pope accept a man
who was usurping his nephew's inheritance ? Could
he look on approvingly while the House of Suabia
passed on the Empire from kinsman to kinsman,
establishing a prescription which would make it
independent of the Church ? No question of a
spiritual nature was this in the modern sense; but
it concerned the Pope's immunity from political
thraldom, and Innocent must have been delighted
when Adolphus of Cologne raised a party, the object

•'•'¦ CONTEST FOR THE EMPIRE 29 1
of which was to break the Hohenstauffen. This
Archbishop and his fellows set up Otho, son of Henry
the Lion, Guelf of the Guelfs, who came forward as a
champion in Church defence, with English gold in his
purse, the nobles of Flanders at his back, May, 1198.
Innocent did not immediately declare his mind. A
Legate arrived from Rome, demanding the release of
Sibylla, Tancred's widow, and her daughters, but
above all, that of the Archbishop of Salerno, imi
prisoned by Henry VI. The penalty threatened was
an Interdict over all Germany. But, besides this,
Philip, even now excommunicate, must surrender the
lands which belonged to the Holy See. Philip made
vague promises, and bribed the Legate, who gave
him absolution. He was at once disowned by his
indignant master. Nevertheless, the absolution had
been pronounced, and the Empire seemed to have
chosen Philip.
Both candidates were crowned — by no means an
empty ceremony in ages when symbols convey the
virtue they express — but Otho appealed to Rome.
France and England were taking opposite sides. Still
the Pope kept silence, and war broke out. After a
year, when Otho began to lose, Innocent required of
the Electors that they should remit the cause to him
self. Philip would not formally appeal ; yet he sent
up a great list of his supporters, including the King
of France and a host of prelates. The address which
accompanied this manifesto threatened an invasion of
Rome. Innocent replied with firmness. Again the
war broke out ; horrible deeds were done ; and in
1200 the famous "Deliberation" was carried to

292 INNOCENT III. AND FREDERICK II.
Germany by Pierleon, Bishop of Palestrina, in which,
after comparing the merits and claims of Frederick,
Philip, and Otho, Innocent declared that the Apostolic
See had the right of passing judgment on an election
to the Empire. He went on to say that the House
of Suabia, as far back as Plenry V, had ever been
hostile to the Popes, and in Henry VI. had been
guilty of repeated sacrilege ; that Philip himself was a
persecutor ; and that Otho, chosen by a minority, was
yet a good son of the Church, and came of a loyal
Catholic stock, wherefore he, and not Philip, should
be Emperor.
Otho came before the Papal Legates ; made every
concession ; and was proclaimed by Cardinal Guido.
But, in the Diet of Bamberg and elsewhere, almost
all the great prelates stood by Philip ; and ten years
of war ensued which might be fittingly compared for
the murders, pillagings, and havoc perpetrated in
them, to the Thirty Years' War itself. Whose was
the fault ? Many, then and since, have laid it to the
charge of Innocent, careless what befel the German
lands while no strong Emperor menaced him at
Rome. Others will not allow that Guelfs and
Ghibellines could be subdued into peace by Papal
Encyclicals ; Otho represented one powerful party,
Philip another ; they must have fought their battle to
the end, though Innocent had taken no side. How
ever, Adolphus of Cologne was paid to desert Otho,
whom he had himself proposed ; in 1207 Philip and
the Pope came to terms ; and the Papal Legates kept
Christmas Day at Metz with the Hohenstauffen, now
absolved again. Ere the July of 1208 had run out,

OTHO IV. IN ITAL\ 293
Philip, the best of his dynasty, was stabbed .to death
by another Otho, Count of Wittelsbach, and the Guelf
became Emperor a second time.
If, as the facts lead us to conclude, Innocent had
broken his pledges to Otho IV., he was doomed in a
brief space to undergo the severest penance. They
met at Viterbo with rejoicings. The Pope crowned
his elect son in St. Peter's. And, as always, the Roman
crowd fell on a German bishop ; the German soldiers
fell on the sons of Romulus ; horses and men were
slaughtered ; and Otho drew away from the field of
blood — but only to resume the Tuscan cities from
Florence to Pisa. He gave away Spoleto ; he made
Diephold Prince of Salerno ; he defied the Pope and
his interdict ; and then set forth to subdue Naples.
There remained no enemy behind him except Inno
cent, who uttered over the renegade his most solemn
censures on Maundy Thursday, 12 11. But in an
hour the tide of victory turned. Siegfried of Mayence
published the excommunication from his cathedral.
Innocent, by force of events, had become a Ghibelline.
For if Otho should be put down — and his avarice,
insolence, falsehood, richly deserved it — who could
-succeed but young Frederick of Sicily? Flere then
was to begin a most romantic episode in the life of
one whose adventures, like his genius and his
character, exhausted the capacities of good and evil.
The King of Sicily was no more than seventeen,
but already married to Constance of Arragon, and
the father of a son destined to bear the name of
Henry VII. In Frederick himself all manner of
graces were combined with an intellect which his

294 INNOCENT III. AND FREDERICK ll.
friends called philosophic, a courage that would
shortly be put to the test, a vivacity and versatility
which astonish us at so great a distance from his
time, and a genius the true epithet for which is
" modern," not " medieval." In his exquisite youth,
amid the golden groves and the shining seas of
Palermo, poetry was the language he took pleasure
in ; and the quests of a knighthood, not crusading but
early Greek or contemporary Provencal, drew him on
towards the unknown. Anselm of Justingen and
Henry of Niffen were now charged by the Suabians
to bring him up from the South. In Rome they had
an interview with Pope Innocent ; he yielded to the
logic of circumstances ; and in his Sicilian garden
Frederick was offered the crown which Otho had not
yet surrendered. He accepted it without hesitation.
But Otho, in November, 121 1, rushed from Apulia
to Frankfort, summoned a Diet, began to war upon
certain of the nobles, and, by way of enticing others,
married Beatrice, daughter of the Emperor Philip.
In four days she was dead. Her cousin from Sicily
had set out in March, 1212, with only a handful of
soldiers. He made his entrance into Rome, received
the welcome of Pope and Senate, was conveyed by
sea to Genoa, and by side marches came to Trent,
where a squadron of Guelfs held the pass. Escaping
over mountain roads he arrived at Chur, and the
great monastery of St. Gall. Otho was advancing to
Constance ; Frederick with his few knights and some
retainers of the abbey ran swiftly forward, reached
Constance three hours before Otho, and persuaded
the Bishop to shut his gates. The Empire was taken.

BATTLE OF BOUVINES 295
At Basle other Bishops and a crowd of noble horse
men saluted Frederick. The Primate Siegfried lent
him all his strength ; at Frankfort he was named
Emperor ; and Otho retired into Saxony. There
was not much fighting. England and Flanders
leagued with the Guelf as in previous campaigns ;
Philip Augustus with the Ghibelline. A battle of no
heroic dimensions, but which marked an epoch, the
battle of Bouvines, decided that France should exist
henceforth as a great European Power ; and that
Frederick should win his wild enterprise (May 27,
1214). Otho went back to his own land ; built
monasteries ; lived three years in retreat and repen
tance ; and died in 12 17 forgotten. Frederick at Aix-
la-Chapelle put on the crown of Charlemagne. One
Pope had made him Emperor ; that Pope's successors
were to spend their lives, treasures, and reputation, in
unmaking him.

XIX
CRUSADES AGAINST GREEKS AND ALBIGENSES
(12OI-I233)
By a singular good or evil fortune, Innocent III.,
who was to subdue the Western Empire, began his
reign by conquering the Eastern in his own despite.
Henry VI. may have dreamt of stretching his iron
sceptre over Constantinople ; but the honour and
shame which this new voyage of the Argonauts
brought with it were reserved for Venice and the
pirates of the Fourth Crusade. Saladin was no more
Fulk of Neuilly preached the Cross from Brittany to
Flanders, a penitent, saint, and humourist, whom
crowds followed and princes obeyed. Immense
offerings flowed in, not always expended on the
Holy War, though Fulk appears to have dealt
honestly with them. Baldwin of Flanders took the
Cross ; so did a host of nobles, including Simon de
Montfort, who had lately made truce with the
Saracens in Palestine on behalf of his fellow-
Christians. And this was to be a great French
expedition, of which Villehardouin, Marshal of
296

ZARA TAKEN 297
Champagne, would write the story in his picturesque
and soldierly prose.
But the divisions could not march across an Empire
now one huge battlefield, nor attempt the land
journey to Byzantium. It was resolved to convey
them by sea. And the carrying trade of Europe had
long been in the hands of Genoa, Pisa, Venice. To
Venice on this errand came Villehardouin. Terms
were arranged ; the old half-blind Duke Dandolo
required eighty-five thousand silver marks as the
price of transport ; the Republic would furnish fifty
galleys in addition, commanded by the Doge, and
would be entitled to half the conquests made by its
more enthusiastic allies. Boniface of Montferrat, a
pious condottiere, was captain-in-chief. The crusaders
swarmed to Venice in 1201, but on the eve of depar
ture they could not raise the pile of silver marks to
the height stipulated. What was to be done ?
Dandolo suggested an equivalent for the thirty
thousand marks wanting. Zara, on 'the Dalmatian
coast, had fallen off from Venice and sworn allegiance
to Hungary. Let the crusaders take Zara. True,
the Hungarian King had himself assumed the sacred
emblem, and to make war on him meant excom
munication. True, also, that Cardinal Peter forbade
the plundering of a Christian city in the Pope's name.
Nevertheless, Dandolo led the fleet, a glittering show,
across the Adriatic. Zara was taken' and spoilt, its
wealth divided (November, 1202). Istria yielded to
Venice. And now, says Villehardouin, there came to'
pass a great wonder, the strangest and most unlooked-
for adventure in the world.

298 CRUSADES AGAINST GREEKS AND ALBIGENSES
Alexius Comnenus had dethroned and blinded his
brother, Isaac Angelus, and this man's son, Alexius
the Younger, had in vain traversed Italy, beseeching
now the Pope and now his own brother-in-law, the
Emperor Philip, for assistance to overturn the
usurper. His messengers had already appeared in
Venice, not without hope ; for between the Republic
and Byzantium a long-standing quarrel existed on the
subject of commerce injured by the Greeks, and
moneys due from them. Dandolo had his private
grievance ; it was in handling these Easterns that his
sight had been nearly destroyed. Now in the camp
at Zara, fresh proposals were made. The Pope would
not hear of such a thing. He interdicted the Crusaders,
excommunicated the Venetians ; Simon de Montfort
went over with his followers to the King of Hungary.
All to no purpose. It seems not unlikely that
Dandolo from the first intended to revenge himself
and the Republic on a State which supported Genoa,
while harassing the Venetian Colony at the Golden
Horn. And so, while Rome put forth one protest after
another, the galleys sailed down to Corfu ; they went
on to Constantinople. When the towers, walls, and
domes of that incomparable city broke on their view,
the Crusaders, astonished, felt like men in a dream.
On the shores appeared sixty thousand Greeks jn
arms. But before the charge they vanished. Dandolo,
whose friends had concerted with him already, seized
twenty-five towers ; the banner of St. Mark waved
over the city of Constantine. During hundreds of
years Venice was to hold the gorgeous East in fee
and to share with the Franks in Morea and the

FRENCH PRINCES IN GREECE 2QQ
Greek Archipelago such dominion as their united
arms and wealth could secure.
But the self-styled army . of the Lord pillaged,
murdered, desecrated, broke the monuments, plucked
up the bones of dead Emperors, set Isaac and Alexius
on the throne, hurled them down again, offered the
crown to Dandolo, carved the city and the Empire
into slices, and gave what was left to Baldwin of
Flanders. There was a King of Macedonia, the
Marquis of Montferrat ; a Duke of Nicaea, the Count
of Blois. Shakespeare's Duke of Athens dates from
this period. Villehardouin was Marshal of Roumania ;
Guillaume de Champlitte was Prince of Morea, and
built his castle, as did Templars and Teutonic Knights
their churches, at Andravida in Elis, by which the
tourist passes now on his railway journey to Olympia.
As late as 1300 French was spoken at Athens, where
Otho de la Roche had founded a dynasty, which
Walter de Brienne, with the help of Catalonian
mercenaries, overthrew.
Innocent, who had done his utmost to prevent a
catastrophe which he felt could never bring about the
union of the Churches, took some dubious pride in
having let down the net. But his indignant language
holds up the Crusaders to reprobation as " worse than
dogs," stained with lust, avarice, cruelty, steeped in
Christian blood. The Venetians appointed their own
Patriarch ; Innocent unwillingly approved of him.
He took the Latin Empire under his especial pro
tection. Yet feuds of the Western type between
clergy and nobles. Pope and Patriarch, could not be
kept down. The Latin Church at Constantinople

300 CRUSADES AGAINS1 GREEKS AND ALBIGENSES
added, if addition were possible, to the deadly hatred
of the Greeks whose Emperor, Lascaris, had with
drawn into Asia, while. their Archbishop, Camaterus,
set up his throne at Nicaea. Ancient history repeated
itself; the King of Bulgaria took Baldwin captive at
Adrianople, though Bulgaria had submitted, both
kingdom and Church, to Rome. Yet Baldwin died
in the grasp of Johannes, whose submission was little
more than a pretence. From 1204 to 1 261, the Latin
Empire lingered out its agony. Between East and
West the greatest and most calamitous of schisms
had become irremediable. In taking Constantinople,
the Crusaders prepared the way for Mohammed II.
and his Turkish hordes ; they gave an example which
was immediately followed, of beating the Cross into a
sword against Christian countries and peoples ; they
may even be said to have created some of the circum
stances which made the Reformation plausible and
popular. Such were the results of that marvellous
undertaking so vividly described by Villehardouin,
alternately cursed and blessed by Innocent III.
After this we hear no more of a universal Crusade.
Venice, the gate of the East, poured into Italy
treasures of art and learning ; decorated St. Mark's
with brilliant mosaics in which the whole Bible seems
to glow upon its walls and cupolas ; and held the
golden chain that binds the Renaissance of the
thirteenth century to that of the fifteenth. We have
left the Dark Ages behind. A revolution was ap
proaching in the West. England, thanks to King
John, had lost Normandy. France, under its able,
mean, unscrupulous Philip Augustus, had united to

SAN MARCO, VENICE.

302 CRUSADES AGAINST GREEKS AND ALBIGENSES
the crown those Northern dukedoms, and would, by
and by, annex the Southern, wrenched from the
trembling hands of Raymund of Provence. In 1212,
an innumerable ' Moorish host was to be cut in pieces
at Navas de Tolosa, and Spain would become once
for all the Catholic land we know. But in Europe at
large a revolt, due to many causes, mingled of most
confused ingredients, mystic, dogmatic, economic, had
long been preparing. It burst forth while Innocent
was receiving ambassadors from Armenia, Bohemia,
Iceland, from both Empires, and from all the Kings
of the West.
This widespread insurrection has been celebrated
in undying literature. It is regarded with sympathy
by all such as consider it the first though un
successful effort towards a true Reformation. Catholic
historians, on the other side, paint it in the darkest
colours and hold that it would have brought down in
a common ruin Church and State. In the mysterious
anarchy which was ever shaking the pillars of the
world as with subterranean earthquake, Michelet
perceives an influence, Oriental, Jewish, and Arabian,
but above all, Manichaean, propagated Westwards
from the Crusades themselves. We can follow the
movement across Northern Italy and upwards from
Southern Spain, until its streams meet in Languedoc,
a country which resembled Judea in physical features
and of which Toulouse was to be the Mount Zion.
Hebrew scholars taught at Narbonne and Mont
pellier. Moorish science, philosophy, and even
theology, penetrated into the Universities of Christen
dom by way of the Pyrenees. The exaltation of love

RELIGIOUS ANARCHY 303
and chivalry was a chord never silent in Provencal
verse. And a tremendous word had been uttered in
secret, yet was repeated by many, " Nothing is true,
everything is lawful." Did multitudes believe in the
two principles, Ormuzd and Ahriman ? How, then,
could the standard of morals be saved? Was there
a design to level the Hierarchy? But in a crowd of
wrangling sectaries what would be the fortune of truth?
Toleration as a general axiom would have been
scouted and called blasphemy by all the parties con
cerned in this frightful crisis. Jews, indeed, might be
tolerated ; but they were aliens, soon to wear the
badge of the yellow quoit. Heretics, who wore no
badge, who lived everywhere, and might be found in
all stations, how were they to be dealt with ? These
immoral mystics, it was said, deserved to fare worse
than Saracens ; they must be run upon like mad
dogs. If a Crusade were holy which aimed at
delivering the Lord's Sepulchre from infidels, was it
not as holy when it took up arms in defence of
priesthood, Sacraments, the Commandments them
selves, and the social order? But in truth no one
questioned its lawfulness. To the powers that were
in the year 1208 heretics appeared precisely such as
anarchists appear to us now — insane revolutionaries
that cannot be reasoned with, but must be cut off by
the strong arm of the law.
So thought Innocent III., and on this principle
he acted. As Captain-General of Christendom, he
received from every quarter bulletins which an
nounced that the enemy was growing in force
through all the towns, of Italy, and even in Rome.

304 CRUSADES AGAINST GREEKS AND ALBIGENSES
But the centre of the storm was Languedoc, with its
Moorish culture and its Asiatic creed.
Toulouse was a republic under Raymund VI., the
richest prince in Europe, dissolute but accomplished,
the friend of Saracens and patron of heretics, lord of
seven wealthy provinces, seemingly a match for the
unarmed Pope, who could not reckon on a street in
Rome as loyal. -But the Pope could summon a
Crusade. Not against Raymund, whose orthodoxy,
if suspected, had not been disproved ; yet against his
subjects, should he persist in declining to coerce them..
For his indulgence was more perilous than open heresy.
If Macaulay is justified — and our documents bear him
out — " the Papacy had lost," in Provence and
Languedoc, " all authority with all classes, from the
great feudal princes down to the cultivators of the
soil." Let this plague spread, as it threatened, from
the Rhone to the Meuse and the Rhine, there would
come an end of the Catholic Hierarchy, which in those
lands governed not only in the holy place, but in the
university, the army, the market, and the State at
large. Innocent was not the founder of the Inquisition,
any more than St. Dominic, whose name has been
associated with a tribunal which did not exist till
after his death. But the Bishops' Courts had taken
cognisance of heretical pravity from of old — and their
jurisdiction received fresh strength under Lucius III.,
in 1 1 84, when the Paterines were active in demanding
a reform- of the Church. No sooner had Innocent
been elected than he gave most extensive powers to
the Cistercian Order, naming as his legates in the

CISTERCIANS PREACH IN VAIN 305
South of France Arnold d'Amouri, the Abbot of
Abbots, Raoul, and Pierre de Castelnau. They were
to preach repentance, but also to insist on the local
authorities putting in force the ban, or outlawry,
equivalent to civil death, which Innocent judged to
be the portion of apostates.
Citeaux, indeed, was rich, corrupt, fallen from
its first fervour. The Abbot displayed a magni
ficence unbecoming his vows, a hardness of heart
which he mistook for Gospel charity. On his
travels he fell in with the Spanish Bishop of Osma
and St. Dominic, returning from Rome. He com
plained that his preaching bore no fruit. Dominic
reminded him that the Lord's disciples were sent to
preach barefoot, without scrip, without staff, and set
him an example which he unwillingly followed. But
still the conferences proved barren, or showed that
the Paulician dogmas had admirers, if not adherents,
in every town where a public discussion took place.
The only means likely to avail with these stiff-necked
dissenters were such as Raymund would not employ.
After eight years of preaching, Pierre de Castelnau
declared a general peace among the feudal chieftains
and a campaign against the heretics, under threat of
interdict. His strong measures were enforced by the
Pope in a vehement letter to the unfortunate or guilty
Raymund, charging him with heinous crimes, and
concluding with a menace to deprive him of his
territory. This was followed up by the proclamation
of a Crusade in November, 1207, to be undertaken by
the King of France and the Duke of Burgundy.
Two months afterwards, Pierre de Castelnau was
21

306 CRUSADES AGAINST GREEKS AND ALBIGENSES
murdered by one of Raymund's esquires on the banks
of the Rhone.
That any prince not out of his mind should have
instigated this crime is highly improbable. No fair
judge will lay it at Raymund's door. It was, indeed,
the prelude to calamities which did not finish with
his life, and which proved the ruin of his dynasty.
But the Pope assumed, and rumour asserted, his share
in the murder. Cowed, as Henry II. had been on the
death of Thomas a Becket, like Henry the Count
submitted to a public scourging at the martyr's tomb.
But his presence, his protestation, was of no avail.
The eagles were gathering to their prey. Innocent
called on Philip Augustus to be up and doing as a
Christian soldier ; the two swords were to smite
Languedoc ; and though Philip would not move,
being apprehensive of King John, now allied with
the Emperor Otho, thousands were ready and willing
to enter on the Promised Land. Citeaux, proud of
its warlike Abbot, was the mother-house of the
Templars, the Teutonic Knights, the Orders of
Calatrava and Avila. With its royal Duke and its
white Cistercians all Burgundy seemed on the march ;
behind came Germans, Lorrainers, the chevaliers of
the Rhine. But the most famous leader was
Simon de Montfort, in whose story the tragic Muse
finds volumes — Montfort, a saint, a hero, fierce,
gentle, fascinating to his enemies, but one whose
sword never turned back from blood. Twenty
thousand knights, two hundred thousand of the
commoner sort, sings the Epic historian, flung them
selves on the land of olives, roses, serenades, and love

RAYMUND LOSES PROVENCE 307
songs. Innocent had precipitated the North on the
South. Raymund knew that there was no turning
these battalions home without conquest and booty.
Captive in their hands he was dragged along to the
destruction of his people. The judicial process
became a war, at the remembrance of which man
kind has shuddered ever since, and apologists them
selves have fallen silent.
Led on by their Abbot of Citeaux, the Crusaders
besieged, massacred, and burnt all before them. The
sack of Beziers is the St. Bartholomew of the thirteenth
century. Not a living soul was left in its ruins.
Carcassonne was taken and ravaged. Five hundred
castles or towns opened their gates at 'the tremendous
summons of warriors who burnt women and children
" with an extreme joy," and whose delight it was to
treat these doubtful Christians more vilely than if they
had been Turks or Saracens. Raymund, excom
municated — was it a third or a fifth time ? — fled after
Carcassonne to Rome. He met with Italian courtesy
from the Pope and his great prelates ; but could not
hinder the burning of Minerva and Termes with their
garrisons. In the Council of Aries (February, 1212)
fourteen stipulations were submitted to him by the
Legates which amounted to his virtual abdication. He
refused and fell back on Toulouse, which became im
mediately the scene of havoc between himself and its
Bishop. Ferocity was not confined to the orthodox ; but
they gained on him continually ; before the year was
out he had lost every inch of land except Toulouse and
Montauban. The miserable Count now took refuge
with his brother-in-law, Pedro of Arragon, who had

308 CRUSADES AGAINST GREEKS AND ALBIGENSES
just won a battle of giants at Navas de Tolosa.
Montfort had secured the attainted estates of Beziers ;
he was becoming lord of Languedoc. Pedro argued
that this could no longer be deemed a Crusade but a
mere campaign of robbery ; yet, though he startled,
he could not convince the Pope, who may have felt
some remorse, but dared not intervene. The King of
Arragon moved forward with a large army. Mont
fort, with less than fifteen hundred men, encountered
him at Muret (September 13, 1213). Pedro was
defeated and slain. Raymund, with his son, took to:
flight. It seemed that all was over.
But the end was not yet. At Montpellier in 12 15,
the Legate, by advice and consent of a great meetings
bestowed on Montfort the whole dominions which these
two Counts had forfeited. The same year, Innocent in
the Lateran Council declared Raymund VI. fallen from
every tittle of sovereignty : condemned him to exile,
but was willing to leave Provence to his son under
conditions. War was resumed. In 1216 Toulouse*
underwent a siege that lasted nine months ; Simon
de Montfort was killed ; his son Amaury made over
no less than four hundred and thirty fiefs to the
Crown of France. Young Raymund, as we might
expect, fell under the same suspicions which had
ruined his father. Louis VIII. overflowed the land
with an army ; threw down the walls of Toulouse and
Narbonne; but died in Auvergne on his way home to
Paris. Three years later, when the infant St. Louis
was on the throne, Blanche of Castile gathered in
this magnificent spoil, which made the French
Monarchy stronger than it had been since Charle-

LOOKING BEFORE AND AFTER 309
magne. Raymund VII., in 1229, became a vassal
instead of a sovereign prince. The sternest In
quisition was established by a Council at Toulouse.
If any Manichaeans survived, they could be handled
without a Crusade. Between the years 1230 and
1233 the Dominican friars superseded the Bishops'
tribunals,, and for a while the Albigenses gave no
further sign of life.
I happen to be writing this page of history in the
garden at Lausanne where Gibbon added the last
stroke to his immense and as yet unrivalled panorama
of the Roman Empire in decline. Out of those ruins
a second Empire had grown ; and Innocent III., the
Catholic Augustus, wielding both swords, temporal
no less than spiritual, reigned when the New Rome
stood at its highest point above Kings and peoples.
Yet as we survey the prospect on which Gibbon's
eyes so often rested, other names rise into the
memory, as well known and as enduring as the
mountain peaks which are reflected in Leman's blue
waters, — names of men whose heralds or forerunners
Innocent opposed even to the death. This quiet
garden calls to them, as if in all one spirit lived and
wrought. There is Calvin at Geneva ; but over against
him there stands Voltaire. From the Bohemian Huss,
committed to the flames at Constance, Farel and
Beza seem to point on to Zwingli perishing in battle
with the Forest Cantons ; while they and their dis
ciples forebode the crimson-dyed preacher of Social
Democracy, Jean Jacques, out of whose volcanic
heart and moonstruck brain the French Revolution
burst. Gibbon himself, the mocking not unkindly

3IO CRUSADES AGAINST GREEKS AND ALBIGENSES
sceptic, from this little Paradise saw his own world
shattered by the Rights of Man, guillotined by
Robespierre, blown to atoms by Dumourier's artillery.
To hinder consummations such as these it was that
Innocent smote Kingdoms with interdict, hewed
down the Albigenses, sent forth Dominic and
Francis to announce a Gospel rich in mercy yet
terrible in vengeance. He would hear of no liberty,
no learning, no sanctity of life or beauty of holiness,
which had not been consecrated by his Papal hands.
Unconsciously, yet with all his might, he aimed at
making the Calvins, Voltaires, Gibbons, and Rous-
seaus impossible. But they arrived in they hour,'
and the light of Innocent III was darkened at their
coming. Yet, as sitting here we muse upon the
whole story, it may occur to us that not Dante alone,
the medieval seer, but Shakespeare too, sovereign
among mortal minds, and Goethe, one of the wisest,
would have preferred Innocent himself to Calvin, St.
Bernard of Clairvaux to Jean Jacques, and St.
Francis of Assisi to Voltaire.

XX
ST. FRANCIS — THE FRIARS — THE LATERAN
COUNCIL
(II82-I2I5-I226)
PROVENCE had been tamed in the fire. But Italy
was overrun with Waldensian reformers ; the Ca-
thari abounded in its cities; and a succession of bloody
crusades might have ended in revolt everywhere, when
the most wonderful scene of a time rich in contrasts
was enacted in Central Italy. There is a white stone
village, perched midway on Monter Subasioj called
Assisi, which looks towards Spoleto and Perugia over
aland of vines and olives. In 1198 Conrad of Suabia
held the castle ; down below, nobles quarrelled with
villeins, as in every medieval township ; luxury and
leprosy flourished side by side ; our vilest modern
alleys show nothing equal to the disease, filth, and
beggary, which were at home in these fever-dens.
The people could not read ; seldom heard a preacher ;
died young. Feudalism plundered them ; prelates
neglected them ; the religious orders behind their

312

ST. FRANCIS AND THE FRIARS

high walls no longer, on the whole, fulfilled a civilis
ing mission. Prophets, like Joachim the Cistercian
Abbot of Flora (i 132-1202), announced revolutions':
which would end the reign of Bishops, and bring in
the Kingdom of the Holy Ghost. Others, such as
the Humiliati, the Poor Men of Lyons, and their
nameless followers, sighed after Gospel simplicity,

but were by design or prejudice confounded with
Manichaeans and liable to cord and stake. Innocent
III. might subdue the Ghibelline chiefs, and among
them Conrad of Suabia ; but there is no evidence that
he meditated an evangelical crusade among the
peopie. Never had the Church seemed so near
destruction as at the moment when Francis, the
Poverello of Assisi, came to her succour. It has

314 ST. FRANCIS AND THE FRIARS
been said of him, with pardonable _ warmth,, that he
added a page to the New Testament and put off the
Reformation for three centuries. He is the one Saint
whom all succeeding generations have canonised.
Francis, at first called John, was born in 1182, son
of Bernardone the merchant, who changed his name
and taught him to speak the charming French
language. Slightly educated, gay and impetuous,
he was fired with enthusiasm by the wandering
minstrels who sang of Charlemagne and the Table
Round in their lofty lays. At sixteen he took a lad's
part in the uprising against Conrad. He scorned the
merchant's trade, fell into dissipation, went out 'with
his townsmen to fight the Perugians, was wounded
and taken prisoner ; but he fed on his visions of
chivalry, and at two and twenty he underwent the
great spiritual crisis that we call conversion. Dis
owned by his father, the young man stripped himself
bare in the presence of the Bishop of Assisi, and
was wedded to his bride Poverty, in which name
he comprehended the utter renunciation of goods,
honours, and privileges. It was an inspiring word.
He had learned it from the Gospel, and put it to the
touch in attending on the lepers out of whose loathly
dish he brought himself to eat. Then he went forth
preaching peace, the herald of the Great King ; and
Assisi, Umbria, Italy^ere stirred as though never
before had Christ been 'announced to them. Umbria
became^the Italian. Galilee-;-F-'ran.cis—the-benefiG&n-t-
shadow of the Son of Man.
His detachment from the secular greatness of noble
and bishop was perfect. But he built no cloister and

EVANGEL OF POVERTY 315
went straight to the people. His rule, he said, was
the life of Christ. Men and women came about him
asking for guidance, and this was his one reply.
Ordained deacon, he never would become a priest ;
he remained entirely a stranger to the learning,
classic or theological, of his time ; with Canon Law
he was unacquainted ; but his reverence for the
clergy, his devotion to the Eucharist, saved him from
the perilous conflicts in which Waldo and the Pate-
rines had gone down. With a few companions he
drew near Innocent at the Lateran only to be
repulsed. His aims were judged by those high rulers
of the Church impossible ; but to resist the sweet
ness and joy of which he held the secret was not
in men still enthusiastic, violent, and youthful. The
new Order, tolerated or approved; made converts,
especially among the middle class; or the '" Minores,"
after whose name it was called. "••"'It drew to itself
votaries whom an austere heretical movement would
else have swept away beyond the Catholic pale.
Among his friends was the brilliant, passionate,
severe Cardinal Ugolino, afterwards Gregory IX., a
kinsman of the reigning Pope, attached undoubtedly
to Francis, whom he venerated as a Saint but
managed as an enthusiast. To bring these lofty
ideals within rule and compass Ugolino did not shrink
from a policy in which Francis himself had little
share, nor could witness its execution without suffer
ing. This figure that took all hearts was not moulded
on lawyers' traditions ; we must seek him in the
idyls of the Fioretti ; in the legends of his tender

316 ST. FRANCIS AND THE FRIARS
dealing with bird and beast ; in his Canticle of the
Sun; in his journeyings to convert the Soldan of
Cairo ; in his fraternity with the poor ; and at last in
his ecstatic visions on Monte Alvernia which stamped
him with the living sign of Christ. He died at forty-
four, amid scenes of touching simplicity ; worshipped
as already a Saint ; but leaving to his disciples the
task of reconciling inspirations so unstudied and free
with an order of things which they had outgrown.
That was the long tragedy of the Franciscan brother
hood. Medieval in its colouring, yet a fresh type of
religious development, orthodox and progressive, it
accepted from Gregory IX. an interpretation of its
idea that to the Fraticelli, or the Spirituals, seemed
a betrayal. These mystic disputes, lasting over a
hundred years, were marked by revolt on the one
hand, by repression on the other, — both accompanied
with harshness and even cruelty. We shall hear of
them again. But when Brother Elias built the
splendid Basilica of Assisi and Gregory IX. canon
ised Francis, in 1228, the Moderates had overcome.
From this time forward, the Papacy could reckon on
the Friars ; and a new chapter of Catholic achieve
ments was beginning.
No such poetic legend flings its light over the
simple but earnest commencements of St. Dominic
(1 170-1221); A grave Spanish hidalgo, a learned
Canon of Osma, he was always well seen in Rome.
The idea of poverty with him was not original ; he
took it from St. Francis ; and while the Umbrian
wanderer would have no stately houses built, and
forbade his companions to teach in the Universities

ST. DOMINIC 317
or accept graces of any kind soever from the Roman
Court, Dominic followed older precedents, encouraged
the study of the sciences — kindled thereto by the
glories of Moslem Spain — and adapted to his own
St. Augustine's Rule. His brethren have been happily
termed the Jesuits of the thirteenth century. They
were preaching Friars, like their friends or rivals the
Franciscans, bringing the Gospel into streets and
market-places, not always to the delight of the silent
secular clergy or the gentlemanly and often indolent
monks. But religion revived ; a wave of mystic
enthusiasm swept over Europe ; and gifts began to
pour in which it would have been well for these
reformers had they declined. Their palmy days
lasted till near the end of the century. Perhaps the
chief works they accomplished were to furnish the
Holy See with its own spiritual militia ; to put down
heresy by means of the Inquisition ; to create a
synthesis of ideas in which Aristotle's philosophy
became a prelude to Christian dogma ; and to knit
up the middle and working classes, over which the
Catholic Hierarchy had lost its hold, into a strong
confederation of orthodox believers. In this many-
sided enterprise it is difficult to say which may claim
the larger influence, Francis or Dominic. But we
cannot imagine the later Middle Age without its
friars ; the schools of philosophy without St. Thomas
Aquinas ; or religion itself without the Poor Man of
Assisi. From these heights we come down by a very rapid
descent to kings and princes. Philip Augustus of
France had married Ingeburga of Denmark with a

318 ST. FRANCIS AND THE FRIARS
view to prosecuting over England some shadowy
claims derived from the famous Knut. The lady did
not please him ; on the score of affinity (in the Middle
Ages disastrously extended) Philip divorced her, with
the assent of the courtly Cardinal of Rheims. Inge
burga made appeal to Pope Ccelestine III. ; but she
was shut up in the castle of Beaurepaire and the
King married Agnes of Meran. At this point in
1 198 Innocent took up the Danish quarrel. He sent
Cardinal Peter of Capua to demand that the French
should make peace with England, undertake a new
crusade, and acknowledge Ingeburga's rights. With
his subjects Philip was not popular. He granted a
truce ; was willing to take the cross ; but would never
give up Agnes. The usual consequences followed.
At Dijon Cardinal Peter suspended religious services
all over France ; the nation was awed and irritated ;
Philip's nobles insisted on his submission ; and at
Soissons in 1201 he consented to admit Ingeburga as
his lawful wife. His partner in this great scandal,
Agnes, had passed away ; but during the troubled
years down to 121 2 Ingeburga was queen merely in
name. Innocent had protected the law of marriage ;
nor did he deal harshly with the King or even with
Agnes of Meran. It was France that suffered,
according to the Horatian maxim here and after
wards fulfilled to the letter, Delirant reges ; plectuntur
Achiyi : "Kings play mad tricks, the people pay for
them." But interdict was growing dangerously common.
Similar disagreements arose from causes matrimonial
south of the Pyrenees. Innocent annulled the

ROYAL DIVORCES 319
marriage between Alfonso of Leon and Berengaria
of Castile, as Ccelestine III. had done before him, and
with like penalties in case of disobedience ; the ban
lasted nearly five years, after which Berengaria
retired to a convent. Again, the King of Navarre,
having made a treaty with the Moors, was deposed ;
his realm would have been annexed to Arragon but
for a seasonable composition of terms which he made
with his rivals. Yet Pedro the Arragonese, eight
years before he won the battle of Navas de Tolosa,
had entered on a more than doubtful marriage,
against which Innocent did not utter one syllable
of protest. Neither did he open his lips when
John, King of England, sent away his wife, daughter
of the Earl of Gloucester, and took from his own
vassal the Count de la Marche Isabella, his betrothed
consort. This shameful deed cost England the
sovereignty of Maine, Touraine, and Anjou ; but the
Pope had need of allies against the Emperor Philip,
and counting on the dissolute John he let it pass.
For the moment John was gained over.
John had lost at Chateau Gaillard the Continental
dominions of his house. He was destined to make
up for one crime by committing another and thereby
to secure to the English people their chartered rights,
coming down from old Teuton customs and prece
dents. The Pope himself unwittingly and unwillingly
led the way. A quarrel, by no means singular,
between the monks of Canterbury when the See had
fallen vacant threw the choice upon Innocent, who
appointed - Stephen Langton, Cardinal of San
Crisogono (1207). Langton was a " scholar of

320 ST. FRANCIS AND THE FRIARS
European fame, star of the University of Paris,"
and in morals unimpeachable. But John, who had
named De Grey of Norwich to the Primacy, would
not suffer this Roman Englishman to set foot in his
kingdom. Once more the tremendous machinery of
the interdict was brought into play (March, 1208)^
Public festivals, ceremonies, and sacraments were
abolished ; only baptism of infants and the Eucharist
for the dying were permitted ; the daily life of the
nation came to a standstill, as if plague and famine
ruled in , the land. John had his prelates and his
ministers who took no heed of interdicts ; he could
seize the revenues of bishoprics, abbeys, and parishes,
and put the clergy outside the law. Himself furious,
wanton, disbelieving, but as energetic as ruthless,
guilty of enormous and unspeakable sins, he laughed
to scorn the spiritual censures of Innocent. Excom
municate, he held out still ; but after four years of
confusion and misery, in 1212, he was deposed; his
crown and kingdom might be seized by any Christian
soldier ; and Philip Augustus, though not a pattern
Christian, flattered himself that he was the man.
What followed is written in all our historians. The
crusade was announced at Soissons in presence of
Langton and other Bishops — traitors according- to
modern law, patriots and good Christians in the
opinion of medieval Europe. John gathered sixty
thousand men on Barham, Down ; he put forward, or
hinted at, a treaty with the Spanish Mohammedans j
yet he negotiated with Innocent in spite of all ; and
he yielded to the diplomacy, the menaces, and the
imposing person of Pandulph, the legate, a man of

JOHN, KING OF ENGLAND.
(From a Print in the British Museum. )

22

322 ST. FRANCIS AND THE FRIARS
consummate ability, who held a conference with him
at Dover. The King gave up everything. On
| Ascension Eve, 121 3, in the Temple Church, he
! made the great surrender ; England and Ireland
were to be fiefs of the Holy See, paying annual
tribute of a thousand marks ; the deed was subscribed
by John, his bishops and nobles, and he took the
vassal's oath of fealty. There was now no kingdom
in the West which, directly or indirectly, did not hold
of Innocent III., except France.
Acts of feudal homage were so familiar to the
! time that John's submission called forth no protest ;
i England was hardly yet a nation. Pandulph now
bade Philip Augustus put back his sword into its
sheath ; but France stood behind the King, eager to
attempt a new Norman Conquest of Britain. Yet
; the league which had threatened Lackland melted
; away. He himself invaded Poitou ; stirred up the
Count of Flanders and the Emperor Otho to attack
Philip at Bouvines ; but, in their persons, was defeated
at this small yet epoch-making battle which delivered
France for ever from the German yoke. When he
returned across the sea, barons and people were
confederate against him. Innocent, by his Legate,
would have shielded this incomparable tyrant ; on
the other side rose Stephen Langton who, says a
modern writer, " from the moment of his landing in
England had assumed the constitutional position of
the Primate as champion of the old English customs
and law, against the personal despotism of the kings."
He had conipelled John to swear that he would
observe the laws of Edward the Confessor. Now in

INNOCENT ANNULS THE CHARTER

323

a meeting of the Barons at St. Paul's he produced
Henry I.'s neglected Charter. Bouvines assured the
popular triumph. The Legate was recalled ; but
Innocent menaced with anathema the Barons' alli
ance ; he rebuked the Archbishop, and sent back
Pandulph. War broke out. The "Army of God
and Holy Church," led by Fitz Walter, consecrated
by Langton, though acting as a genuine peace-maker
throughout, appeared before Northampton. John
lost his tyrant's sway without a battle. At Runny-
mede, in presence of Pandulph, he signed Magna
Charta. It was the birthday of English freedom
(1215). How Innocent took these famous proceedings is
too well known. An accomplished and imperious
statesman, he was no prophet ; and with his legal
Southern mind he failed to understand the North.
John was his man by public acknowledgment ; ' as
overlord he annulled the Great Charter, calling it
"vile and base," suspended Langton from his office,
and renewed the interdict. The City of London
answered boldly that " the ordering of secular matters
appertaineth not to the Pope." Simon Langton,
brother of the Primate, bade his countrymen disre
gard these censures. And Louis the Dauphin,
setting at naught Innocent's prohibition, landed in
Kent, called thither by the people. Langton was
in Rome, attending on the Lateran Council, frowned
upon by the Pope, and held in a sort of imprison
ment. From this confusion two events cleared the
air. Innocent died ; John within a few months
followed him, though not perhaps to the same place.

324 ST. FRANCIS AND THE FRIARS
Henry III. was crowned ; Prince Louis, after the Fair
of Lincoln and some other fighting, retired across the
Channel ; and William Earl Marshal, in conjunction
with the Papal Legate, issued Magna Charta once
more. Innocent's last enterprise, and the crowning, in
truth, of that immense edifice which he had so largely
built up, was the Fourth Council of the Lateran, held
in November, 1215. It was attended by 412 bishops,
eight hundred abbots and priors, the Masters of the
Orders of Chivalry, and a host of secular representa
tives. " With desire have I desired to eat this Pasch
with you," quoted the greatest of medieval Popes,
and tears streamed down his cheeks as he welcomed
united Christendom in his opening discourse. The
three thousand four hundred Briefs which in these
seventeen years he had issued were to be wrought
by Conciliar decree into a legislation binding from
Servia to Iceland, covering the whole of human
existence from the cradle to the grave, and upheld
by penalties that neither haughtiest monarch nor
meanest peasant could escape. But the immediate
occasion was to settle the succession of Languedoc,
to put down the Cathari, and to enable the Pope, as
Captain-General of Christians, to raise men and
money for a fresh Crusade.
This all-embracing Code was no free compact
between rulers and subjects ; it rested on a Divine
Right, and was enforced by rigorous sanctions. It
took for granted that all except the Jews, now com
pelled to put on a yellow badge, who claimed the
protection of the laws, must be practising orthodox

FOURTH LATERAN COUNCIL 325
Christians. They were to confess and receive the
Eucharist once a year ; to pay tithes and other church
dues ; and not to touch the freedom of the clergy,
who enjoyed large immunities and were an inde
pendent, self-taxing corporation, subject in every
land to the Pope alone as to their spiritual sovereign.
By a species of eminent domain he could appoint to
livings, canonries, and bishoprics whenever he so
decided ; from all the clergy he might exact contri
butions, as he judged fit, for the general good of the
Church ; his power of dispensation was limited only
by the strict terms of the New Testament ; and he
owed no account to any earthly tribunal for his
actions. But, on the other hand, rulers were liable, in their
quality of baptized Christians, to be admonished,
censured, and deposed by the Pope if, in his eyes,
they had broken the laws which he enacted. The
Lateran Council of 1 1 79 had released from their oath
of allegiance all subjects of a prince fallen into heresy,
so long as he did not repent. This Council of 121 5
directed, says Cardinal Hergenrother, who gives the
decree, "that temporal sovereigns if they neglected
to cleanse their kingdoms of heresy should be excom
municated by the Metropolitan ; in case they made
no satisfaction within a year, the Pope was to be
informed, in order that he might declare the vassals
free from their allegiance, and give over the land to
Catholic rulers." To this engagement every man
that entered upon office, temporal as well as spiritual,
was bound to subscribe by oath. Hence, if he did
not fulfil its conditions, the law held that he had

326 ST. FRANCIS AND THE FRIARS
forfeited his dignity ; and, as in illustration, Raymund
of Toulouse had been deprived of his vast dominions
and even condemned to exile.
" As a general rule," says Hergenrother once more,
"excommunicated persons who were not reconciled
within a given time forfeited their civil rights and
incurred political proscription." In this' Lateran
Council, arid in 1220 by the laws of Frederick II., it
was laid down that such as made no satisfaction
within a year should be deemed "infamous," in
capable of pleading though liable to action at law,
and deprived of dignity and office. ¦ The excom
municate were imprisoned, and fined heavily at short
intervals ; their property was. confiscated, and . them
selves by many Councils were judged, if persistent, as
suspect of heresy, which led to examination under
torture and the extreme penalty of the law.
What then was heresy ? The Canonists, like the
Civilians, did not shrink from constructive reason
ing which tended to make heresy rather a moral
temper than a mental attitude ; it was "contempt of
the power of the Keys," disloyal neglect . of the
Church's jurisdiction, and might be inferred from
silence, or a secluded way of life, or consorting, with
others already under the ban. Besides the " greater "
excommunication, which struck the guilty, there was
the " lesser " inflicted on all who held intercourse with
them. Gregory VII. in 1078 had relaxed these terms
so far as to permit a man's wife, children, and
domestics, not to forsake him — a regulation which
Innocent III. acknowledged, while insisting that
none, except these few, should eat, drink, or do

TOM'B OF ST. DOMINIC — BOLOGNA, A.D. 1271

328 ST. FRANCIS AND THE FRIARS
business with the excommunicate. If was not for
bidden to supply them with the bare necessaries of
life. But again the lawyers felt disposed to merge
the lesser anathema in the greater, as is shown by the
mild protest of the Council of Lyons in 1245, which
enacts that canonical warning shall first be given
and complicity proved before this be done. On the
.whole, travellers, pilgrims, merchants, were to refrain
' like their fellow-citizens from intercourse with these
spiritual outlaws ; and no obedience of any sort was
due to them.
Neither the Bishops nor the Pope undertook to
pronounce on purely secular causes ; " I judge the
sin, not the fief," said Innocent ; and in like manner
the Holy See did not itself depose Kings or burn
heretics. The Canons repeatedly forbade clerics to
be partakers in a judgment of blood. Hence we see
two Courts, the spiritual, presided over by ecclesi
astics, and the lay by secular magistrates, which must
c'offibine to make the outlawry effective and to bring
persons condemned for heresy or other religious
offences to punishment. This is the doctrine of the
two swords, always supposed^ ofteri expressed, in
Canon Law, summed up at length in an aphorism by
Boniface VIII. When the Church delivered a culprit
to the secular arm, it was the duty of magistrates to
inflict the prescribed penalties ; but, except by using
the spiritual weapons of anathema and interdict, clerics
had no means of coercing the lay authorities. Thus
Canon Law rested ultimately on public opinion, or
religious belief, or inherited custom. While Europe
was Catholic as a whole, it prevailed, though with

LEGISLATION CONCERNING HERETICS 329
frequent and ever-strengthening protests not only
against its abuses, which were often extreme, but
against the conception out of which it arose. When
the crown overtopped the mitre, that mixed jurisdic
tion, called spiritual but in fact dealing largely with
temporalities and immunities, was annexed by the
sovereign. It has now been so strangely transformed
that many will suppose it no longer to exist. Yet
the last shadow of the deposing power can be traced
in the explicit or silent compact, according to which
a Catholic King may not occupy the throne of
England, nor a Protestant that of Hungary. In
either case the sentence would be carried out by a
democratic Parliament ; but the principle of exclusion
founded on religious motives, is the same in both.
And so the dream of Gregory VII. was fulfilled.
Innocent III., "a man of commanding genius and'
extraordinary force of character," as one English
historian reckons him ; geritle, wise, blameless in
private life, according to another ;¦ might have said in
his Lateran Council, " Here is my throne, bid Kings
come bow to it." His aims were lofty, as high indeed
as "the eternal principles of justice, righteousness,
and humanity " ; never personal or self-regarding ; in
a certain sense, even those who do not bend before
the Papal power have admitted that he carried on
" the noblest and most religious contest for ascendency
over the world of man." That he, unarmed, without
a single soldier at his beck or call, should have
brought to their knees German Kaisers, and French,
English, or Spanish Kings ; reigning like some being
from a higher realm over their nations, which he

33°

ST.~ FRANCIS AND THE FRIARS

smote as with thunderbolts ; is a witness to the faith
that was yet in them, and to his peremptory greatness.
He is calm, majestic, invincible ; he rules by edicts
and lieutenants from Byzantium to the borders of the
West ; and he dies at fifty-four, worn out by seventeen
years of crowded and incessant undertakings, which
all seemed to end in victory.

Yet we pause over the verdict and dare n6t call him
saint. Of this astonishing age the hero is Francis
rather than Innocent. The mighty Pontiff strikes
with mailed warriors upon heretics, and exterminates
without converting the unhappy thousands of Pro
vence. He yields to subtleties and dissimulation ; he
plays off one Christian ruler against another, and is

LAW AND GOSPEL 33 1
answerable for wars in Germany, the Netherlands,
Italy, England ; he cannot keep within bounds the
rapacity of his Court ; personally just-minded, he lets
a system of exactions flourish that was to undermine
the Papal grandeur and almost bury the Church in
its ruins. Never, perhaps, did any Pope illustrate
more decisively the strength and weakness of Canon
Law, which appealed to men's fears while taking too
little account of their affections. Long spaces of
interdict tempted them to view with growing indiffer
ence the services of religion, granted or withheld for
reasons, too often not so much spiritual as worldly
and diplomatic. If Mass and Sacraments could thus
be taken away, were not pious minds thrown back
upon themselves, and might not the clergy be dis
pensed with? Neither Innocent nor his advisers
could have prevented the outbreak of what was
already Protestantism, had the friars been wanting
whom Francis called up in their preaching hosts and
sent through Christendom. Most opportune was the
alliance of Law and Gospel, bearing witness to the
amazing genius, as men speak, of that Catholic
Church wherein both could flourish side by side, and
a period of expansion grow as by magic out of a
period of repression hitherto unequalled in Europe.
But Innocent on his judgment-seat is less winning,
and to our later age far less comprehensible, -than the
lowly friar, who improvises popular chants instead of
solemn decrees ; who begins Italian literature; inspires
Giotto and Dante ; preaches universal brotherhood ;
looks beyond the schools to Nature and its everlasting
beauty ; is tender to all forms of disease ; and converts

332 ST. FRANCIS AND THE FRIARS
from vice by the simple joy of loving. Sinai with its
thunders may be grand ; Galilee is sweet. That
Innocent, by measures of awful severity, preserved
European civilisation has been asserted, and on
grounds not easily shaken. Francis did more. His
vision of faith and charity ; of a Christian life in the
world without vows, yet in accordance with the
Gospel ; pure, compassionate, laborious, cheerful ; at
peace with God and man ; is one that can never grow
old. It is higher, by all the grace of the New
Testament, tfc^n any society which we have yet
realised; and to say that Innocent III., while allowing
it, still deemed it impossible, is to mark the limit
beyond which he could not pass.
On July 16, 1216, this tamer of kings died at
Perugia. Fie was succeeded two days after by
Honorius III.

XXI
EXCOMMUNICATION — WARS— FATE OF FREDERICK II
(1216-1250)
ElGHTY-SEVEN years, in round numbers, are left of
the story which we have undertaken to tell. From
now onward it becomes a drama in four acts, of almost
Greek simplicity, though with many a stirring episode,
and the background is ever that Sicilian Paradise over
which the Popes claimed to be feudal lords. The
first act, down to 1250, is filled with the exploits,
sufferings, triumphs, and death of Frederick II. It is
followed by a sequel lasting till the execution at
Naples of young Conradin, heir of the Hohenstauffen,
in 1268. Act the third brings on Charles of Anjou
and the French domineering in Norman Italy, but
suddenly blasted to pieces by the Sicilian Vespers of
1282. The closing, unexpected, but decisive fourth
act shows on our stage Philip the Fair at death-grips
with Pope Boniface VIII. When Colonna and
Nogaret, ministers of the French King's vengeance,
seize the Father of Christians in his palace at Anagni,
333

334 FATE OF FREDERICK II.
pull him from his throne, and kill him with their
shameful handling, the Papal Monarchy is no more.
Never again does the Pontifex Maximus bestow
crowns, or depose Kings, or exercise to any effective
purpose the over-lordship hitherto granted him in
Europe, which had made him supreme from Russia to
the Western Sea. His spiritual dominion remains ;
and he will in time be absolute master of Rome and
its territories ; but with Boniface VIII. comes to an
end medieval Christendom.
In this mighty struggle the Holy Roman Empire
lost its meaning and melted to a shadow ; Pope and
Emperor between them ruined the system of which
Charlemagne had drawn out. the lines and Dante sang
the exceeding glory. A new idea, that of independent
nations, with no Caesar above them, was coming to
the birth. The great Roman unity — a Theocratic
King seated beside a Feudal Pontiff — broke up when
the Hohenstauffen defied the Papacy and Clement
IV. saw the blood -of Frederick's grandson staining
the scaffold at Naples. While the combatants im
agined that one of them must be victor, both were
surprised by the growing power of France ; the firm
and haughty legislation of Edward I. of England ;
the end of the Crusades ; and the anarchic fourteenth
century. The Hohenstauffen sank ; the Popes went
into a Babylonish captivity at Avignon. Such is the
spectacle to which we invite our readers' attention,
who will find that these far-off events have had on
their own story an influence no less direct than
decisive. It was now a recognised duty of the Pope to pro-

FREDERICK TAKES THE CROSS 335
claim the Crusade, binding it on Kings whether they
would or no, and raising contributions all over
Christendom to carry it out. Honoriusf mild and
feeble in health, a contrast to his adamantine prede
cessor, had stirred up Andrew of Hungary, and seen
with joy the capture of Damietta in 12 19 from the
Egyptians, whose offer to restore Jerusalem was
treated with scorn. Christians still dreamt of
conquering Islam on Mount Zjon ; and Frederick II.
aspired to lead the armies of the Cross, if he might
be Emperor in fact, and his son Henry King of
the Romans. His enemy, Otho, was dead in
1 2 18 ; his counsellor was Hermann of Salza, the
Teutonic Master ; at Fulda the German Princes
gathered joyfully about Frederick ; would Honorius
yield to him and his the Imperial Crown? There
had always been a party in Rome hostile to the
Suabians ; they charged Frederick himself with
designs which he does not seem yet to have enter
tained ; but the Pope would, under no circumstances,
grant him the joint investiture of Sicily and the
Empire. As Voltaire observes with justice, the
Italians did not want a foreigner to lord it over them ;
the Pope considered that his freedom would be lost if
he were shut in by German territories on all sides ;
but he had consented to certain terms when, at the
Diet of Frankfort, young Henry was elected without
his leave as Frederick's successor. Still no quarrel
broke out. The Hohenstauffen Prince descended
upon Italy ; he was crowned in St. Peter's ; he
solemnly took the Cross from Cardinal Ugolino. He
swore to set out in August, 1221 ; and meanwhile

336 FATE OF FREDERICK II.
surrendered to Honorius the great and constantly
disputed inheritance of Matilda. His concessions of
Church immunity were so large that we can scarcely
believe them sincere. His laws against heretics re
peated and enforced the decrees of Lateran. But he
had gained the double investiture ; he soon showed
that rebellious clerics in Apulia would appeal in vain
to their surplice and shaven crown ; nor did he,
though Damietta fell in 1221, press on the expedition
to which he had pledged himself. These are the
facts ; that Frederick apologized for them could
never set him free from the first duties of an
orthodox King.
After two years spent in Sicilian troubles and
delights, a new agreement was made. Frederick, in
August, 1227, would sail for Palestine with a thousand
cavaliers ; he would pledge a hundred thousand
ounces of gold as a forfeit if he did not embark ; his
successors were to be bound like himself, and all
under interdict. He wedded Iolanthe, daughter of
King John, and immediately took the style of King
of Jerusalem. In these actions we perceive a chival
rous, unsteady, medieval Byron, passionate, sensuous,
not so much crafty as fired with the spirit of adventure,
drawn many ways by the calls of a situation to which
no genius was equal. Engelbert of Cologne had been
murdered ; Italy was in flames ; the Emperor struck
hard at his rebels like a Ghibelline ; an immense Lom
bard League was forming against him. Honorius
began to remonstrate in the language of Innocent,
and upheld the Lombards as though they owed no
allegiance to the Empire. At this critical moment

ROGER, KING OF SICILY, RECEIVES HIS CROWN FROM
(Mosaic in la Martorana, Palermo.)

23

338 FATE OF FREDERICK II.
he died, leaving the succession to Cardinal Ugolino,
henceforth to be known as Gregory IX. (March, 1227).
Of this extraordinary man the tale is told -that he
was elected Pope at eighty-six and lived to be a
hundred. Handsome, grave, devout, impetuous,
learned, and resolute, he had been the attached friend
of St. Francis and St. Clare, deep in the counsels of
his cousin Innocent III., and on affectionate terms
with Frederick. But the old Pontiff deemed his
Canon Law, which he was now digesting- into the
Decretals, to be supreme without appeal or adversary.
The youthful Emperor did not take that view. He
sat on the throne of Justinian ; he was himself the
embodiment of Roman Law ; he held authority over
the world by Right Divine. To the clerics of the
Curia he opposed his lawyers ; his Pietro della Vigna
would be a match for any Cardinal ; nor did he
hesitate to claim a power at the Capitol to which the
Lateran never yet had willingly •submitted. He was
a strangely mingled character, reminding us of the
Moorish Sultans, his contemporaries, rather than
of the unpolished Northern chiefs from whom he
descended. In outward looks he was Norman, fair,
slender, ruddy-haired, with blue eyes, and a winning
tongue ; but his gift of gay improvisation, his softness
of living, his metaphysical talk, his polygamies, and
what else may not be named but was currently re
ported of him, bring before us a light Epicurean, to
whom the repressive doctrines of Gregory IX. must
have been intolerable. That he believed in no
religion at all was the rumour of the day ; but, in the
contest now approaching, had he been as orthodox as

FIRST EXCOMMUNICATION 339
St. Louis, there were elements of dissension which
could not be reconciled. Gregory struck the first
blow. The moment he was crowned, his word went out
for the Crusade, and he fastened an instant obligation
upon the Emperor. He was equally severe with the
Lombard cities, delaying to keep their engagement ;
they must obey Caesar and despatch their own soldiers
to Palestine. From Anagni he addressed a vehement
rebuke, which was undoubtedly deserved, to the Court
of Palermo, where Jews and Mohammedans held
great sway and a heathen licence flourished. Sicily
was becoming a second Provence ; the Pope may well
have dreaded lest Christian faith should hardly
survive Christian morals ; and he despatched his
Friar Gualo to prophesy against the dissolute Prince
who had bound on himself the cross of his dying
Lord. Frederick began to negotiate with the Sultan
of Egypt, Kameel. Yet his preparations for the
voyage were extensive ; he sailed round to Otranto ;
met the German expedition of which thousands
perished in the amazing Southern heats ; himself
embarked ; but after three days hastily returned to
port. Then he broke up the armament, and giving
out that he was ill, retired to Pozzuoli (summer
1227). At Michaelmas the Pope excommunicated this
recreant crusader in language at once passionate
and scornful. He made out a strong case, if
not altogether convincing; twice he repeated the
censure, of which its subject seemed to take but
little heed ; yet Frederick did answer, by appealing

34O FATE OF FREDERICK II.
to all his fellow-sovereigns against the monstrous
regiment of clerics. He made friends in Rome.
Gregory during Holy Week had menaced him with
deposition ; a few days afterwards the Frangipani
raised a tumult while the Pontiff was saying Mass
and drove him out of the City. He took up his
residence on the heights of Perugia. It was soon
announced that the pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre
had turned back on hearing of Frederick's defection ;
but news came that Moeddin of Damascus, who
had been a scourge to Christians, was dead, and
the Emperor set sail in April, 1228. Gregory had
forbidden him to stir till the interdict was raised ; he
drew into revolt the churches and monasteries of
the Sicilian Kingdom by ordering them not to pay
their taxes ; he called Frederick a pirate and other
bad names — all on grounds which, at this distance
of time, do not appear to warrant such high-handed
proceedings. Attempts at reconciliation came from
the Emperor ; they were rejected by the Pope.
But Frederick, who now lost his wife Iolanthe,
sailed to Cyprus and thence to Acre, with about
six hundred knights. Two friars had gone swiftly
before him ; they warned the clergy, the Templars,
the Hospitallers — by no means friendly to his Sicilian
laws which put them under civil jurisdiction — that
they must not receive the excommunicate. He was
opposed on landing ; he could gather no sufficient
army; and, making terms with the Sultan of Cairo,
he entered Jerusalem, March 17, 1228. At once
the Archbishop placed the city under a ban, inter
dicting the Holy Sepulchre itself. These fright-

CROWNED IN JERUSALEM 341
ful dissensions, carried to the utmost pitch in the
presence of Islam, strike us with horror. Had
Frederick been more of a Christian, he would now
have shrunk from any further acts. Yet he pro
ceeded to crown himself in the desecrated Church of
the Sepulchre, where Hermann of Salza read his
master's defence, which was a loud indictment of
Gregory. Idle tales, exaggerated or wholly false,
depicted the Emperor as a mere infidel ; his presence
irritated the Moslems and was a scandal to the
orthodox. He wrote in glowing terms to Europe of
all he had accomplished ; but on the third day he
left Jerusalem; and his treaty, denounced by Pope
and Patriarch, came to nothing. He must fiasten
home ; John of Brienne was invading Apulia ; Albert
of Austria had been tempted to throw off his alle
giance ; while Gregory was proclaiming a crusade, for
which he demanded benevolences even in the British
Islands (and obtained them) to put down the sacri
legious Emperor. A Crusade against Caesar ! It was
the strangest perversion of medieval laws. It shocked
Christendom. But the Pontiff did not heed remon
strance. He joined in one sweeping anathema
Frederick with all possible heretics ; condemned
his adherents ; and set his subjects free from their
oaths. But the man himself was in Southern Italy once
more. He drove back the Papal forces which had
poured over into Naples ; he relieved Capua ; he
settled his Saracens at Nocera. With his squadrons
bearing the Cross on their armour he met and slew
Gregory's retainers, who held aloft St. Peter's Keys.

342 FATE OF FREDERICK II.
No sadder moment is on record through all the
sanguinary and confused chronicle of that century.
The friars stood by the Pope ; but clergy and laity
were in high dudgeon with him ; on neither side of
the Alps could insurrection be stirred up ; and when
the Romans, terrified by a fearful rising of the Tiber,
had called back their Pontiff to the Lateran, he made
peace at San Germano (June, 1230) with this infidel
whom he had lately drawn in the blackest colours.
Frederick forgave all his rebels and restored clerical
immunities to the full. He gave up confiscated
estates ; in general terms he submitted ; but regarding
the Crusade or the Holy Land not a word was uttered
on either side. The enemies met at Anagni, em
braced, and, as Frederick tells us, were charmed with
one another. It is difficult to understand these
sudden, dramatic changes which are so frequent in
medieval history. Acts and speech were equally
violent ; enthusiasm, liable to such hot fits of love
and hate, takes on the air of deep dissimulation ; yet
we must suppose it genuine. The nine years' peace
which followed seems to confirm our better thoughts
of men who to rare qualities added passions not less
beyond the common. Frederick went on to complete
his Code of Laws ; Gregory, aided by Raymund of
Pennafort, the Dominican, gathered up into his
Decretals whatever was extant, or gave itself out as
such, of his predecessors' enactments from the first ages.
Yet legislation, however sound, which did not seek
approval of the Holy See, was looked upon with
distrust. This new and growing conception of a
purely secular Code pointed back to heathen, not

HIS FOUR SONS

343

Christian Rome, and forward to a condition of things
when the Pope would be no more the supreme law
giver. A fresh struggle on this larger battlefield was
at hand.
Like Solomon or Mohammed, the Sicilian had
many wives and concubines. We must distinguish

CLOISTERS OF THE CHURCH OF MONREALE.
four sons of his, — Henry the eldest, now ruling
Germany; Enzio, the golden-haired offspring of
Bianca Lancia, and his brother Manfred, who dis
played all the genius of the Hohenstauffen ; lastly,
Conrad, son of Iolanthe and heir to Jerusalem. Of
these Henry, now grown up to manhood, was frac
tious and feeble ; his Teutonic counsellors tempted

344 FATE OF FREDERICK II.
him into rebellion against a distant power ; and in
May, 1235, Frederick, as in olden days, crossed the
Alps to save the Empire. It is certain that Gregory
did not encourage the foolish youth. Henry was
soon made to submit; he was banished to Naples and
died a prisoner.
But these troubles had involved the Lombard
League ; moreover, the popular party in Rome, never
quite extinguished, was secretly Imperial; in 1234
Savelli the Senator had pulled down some of the
Lateran, defied Cardinal Ranieri, taken tribute and
allegiance from Tuscan towns. The everlasting
quarrel between camp and sacristy was on foot again.
Frederick, called in to mediate, restored peace. He
was now getting ready to break the Lombards on the
singular plea, which Gregory himself had put forward,
that they dealt too easily with heretics, compounding
for their offences and giving back their fines. Heretics,
in these Northern parts, were not only weavers or
small tradesmen but well-to-do merchants ; the
middle class, when not under guidance of Franciscan
Saints, often fell away from Church and clergy.
Thus the Pope found his chief allies discredited,
himself in danger. He proposed arbitration. Before
it could be done, Frederick had taken Verona, stormed
Vicenza, beaten the Duke of Austria to his knees.
On November 27, 1237, he won the fight of Corte
Nuova, in which the Lombard legions were ruthlessly
slaughtered ; the Caroccio of Milan fell into his hands ;
young Tiepolo, the Podesta, son of the Venetian
Doge, was bound a prisoner to its chariot wheels.
From Cremona he published an Imperial Encyclical,

SECOND EXCOMMUNICATION 345
vying in strength of language and pride of power
with those of the Roman Chancery. The Caroccio
he sent to the Capitol ; Tiepolo was put to death
at Naples. Who could withstand Frederick now ?
Surely, this world was made for Caesar.
Gregory rose to the occasion, not as Pope — for how
did Frederick impeach his spiritual prerogatives ? —
but as an Italian patriot. He leagued together Venice,
Lombardy, Romagna, Genoa ; bound in one all the
charges to which forty years' perplexed litigation had
made the Emperor amenable ; and especially urged
that he had fomented rebellion in Rome ; had usurped
Sardinia, which was an estate of the Holy See ; had
cherished Saracens ; had hindered the recovery of
Palestine ; and had oppressed the clergy. On these
grounds Pope Gregory, in the Palm Sunday Mass
of 1239, excommunicated, interdicted, and deposed
Frederick II., and delivered him bodily over to
Satan for the saving of his soul.
Pietro della Vigna harangued against the sentence
at Padua ; his master condescended to justify himself
in an assembly of Bishops ; again he appealed to his
fellow princes ; and he called on the Romans to avenge
his insulted honour. " Fierce, indecent invectives,"
as Matthew Paris terms the Pope's rejoinders, were
bandied to and fro. The Barons of England refused
every contribution towards this fresh Crusade ; the
clergy did in like manner. Then Gregory took a fatal
step. He offered the Empire, now considered vacant,
to Robert of Artois. France was to take the place of
apostate Germany. But on the French throne sat
Louis IX., whom all Christians looked upon as an angel

346 FATE OF FREDERICK II.
of God ; and he not only forbade Robert to seize the
tempting bauble, but addressed a severe remonstrance
to the Pope, while his nobles sent Frederick an
embassy which touched him even to tears. Among
Germans the cry went that if Gregory had not helped
Milanese rebels, peace would never have been broken.
It seemed as if the only sure partisans of the Pope
were Lombards in Italy and the friars everywhere. He
had canonised St. Francis and St. Dominic — to whom
indeed St. Louis cherished an equal devotion. But
even the friars were rent by factions — Moderates for
the Holy See, Spirituals for the Eternal Gospel.
Elias, their crafty, versatile General, joined the
Emperor and fell under the same excommunica
tion. We have come to the middle years of that
thirteenth century in which Catholicism brought forth
its most mystic saints, built its unrivalled sanctuaries,
squared the stones of its Canon Law, soared into
Heaven on the wings of its transcendent philosophy,
- — yet heretics are in every land, dissensions rife between
universities and religious Orders, the friars themselves
persecuting and persecuted ; the Emperor is an out
law, the Pope menaced in his own house ; the clergy
burdened, the nations restless ; and from the Far
East is heard the tramp of innumerable barbarians,
for in 1 241 the Mongols pour down on Europe,
advancing to the Danube and the Alps. We can
neither conceive nor imagine such a time ; therefore
we shall do well to refrain from judging it. But
surely Pope and Emperor must have been alike
unhappy. Milan burnt her heretics ; Enzio, the beautiful

MONGOL ADVANCE AND RETREAT 347
youth, began to conquer his father's enemies ;
. Frederick swept towards Rome. He showed no mercy
to the so-called crusaders ; but it was a confused
indecisive war. Enzio, at Meloria, broke the Genoese
fleet and took many Bishops, with all the treasure
which Cardinal Otho was bringing from England.
The hordes of Genghis Khan moved forward. The
Pope was in Sant' Angelo, undaunted but nearly
alone. He meant to call a General Council ; Frederick
and St. Louis would have welcomed it. Under this
awful cloud, charged with red lightning, Gregory
died (August 21, 1241). All his efforts had come
to an untimely end ; but his courage was never less
than his convictions ; and he stands forth, a com
manding figure, in the Papal dynasty.
It is to the everlasting honour of Frederick that,
while chaos ruled, his sons, Enzio and Conrad, rein
forced from Italy, drove back the Mongol hordes on
the Delphos and saved Europe. Acting almost as
Regent of the Church, he suspended his armaments,
allowed the Conclave to meet, and would have made
peace with Ccelestine IV., had not the newly-elected
passed away immediately. For two years the small
body of Cardinals wrangled over a successor. St.
Louis threatened to appoint one ; Frederick insisted ;
they chose Sinibaldo Fieschi, a Genoese, and the
policy of Gregory IX. was resumed. To speak of
Innocent IV. with respect for his person would be
in defiance of the multiplied proofs which exhibit
him as grasping, cold-hearted, insincere, and a
nepotist. He has been held up, not for reverence,
to posterity in the terrible but unquestioned indict-

348 FATE OF FREDERICK II.
ment which Robert Grossetete, Bishop of Lincoln,
delivered to his Court and Cardinals. But where
the headlong Gregory failed, Innocent succeeded,
Hitherto, he had affected kindness towards the
Emperor ; but, as Frederick observed, " No Pope
can be a Ghibelline," and so the event proved.
Innocent, however, began by proposing terms. A
treaty, thanks to Adelaise of Sardinia, was drawn in
1244, but never executed. Next year the Pontiff
escaped by sea to Genoa where he was welcomed
" with loud applause and aves vehement " ; he took up
his quarters in the Imperial free city of Lyons ; and
called a General Council in 1245.
St. Louis, throughout, was calm and neutral ;
Arragon v/as hostile ; the English people murmured
against Martin the collector and all collectors ;
barons, bishops, middle class felt no tenderness for
the Pope ; but though historians like Matthew Paris
are themselves evidence of widespread discontent,
the great system stood foursquare against revolution,
stained as it was with age-long scandals. At Lyons
the 140 Bishops and numerous abbots were protected
by a vile freebooter, Philip of Savoy, who was named
Archbishop of that See but never took orders, and
who died a Duke and a married man, ancestor of the
present King of Italy. Thaddeus of Suessa, that
politic civilian, appeared on Frederick's behalf; he
charged Innocent with double-dealing and appealed
to a future Council. But the prelates sided with the
Pope. Innocent, by the power of the Keys, deposed
the Emperor in a vehement speech ; reserved Naples
to himself; declared the Empire a feud ; and by and
by gave it to Henry Raspe, " the priests' king."

PALERMO CATHEDRAL IN WHICH IS THE TOMB OF FREDERICK II.

350 FATE OF FREDERICK II.
There was civil war in Germany. St. Louis tried
in vain to soften Innocent. Plots and counterplots ;
frightful cruelties, of which Frederick can never be
absolved ; Henry Raspe's defeat at Ulm, death at
the Wartburg ; triumph of the Guelfs at Parma ; and
Thaddeus of Suessa captured and hacked in pieces,
— such are the gloomy incidents of those miserable
days, down to 1249. The Empire was collapsing to
anarchy. Frederick, not old but worn and savage,
felt the blows of outrageous fortune and struck
fiercely again. His beloved Enzio was taken at
Bologna, spending in captivity the twenty-three years
that remained of a tragic story. His bosom friend,
Pietro della Vigna, turned traitor — why or under what
provocation has never been known ; he " held the
keys of Frederick's heart," said Dante, and now he
became false and being taken in the manner dashed
out his brains against his prison walls. Guelfs,
Ghibellines, Free Companies, laid Italy waste. It was
time the Alcibiades of the century left it to work out
its own confusions. In 1250, at Ferentino, not far
from Lucera, the Emperor breathed his last in
Manfred's arms. He sleeps with his royal robes
about him, in the Cathedral at Palermo. But we
cannot look upon the great porphyry urn, which
holds all that is left of Frederick II., without feeling
that he was truly a spirit misunderstood, never wisely
handled, full of mysterious charm and powers wasted,
the most captivating, enigmatic, and unhappy of
Christian Emperors.

XXII
CONRADIN DIES— THE SICILIAN VESPERS
(1250-1299)
With Frederick expired the Holy Roman Empire.
William of Holland, the anti-Emperor raised up by
Innocent, a lad of twenty, held on till 1256, then
perished fighting with the Frisians. An interregnum
of seventeen years followed ; but, if we look at realities
and pierce through the forms of things, the new dynasty
inaugurated by Rudolph of Hapsburg, poor, proud,
and pious, in 1273, took over little but an empty name
and was merely German, never Roman. There will
be in time a crimson-clad Sigismund at Constance ;
a lord of many lands, Charles V. ; but even these do
not fulfil the idea which was dreamt of by Charle
magne or Frederick ; and the rest are shadows.
Innocent IV. had yet to deal with the remnant of
Hohenstauffen. He excommunicated the able though
somewhat stern Conrad, who should have succeeded
his father, but was now charged with heresy and
made the object of a crusade. From Lyons the
351

352 CONRADIN — SICILIAN VESPERS
Pope went down to Italy in triumph, everywhere
rooting out Ghibellines and Nonconformists ; at
Perugia he stayed a year and a half. Manfred, who
kept a grip on the South, found rebellion springing
up at the Pope's instigation, and it is curious to note
the Count of Aquino, brother of the great St. Thomas,
among its leaders. Capua, Naples, fell away from
the Imperial party, when Conrad, crossing the Alps
and sailing from Venice, arrived at Siponto, chastised
the revolting cities with storm and slaughter, and
restored the balance. Factions broke out among the
Pope's own partisans. He turned to the feeble
though exquisite Henry III. of England, made his
second son, Edmund, King of Sicily, and swept into
his coffers an infinite tribute. This became the cause
of civil war between Henry and his people, out of
which rose Simon de Montfort, who laid the founda
tions of a free English Parliament. So wide-reaching
were the effects of that quarrel between Papacy and
Empire ! But Edmund did not get his Kingdom of
Sicily ; as we shall see, it was the golden hook where
with to catch princes ; for Innocent never scrupled
at breaking his pledge. He sold bishoprics as he
trafficked in crowns, always to fill his own purse or
to dower his kinsfolk, for he practised nepotism on a
lordly scale. As Pope he had built, in the energetic
words of Robert Grossetete, for hell-fire ; as a ruler
of this world he showed himself crafty and invincible.
He foreshadows at once Innocent VIII. and Julius II.,
neither of whom do we reckon in the list of edifying
Pontiffs. Rome, the city, has fallen into the background

MANFRED 353
during (these tempests of " blood and flame, rage and
despair." It now possessed a Senator, Brancaleone,
called in from Bologna to appease its everlasting
tumults. He hanged culprits, established quiet for
a while, and sent the Pope a peremptory message to
return to his long-abandoned See. Innocent appeared,
withdrew, was compelled a second time to come
back. We may conjecture that his pleasant hours
in the free city of Lyons had given him a foretaste
of Avignon ; but with his antique Senator and a
murmuring people he did not dare to trifle. From
the Lateran he continued to make war upon the
children of Frederick. Conrad was too strong for
him ; accused, as we said, of heretical sentiments — an
unlikely charge — he defended himself in the Papal
Court. His juvenile brother Henry died on a visit
to him at Naples : Innocent gave out that the lad
was poisoned. In 1254 Conrad, by some mysterious
stroke, lay on his death-bed ; rumour babbled of the
wise Manfred's guilt, but he would not even accept
the Regency.
One legitimate descendant of Frederick II.
was left, Conradin, a boy of three years, on whose
behalf Berthold of Homburg wrote in suppliant
terms to Pope Innocent. The answer was that
Conradin should be King of Jerusalem — a kingdom
in the air — but by no means of Naples. William,
Cardinal of Sant' Eustachio, Innocent's nephew, was
to be Regent, to seize, confiscate, interdict, levy taxes,
and govern the South as a Roman province. To
this Manfred's reply was the assumption of sovereign
power in the name of Conradin. But, in the midst
24

354 CONRADIN — SICILIAN VESPERS
of treachery on all sides, he submitted ostensibly to
the Pope and invited him to enter the kingdom.
Innocent came to Ceperano with a splendid retinue ;
Manfred fell at his feet, was raised up and appointed
Papal Vicar. Still more gloriously did the Pontiff
triumph in the city of Naples ; his nephew took the
homages absolutely in his name. Then Manfred
escaped to Lucera ; beat the recreant Marquis of
Homburg and the Pope's squadrons at Foggia ; and
swore to maintain the rights of King Conradin. The
game was now to be simplified ; its last pieces were
on the board. Innocent, from his palace at Naples,
utterly disregarding English Edmund, offered Sicily
to Charles of Anjou. We may remember that
Gregory IX. had set the example of tempting on this
expedition the younger Princes of France. Not
many days after, in December, 1 254, " he that sold
the Church was dead," writes Matthew Paris of the
Pope. Almost his last act had been to pave the way
for the Sicilian Vespers.
Alexander IV., of the house of Segni, who suc
ceeded without an interval, was a good Pope,
embarrassed by the rapacious Curia which Innocent
had bequeathed to him, and still more by the
damnosa hcereditas of a suzerainty over Naples. He
could not put down Manfred, in possession of the
whole kingdom ; he stumbled between Charles of
Anjou and Edmund of England ; his dealings with
Boniface, the Savoyard Archbishop of Canterbury,
a worldling and a reprobate, as with Sewal, Arch
bishop of York, threw a lurid gleam on the least
defensible of Curial practices — the intrusion of

BRANCALEONE SENATOR

355

foreigners into Sees which they administered like
proconsuls, and the exaction of subsidies in aid of
wars which had become purely secular, though dis
guised under the title of crusades. In Rome,
Brancaleone was acting as temporal sovereign.

POPE INNOCENT IV., A.D. 1254.

Flung into prison but delivered thence, he broke the
; proudest nobles ; pulled down their robber-dens to
the number of a hundred and forty ; stood out
against the Pope himself, who had taken part with
the Patricians ; made alliance with Manfred ; and
was Senator till his death.

356 CONRADIN — SICILIAN VESPERS
The year 1258 saw this highly-gifted son of
Frederick, hitherto Regent, crowned King at the
request of the Sicilian Estates which he alone could
protect. He. had no lawful sons ; and he promised
that Conradin, now Duke of Suabia, should succeed ,;
him. The interminable war of Guelfs and Ghibel
lines went on. Florence had banished its " white ,;
or Imperial citizens ; they united with Pisa and
Siena, overthrew the Guelfs at Monte Aperto, and
would have razed their native city to the ground, had
not Farinata persuaded them to spare it. Michelet,
the French historian, considers that the Guelfs were,
on principle, democratic and revolutionary ; they
drove out their feudal masters ; levelled the ranks
of their fellow townsmen to one class which we should
now call industrial or artisan ; were loyal to the
Church as long as the Church was loyal to them;
and, like other Jacobins, while jealous of superior
men, fell under military sway, the victims of hired
cut-throats. But they never ceased to be genuine
Italian patriots ; thus we comprehend why they ,
looked on the Pope as their anointed chief.
Of the Ghibellines it may be said that in origin
they were feudal lords who would not relinquish the
fierce rights they had so long enjoyed. They fell
back, when assailed, on the Emperor ; but they
relished his impartial centralising law as little as they
welcomed the people's uprising. The old Greek
tyrant in a small city like Corinth or Athens, on his
guard night and day against assassination, might
seem to live once more in the portentous Ezzelino or
the subtle Visconti. Every vice, every horror, that

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358 CONRADIN — SICILIAN VESPERS
legend ascribes to the Greek was renewed in the
Italian despots. But the age did not condemn their
crimes so loudly as it admired their good fortune.
True, they often came to a bad end. Ezzelino him
self, whose father had been a monstrous compound
of sins and superstitions, ruled Padua with a rod of
iron ; yet was he regretted when his Ghibelline
confederates, finding he meant to betray them,
turned round, wounded and imprisoned him. The
half-crazy tyrant tore away his bandages and died
blaspheming. Such were the miscreants with whom
Manfred, gay, subtle, courageous, but certainly not
much of a Christian, had to make alliance. He won
over Venice and Genoa ; when Alexander IV. died
at Viterbo in 1261 the Papacy had no friend except
St. Louis ; and its always precarious dominion over
Rome was hardly even a name. Eight Cardinals
were left of the Sacred College. They chose a
Frenchman, born at Troyes, son of a shoemaker, and
raised by his own merits to be Patriarch of Jerusalem.
It was a hundred and forty years since the last
French Pope, Calixtus II., had mounted St. Peter's
Chair. Pantaleon called himself Urban IV He
proceeded at once to name fourteen Cardinals, of
whom seven were French. And he offered the
crown of Naples to St. Louis.
Certainly the spectacle is an imposing one ; this
cobbler's son, meanest of his subjects by birth, makes
a present to the Most Christian King of Southern
Italy ; he holds the balance between Richard of
Cornwall and Alfonso of Castile, candidates for the
Empire ; and he successfully withstands the Ghibel-

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espousals of THE virgin. [Fresco at Viterbo.}

360 CONRADIN— SICILIAN VESPERS
lines at large, who were pressing Conradin's claims.
But he could not cope with Manfred. The Italian
cities had lost or overturned their Guelf administra
tion. St. Louis argued that 'if Conratdin were not
heir of Sicily, Edmund was ; and the King of
Arragon took a decisive step, hotly condemned from
Rome, when he allowed his son to marry the daughter
of Manfred. This alliance was fated, in the end, to
bring with it the Sicilian dowry ; for the moment it
exasperated Urban, who procured Edmund's renun
ciation and bestowed the title, with all it implied, on
Charles of Anjou. The Romans made him their
Senator; and the last, bloodiest, and most hateful
chapter in this deplorable conflict began.
Personally, the combatants were not ill-matched.
Manfred, whom his rival termed the "Sultan of
Nocera," had inherited his mother's fair face, his
father's versatile and dangerous charm ; adored,
detested, a knight-errant with his Saracen Mame
lukes about him, no friend to priests, he calls up
an image of Napoleon by this mixture of logic,
violence, and adventurous fancy which, for a time,
no power could resist. Charles of Anjou, Count
of Provence, in his wife's name, had nothing of
the gay troubadour ; this tall, thin man, with the
olive complexion and eagle countenance, never
laughed, spoke little, hardly slept. Regular as a
monk, says Villani, who gives us his picture, Charles
professed to be a zealous Catholic ; he took no
pleasure in mimes or courtly feastings ; he was
prodigal of arms to his followers ; but was himself
greedy after lands, lordships, and money. His high,

CHARLES OF ANJOU 36 1
severe thoughts made him, as years went on, dread
fully cruel. But where, except in the heart of St.
Louis, shall we look for mercy during that wild age ?
Manfred was cruel too ; yet history, when it speaks
of Charles, never has a kind word for him, and on
the tomb of the Sicilian hero the tears of generations
have fallen. Friendship was the jewel of these
Hohenstauffen Kings.
We pass over the troubles of England in which
Urban played no successful part. Scarcely had he
called to the Angevin when he died on the way to
Orvieto (1265), and an anxious interregnum of five
months ensued. Hugo Falcodi was Legate at
Boulogne — for he dared not cross the Channel to
daunt with anathemas the English barons. A
Southern Frank, from the Rhone, Archdeacon of
Narbonne, Cardinal of Santa Sabina, in early days
wedded, he was that formidable character, a
Churchman who is likewise a man of the world.
His French colleagues elected him. Clement IV. at
once made his way over the Alps to Perugia ; he
• proclaimed a Crusade, pledged the Roman basilicas,
excepting St. Peter's and the Lateran, and to raise
supplies, sent out his begging Friars with ample
authority, who stirred revolt on the borders of Naples.
Meanwhile, Charles of Anjou, having gained his
terms, embarked at Marseilles with a few galleys,
reached the Tiber, was in Rome at Whitsuntide,
1265, and — evil omen ! — took up his quarters in the
Lateran. He meant, Pope or no Pope, to be master.
As summer ended, the French army passed Mont
Cenis; most of the great families sent sons or repre-

362

CONRADIN — SICILIAN VESPERS

sentatives ; the Crusade was fed with French money ;
and these thirty thousand invaders joined Charles
under the crumbling walls of Rome. The Pope saw
them go by ; he did not join them. At once Anjou
drove forward to Ceperano. Manfred drew out his
motley forces in front of Benevento (February 6,
1 266). The shock was fierce ; French, Germans,

RUINS OF THE ARCHBISHOP'S PALACE, VITERBO.
Saracens, Guelfs of Florence, fought with desperate
rage. But never have Italians resisted the Gallic
outset victoriously. Manfred lost the battle. He
fell by an unknown hand. His body was recog
nized, set on an ass, and brought to Charles. It
was buried under a great cairn, for in holy ground
it must not lie ; then torn up again, and cast out

MARCH OF CONRADIN 363
of the Kingdom, as Dante sings with severe pathos,
to repose by the stream called Verde. The French
sacked Benevento. Apulia, Calabria, and even Sicily
submitted. Clement invested Charles with the
conquered South. Florence took back her Guelfs ;
Pisa was humbled ; Milan was treated despitefully.
From that day to this Italians have feared and hated
the French dominion. Clement might tax distant
nations, excommunicate Simon de Montfort, and set
his Legate above the King of England ; at home he
was the humble servant of Charles, who held all Italy
in his grasp and " made horrible exactions under the
Royal Seal," as the Pope, not without indignation,
writes to him.
Two years were enough to provoke the counter
revolution. Frederick Lancia made his way to
Germany and persuaded Conradin, the boy not yet
sixteen, to assert his rights, cross the Alps, and march
oh Rome. With four thousand troops and his insepar
able friend, young Frederick of Austria, the last
Hohenstauffen came to Verona. Clement at Viterbo
launched his thunder at this serpent sprung from a
poisonous brood. He appointed Charles, "peace
maker" in Tuscany and throughout the Empire.
But Sicily was in revolt. Another Lancia had seized
the Lateran ; his ally, Henry of Castile, occupied St.
Peter's. Down rushed Conradin, while Charles
lingered about Florence; when he went to besiege
Lucera the bold lad and young Frederick rode in
sight of Clement, under the Viterbo battlements ;
" victims to the slaughter," said he, looking down on
them with a kind of melancholy, which did not

364 CONRADIN — SICILIAN VESPERS
hinder his subsequent acts. Rome opened its gates
with joy to the Suabian, whom it soon expected to
crown Emperor. Some churches were plundered.
The small army marched on behind Sabine peaks to
fatal Tagliacozzo. There, a first success ended in
utter ruin, August 26, 1268. Conradin and Frederick
were taken, sold by the Frangipani to the Angevin ;
their followers dispersed. Charles had now his
desire ; the two Lancias were caught — all the hopes
of Hohenstauffen might be struck dead at a blow.
But even he could not murder his prisoners. By
an extraordinary device, to be long argued over,
execrated, wondered at, he brought them to a mock
trial in Naples. They were condemned as rebels to
their liege lord. Germany has never forgotten, pity
will always tell with shuddering, how Conradin knelt
on the scaffold in presence of a numberless throng,
cast his glove among them defiantly, cried, " O my
mother, what news will they bring thee this day ! "
and on that word was smitten by the headsman. His
comrade, Frederick, died in like manner ; then the
Lancias ; then two Pisan nobles who had cleaved to
his cause. " Life of Conradin, death of Charles," the
Pope was fabled to have written ; all we know is
that he did not stay the fall of the axe. We think
.with gladness that Anjou was never to hold Sicily
fast ; that if the Hohenstauffen were gone, the seed
of Manfred should yet enjoy his kingdom. There is
a logic in events which the wise call Providence ; it
-"uinot be mistaken even in so dark a tragedy.
Young Conradin was beheaded on October 29,
1268. Within a month, on November 29, Clement IV.

GREGORY X. AT LYONS 365
died. Charles of Anjou, irresistible, kept — or per
mitted his French Cardinals to keep — the Holy See
vacant for two years. At length, on March 22, 1272,
a Visconti, Archdeacon of Liege, then away in the
Holy Land, was chosen. He is known as Gregory X.
This admirable man united the simplicity of a
saint with the wisdom of a lawgiver. His journey
from Brindisi to Rome was a peaceful triumph. He
made a treaty between Venice and Genoa, hoping
they might combine in a naval expedition to the
East At Florence he attempted the impossible, to
persuade the Guelfs and Ghibellines that they should
dwell together in unity. He ordered a new election
¦ to the Empire, which would henceforth be Teutonic,
for all its short or sudden irruptions into Italy; he
• confirmed Rudolph of Hapsburg when chosen. He
had seen the Latin usurpation at Constantinople end
in 1 26 1 ; nay, though he knew it not, he had taken
part in the last of the Crusades. Instinct and policy
bade him recognise Michael Paleologus, whose name
and succession were to continue until Mohammed II.
should desecrate Sancta Sophia into a mosque.
Gregory, advancing north as he fulfilled these deeds
of reconciliation, opened the great Council of Lyons
in 1274.
Round about him sat five hundred Bishops, seventy
Abbots, a thousand of the clergy. The King of
Arragon was there ; all the West had sent repre
sentatives; in June the Greek ambassadors came.
No anathema was pronounced ; the Churches of East
and West uttered a common creed, acknowledged one
Pope, and bowed to the orthodox Emperors, Rudolph

f I
$66 COrfRADIN — SICILIAN VESPERS
and Michael. Gregory issued stern regulations which
might hinder Conclaves in the future from paltering
with their duty. On his way home, when the Council
was happily concluded, he met the Hapsburg Emperor
at Lausanne and dedicated that august and now deso
late cathedral. But he never reached the Eternal
City. At Arezzo, January 1276, he expired. The
ancient strife began again, though under circum
stances which were substituting French for German
actors, and reversing the part of the King and
the Pontiff.
In three years three Popes ; Innocent V. lasted till
June, 1276; Hadrian V., a Genoese, not ordained,
suspended the imperative rules made by Gregory for
election to St. Peter's Chair, and died in August ;
John XXL, chosen amid tumults, was killed in May,
1 277, by the falling in of his palace-roof. Nicholas III.,
an Orsini, followed. He built the Vatican ; got from
Rudolph the magnificent, empty cession, not only
of all the Papal States, but of the Italian Islands ;
showed little friendship to Charles of Anjou ; enriched
his own nephews ; gave one the Castle of St. Angelo,
made another his Vice-Senator in Rome ; filled the
Sacred College with his kinsfolk ; died at Soriano,
which he had confiscated ; and for his avarice, nepotism,
and Guelfic pretensions was seen by Dante burning
in hell. Yet he is described as no less irreproachable
in character than aspiring and energetic. Charles of
Anjou would not endure a second like him. By sheer
compulsion he forced on the Conclave, after six months'
stubborn fight, his nominee, the Cardinal of Santa
Cecilia, formerly Canon of Tours, a born Frenchman

ANJOU'S TYRANNY 367
(1281). Martin TV. kept his court in Orvieto. He
had but one principle of conduct, to register the
decrees which his creator Charles might dictate.
When this sour, truculent conqueror had seized
Naples, where he exercised a grinding tyranny, the
Greek possessions of Manfred also fell to him. Sicily,
once the lady of kingdoms, he trampled upon like
a slave ; his lieutenants at Palermo kept a list of
marriageable heiresses, whom he bestowed on his
Provencal adventurers, and, though himself decorous,
he let this unbridled soldiery insult the honour of a
people as jealous and reserved as the Mohammedans,
whose blood they often shared. We must fancy these
things and worse going on year after year, while
Pedro the Arragonese watched his opportunity to
strike, in his wife Constanza's name, for the Sicilian
crown and freedom. Charles was effectively chief of
the House of France. St. Louis had perished in
Africa on the foolish noble quest into which he was
betrayed by this designing brother. Philip the Hardy
did not deserve his bold addition. But Anjou looked
to be lord of Italy despite the Hapsburg, who, indeed,
was never able to hinder these distant thunderclaps.
More, he dreamt of an Empire on the iEgean, of
Byzantium and the Golden Horn. Paleologus could
neither subdue his own clergy nor fulfil the promises
made to Gregory X. at Lyons. He was excommuni
cated and would have been left to the tender mercies
of Charles by Martin IV, but his own subjects made
an end of him and renounced the Papacy.
Looking thus East and West the Angevin was
caught between two fires. Arragon joined hands

368 CONRADIN — SICILIAN VESPERS
with the Greeks ; it is even possible that Nicholas III.
was no stranger to plots or combinations which might
reduce an enemy who had come as the Church's
deliverer and now held so much more than had been
granted him. This was ever the risk of appealing to
the secular arm. Romance, taking up its parable,
here weaves in the travels, disguises, hair-breadth
escapes of the physician, perhaps alchemist, John of
Procida, who arranges everything beforehand like a
stage conspirator. The story will always be told
with a sigh or a smile that it should be too strange to
be true. We will grant Procida's negotiations ; it is
known that Martin IV. did his utmost to bring the
Ghibellines under, and he must have felt the storm
advancing from Arragon. But the real stage villain
was Charles, whose soldiers exasperated to madness
a proud and sullen people. " Hate and wait," says
the Corsican proverb ; the Sicilians never ceased to
hate, but during fourteen years they waited.
On Easter Tuesday, 1282, as the crowds were
pouring out of church after Vespers, a French soldier
named Drouet insulted the daughter of Roger Mas-
trangelo. The assailant was instantly stabbed with
his own sword, snatched (as legend says) by the girl's
bridegroom. " Death to the French ! " resounded on
all sides ; the bells of San Giovanni degli Eremiti
rang out the tocsin, and two thousand strangers were
massacred on the spot. Into a common pit their
carcases were flung. Then King Roger's palace
was invaded ; the Justiciar fled ; foreign priests,
monks, residents — every one that could not frame
his mouth to pronounce the shibboleth " Ciceri," says'

SAN GIOVANNI DEGLI EREMITI, PALERMO — ("SICILIAN VESPERS,"
A.D. 1282).

2S

370 CONRADIN — SICILIAN VESPERS
the legend — fell under an indiscriminate vengeance.
It was a day of rebuke and blasphemy, when churches
and convents were themselves polluted with slaughter,
as in frantic revolutions before and since. Mastran-
gelo, with his friends, improvised a Government ;
thirty miles off the Justiciar was caught and killed.
The Island rose in fury ; from Corleone to Messina
was nothing but murder, insurrection, a medieval
Feast of Pikes. Heribert the Viceroy, pledged to
return to Provence, escaped into Calabria. Whatever
French he left behind were done to death ; and by
the end of April Sicily was free. But everywhere
the Church's banner, the cross-keys, floated on the
wind. With Rome the liberated cities sought no
quarrel. Charles's prayer, when this Job's news was brought
him, is on record : " O God, if I must fall, be it by
slow degrees." He sat gnawing his sceptre, by
turns raging and silent. His French Pope, Martin,
laid Palermo under an interdict which these san
guinary Vespers had well deserved ; he confiscated
the property of rebels, from the Archbishop to the
meanest layman, and he uttered once more the
detestable word Crusade. To him the Sicilians gave
reply by calling in Pedro of Arragon, who was making
war on Tunis. He came to Trapa-ni, not far from
ancient Eryx, with Roger Loria, his great admiral,
most adventurous of medieval sailors ; with Conrad
Lancia and other exiles. He was at once hailed
King of Sicily. Meanwhile, Anjou with Cardinal
Gerard was thundering at Messina, vomiting destruc
tion like .(Etna upon the stubborn town. His assault

ROGER LORIA

371

was beaten back. Roger Loria came sailing into the
Straits ; compelled him to desert his tents ; took forty-
five galleys and six thousand prisoners ; the Catalan
King and army triumphed. Charles, a little out of
his mind, challenged Pedro to single combat ; the
absurd proposal was eluded. Again Roger Loria
drew out his fleet in array before Naples. The
Angevin was on the march, but his son, Charles the
Lame, went forth to battle, was defeated and taken.
" Would to God he were dead ! " exclaimed the angry
father. Had his enemies retaliated on the crippled
young man that which Conradin had suffered, who
would have called it unjust ? They spared him, and
he lived to be King of Naples.
But the melancholy Charles sank under his mis
fortunes ; he died at Foggia, January 7, 1285. It
was a year of illustrious deaths. Pope Martin, in
1283, had deposed Don Pedro of Arragon ; the
Kingdom he presented to Charles of Valois (yet
another Charles !), second son of France. A Crusade
once more ; this time led by Philip the Hardy, with a
light-minded, numerous host. Italian fleets ravaged
the shores of Catalonia ; Don Pedro lost all but a
few strong places. Then the tide turned. Roger
Loria, pirate or freebooter at sea, broke the French
ships, tortured the French captives ; Philip had to
raise the siege of Gerona, to leave his dying soldiers
in the passes of the Pyrenees, himself to die at
Perpignan this same year, October, 1285. One
month later Don Pedro joined him in the shades.
Martin was gone already in March. Some handfuls
of white dust were left of them all— Kings, warriors,

372 CONRADIN — SICILIAN VESPERS
Churchmen. As for Sicily, never more did it obey
its Papal overlord. The war of twenty-one years,
which we need not follow through its twists and
turnings, issued in a compromise (1299). Frederick,
brother of Don Pedro, was to keep the Island for
life ; he bequeathed it to his descendants and founded
a dynasty. Charles the Lame succeeded to the other
Sicily, which Italians call " II Regno," on the main
land. Over Conradin and his slaughtered friends
this Charles built, in the busiest part of Naples, the
Church of Mount Carmel, even yet a place of pilgrim
age to the hurrying traveller.
Honorius IV., who passed across the stage" one
moment on Martin's death, annulled the compact
which divided the two Sicilies. But he could not
hinder that division. From the investiture of the
Normans by Nicholas II. in 1059 with the splendid
South two hundred and forty years may be reckoned
(to 1299) during which the Holy See exercised or
insisted on those feudal rights which were judged
necessary at Rome to its independence. They were
now brought down to parchment decrees and cere
monial services. Even the strange, and in modern
eyes unjust, absolution from sealed engagements
which Nicholas IV. in 1289 gave to Charles the
Lame, thereby hoping to keep a hand upon Sicily,
availed not for one instant to delay the inevitable.
Feudalism had done its work, it was going the way
of men's devices ; the Pope, conservative by nature,
tenacious of what had once been his on whatever'
conditions, felt the approaching change ; not he alone,
but all feudal sovereigns must suffer or be transformed.

VITERBO — PALAZZO ALESSANDRINI.

374 CONRADIN  SICILIAN VESPERS
The absolute monarch was to absorb in himself
powers of the clergy, powers of the nobles ; to be
protector of the free cities and the whole nation, a
Caesar who would take no orders from Pope or
Parliament. In this long -threatened revolution
France led the way. France, at the end of the
thirteenth century, broke up the system of Europe,
as she did on a larger scale at the end of the
eighteenth. We are now to trace the steps of this
most memorable transaction.

XXIII
ROMAN LAW VERSUS ROMAN PONTIFF
( I 226-1 287)
GlEBON has told us that the Kingdom of France
was made by the French Bishops as bees make their
honeycomb. Clovis, Charles Martel, Pepin, Charle
magne, were all champions of the Church. And even
the " bad seed " of Hugh Capet, the wicked excom
municated Kings, did not shoot up into rebellion
against Rome, despite their scandalous living.
Rheims and Tours, famous for their shrines, were
minor capitals in which the " Abbot of St. Martin's "
was always at home. He was brought up in the
cloister of Notre Dame or St. Denis ; he had Suger
for his Prime Minister, St. Bernard at his right hand
in council ; Pope after Pope took refuge with him
from the fury of Roman mobs or German lanzknechts ;
he was their man, though never a feudatory. His little
kingdom,, hemmed round about by the wide provinces
of insolent Norman England ; by industrious, hard-
fisted Flanders ; by Burgundian Dukes and Counts

376 ROMAN LAW VERSUS ROMAN PONTIFF
of Provence ; was yet compact, defensible, and in a
manner sacred. When the Godfreys of Bouillon
rushed off to Crusades, he stayed behind to pick up
the inheritances which they left in pledge. Seldom
a man of genius, he was singularly debonair, a father
to his people, and in their hard fights with iron barons
a Patriot King. Until the twelfth century was out he
did not count for much in Europe. But John Lack
land dropped his French provinces like silver plates
from his pocket, and Philip Augustus rounded his
dominions with them. Normandy, Picardy, fell to
his share. Bouvines set him free from the German
Empire. The Albigenses by their Counts of
Toulouse, of Foix, of the whole South, were forfeit
to Rome. But it was Amaury de Montfort, son of
their conqueror, who threw himself into the arms of
France. Louis VIII. subdued Nismes, Albi, Carcas
sonne, but died of this hot campaign, leaving a
Spanish wife, Blanche of Castile, to cope with unruly
nobles, and a child who became St. Louis (1226).
The Salic kingdom had, in legal phrase, fallen to
the distaff. But Queen Blanche managed the spindle
like a sword. We figure this valiant woman as a
haughty, severe, not amiable Madame de Maintenon,
gifted with more will and resolution ; hard upon her
gentle son, whom she carried with her as a relique in
its shrine when she attacked the feudal chiefs ; pure
as an angel, but always Spanish — that is to say,
looking on her enemies as Moors and her friends as
knights bound to follow her in the Holy War. She
proved a match for Mauclerc, the bandit Count of
Brittany. From Thibaut of Navarre she got by

THE CHRISTIAN MARCUS %77
purchase Chartres, Blois, Chateaudun. In 1236
Louis came of age. He reigned until 1270. The
Hohenstauffen at this very time were going down
to their grave, and with them the Empire. Heresies
were rife. It cannot be said that the Popes, though
men of consummate ability, gave edification to
thoughtful Christians. If St. Francis of Assisi, by
his exquisite goodness, lights up the beginning of
that troubled thirteenth century, St. Louis sheds
lustre on its -middle period. We may define him
as the Catholic Marcus Aurelius, or as St. Francis
on the throne. In every situation he is charming,
brave, just, tender, unaffected. Who has yet written
of him without a smile and a tear ? He is Marcus
Aurelius, stoical towards himself, considerate of all
the world, but never melancholy as he that on the
Pannonian frontier wrote those beautiful, sad pages
we know so well. The Middle Ages, it has been too
graphically said, came to an end in a Saint-King and
an Emperor- Pope.
St. Louis kept no diary of his thoughts ; but
a precious inheritance from the Middle Ages, more
authentic than the Fioretti which describe the
Umbrian Saint, and hardly less picturesque, is the
Life in Old French by the Sieur de Joinville, candid
as a child's story, and as touching. His slight frame,
long thin fingers, delicate health give an impression
that Louis was not meant for active life. He never
showed a general's sagacity, but was simply a knight
in armour. Yet he won the battle of Taillebourg in
1242 over Henry III. of England, which utterly smote
feudalism ; he kept Provence and Languedoc against

378 ROMAN LAW VERSUS ROMAN PONTIFF
the younger Raymund of Toulouse, whom, on his
submission, he treated kindly; and, in 1235, he took
the Cross to drive back that immense Mongol or
Kharismian invasion, before which Jerusalem had
yielded and all the Western States, Mohammedan
equally as Christian, were paralysed. For once,
Blanche of Castile dissuaded her son from the heroic
course, and for once he would not obey.
From the Danube, as we saw, Frederick's gallant
sons had turned back the Tartar myriads ; but even
the Moslems entreated Louis, as did the unhappy
Emperor of Byzantium, to lead his Franks against
these wild shepherds. At Citeaux, not without
repugnance, he met Pope Innocent IV., who had
vainly striven to draw Louis into his quarrels and
now did not favour a distant Crusade. Many of the
Albigenses, despoiled of their lands by De Montfort,
the King took on this sacred expedition. He had it
in mind to colonise the coasts of Egypt ; there was
a great gathering, but eight months' delay at Cyprus,
whence he sailed for Alexandria in June, 1249.
But a tempest drove him towards Damietta ; he
landed, captured the town, and should have marched
to Cairo. His soldiers plundered ; lagged on the
road ; fought well ; but knew no discipline. Louis,
taller than most by a head and shoulders, in his
golden helmet, a German sword in his hand, was the
picture of a perfect knight. They told him that his
brother, Robert of Artois, had been killed. " God be
praised for the grace He has given him ! " cried Louis,
and dashed away the big tears ; " I know he is in
Paradise." He won the battle of Mansurah ; but the

ST. LOUIS A PRISONER 379
sick, the wounded, the plague, Greek fire, and an
enemy in pursuit on the Nile, as on its shores, brought
the inevitable disaster. The Crusaders were slain in
heaps or compelled to deny Christ. Louis was taken
with his chief nobles and ten thousand of his men.
If he would consent to give up Jerusalem, he might

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KING LOUIS IX. (ST. LOUIS) OF FRANCE.
be free. He offered Damietta and four hundred
thousand bezants of gold. But when the Soldan was
for accepting these terms, his Mamelukes murdered
him. The story ran that they thought of setting up
Louis in his stead. Just as likely is it that they
would have murdered the French King too, but for
380 ROMAN LAW VERSUS ROMAN PONTIFF
his mild intrepidity and unruffled cheerfulness, which
none that saw him could ever resist. On conditions
deemed moderate he was held to ransom. He
lingered a whole year in Palestine ; built again the
walls of Acre, Jaffa, and Caesarea ; and returned to
Europe in November, 1252, with the glory of a
saint and martyr. Queen Blanche was dead ; his
country cried out for him.
It was the destiny of Louis, in a quaint but apt
phrase, to be justice of the peace to all nations.
England, which under John had been made the fief,
seemed under his vacillating successor to be the farm,
of the Papacy. Henry III. squandered and plundered ;
his Queen's uncle, Boniface of Savoy, little better than
a bandit, was thrust into the See of Canterbury.
Innocent IV. treated English riches as an inex
haustible mine. He once demanded for his absentee
favourites no fewer- than three hundred livings ; the
clergy, as he argued, were his vassals ; they must
render suit and service, or its equivalent in hard cash,
while he carried on his war against Frederick the
Antichrist. Langton had all along upheld the Great
Charter ; Edmund, who succeeded him, a lesser but
very winning Thomas a Becket, did what in him lay
to reform abuses, and died in exile at Pontigny. The
manly Grossetete rose up at Lyons to denounce
iniquities that he had fought against at home, and
withstood Innocent to his face. The undergraduates
at Oxford assailed Otho, the Papal Legate, and drove
him out of the city.
To supply Prince Edmund with funds for his mad
Sicilian expedition which never came off, Henry

ANNULS OXFORD PROVISIONS 381
pawned the kingdom to the Pope, and asked his
barons to redeem the pledge. They answered by the
voice of Simon de Montfort, a saint like his father, in
the Oxford Parliament (1258). Its provisions made
the King a lay figure, managed by fifteen nobles.
Alexander IV. dispensed him from his oath, which
Edward the Prince insisted on keeping. Civil war
followed. St. Louis was called in to arbitrate. He
annulled the Provisions, gave back the royal power to
Henry, but left the English Charters in force (1264).
A second campaign was the result, ending in the
battle and the " Mise " of Lewes. Then came the
first real Parliament, and the King's abeyance, which
led up to the Fight at Evesham and De Montfort's
heroic death (1265). His Parliament had been
"partisan, revolutionary, transient." Ottobuoni,
the Legate, appeared in St. Paul's, did away with
Henry's oaths, and declared all that Simon had
striven for utterly abolished. It was in vain.
Edward I., who is called the " English Justinian,"
would complete hereafter that which the great Earl
of Leicester had begun.
That St. Louis when he annulled the Provisions of
Oxford acted according to his lights, no man may
doubt. Conscience had already urged him into
surrendering large lands in Aquitaine to England
which any but he would have held against all
comers. Read his spirited words in Joinville. But
as the Popes, in these Charters and Parliaments,
could see nothing but rebellion demanding unheard
of privileges, so Louis felt that the royal authority
must be maintained in spite of barons whose fellows

382 ROMAN LAW VERSUS ROMAN PONTIFF
in France were men like Thibaut, the Robber-Count
of Champagne. Thibaut was a Crusader, therefore
inviolable, and under the Pope's emphatic protection ;
yet Louis had smitten him down. But at Westminster
the Commons' House, with its knights of the shire
and burgesses from the towns, was destined to the
long trials and decisive triumphs which have made it
supreme ; at Paris the so-called Parliament was to
become a lawyers' assembly, the instrument of an
absolute monarch whose decrees it gloried in carrying
out to the utmost. England never lost its Magna
Charta. But of the French legists it is said that the
Pandects were their Bible ; they would allow no
check upon the King ; he was their Caesar, to whom
they rendered the things that were God's, as well as
his own.
We have watched this movement at its beginning
under Frederick Barbarossa; since his day, it had
embraced Church and State ; the turbulent, half-mad
thirteenth century strove yet with all its powers to
establish the reign of law. From Innocent III. to
St. Thomas Aquinas ; from Frederick II. to Philip
the Fair and Edward I., it goes on, an immense
and partly successful attempt to bring confusion out
of chaos, to restore the supremacy of Roman Law, in
its twofold form, Canon and Civil. But here, almost
of necessity, layman and priest came into conflict.
When Frederick II. codified the N°rman statutes, in
Sicily, he trenched on immunities which the clergy
would not give up. All over Europe the quarrel that
in Henry II.'s time raged round the Constitutions of
Clarendon was now, or soon would be, the question of

Photo)

INenrdein Freres.

ST. LOUIS ADMINISTERS JUSTICE.
(Fresco in the Pantheon, Paris. )

384 ROMAN LAW VERSUS ROMAN PONTIFF
the day. It was at once home and foreign ; were
clerics prepared to submit their temporal causes to
the Common Law ? Would the Pope cease to tax
them and the Kingdom without regard to the duties,
rights, and charges of the Crown ? The dispute was
concerned with lands and money; it never directly
touched doctrine. As the law became centralised,
taxation followed it. The Pope, in his quality of
Commander of the Faithful, had long raised a
revenue from the whole of Christendom. But the
Crusades were ending ; these subsidies had often
been misused and turned aside from their legitimate
object, never more so than under Innocent IV. and
Clement IV. Kings built up Codes by way of
consolidating their jurisdiction. Alfonso the Wise in
Spain, Frederick in the Empire, set an example ; but
it was probably St. Louis to whom Edward I. owed
his lawgiving ; and beyond peradventure from him
the French legislation is derived which set the royal
Court of Appeal above all others. In this sense the
Pragmatic Sanction, though not his work, may be
attributed to his age and advisers, among whom the
chief, Pierre de Fontaines, had embodied no little of
the Roman Law in his Counsel to a Friend.
When, beneath the oaks of Vincennes, he did
justice, " fair and round," as Joinville says ; when he
declared to Enguerrand de Coucy that he would not
admit him to wager of battle lest in such cases the
Church and the poor should never find champions
against lordly barons ; when he took counsel with
St. Thomas Aquinas, and yet gave judgment adverse
to haughty prelates like the Bishop of Beauvais j in

THE GLORY OF PARIS 385
all this he was bringing the idea of law, impartial
and without regard for privilege, into a world which
confounded right with station and sacrificed modern
society to its ancient defenders. " Fair son," he said
in his illness at Fontainebleau, to Philip the Hardy,
" win the love of your people ; for I had rather a
Scot came from Scotland and governed them well
and loyally, than that you governed them ill in men's
sight." Such was a saint's conception of law. But a
kingdom could not be ruled by open-air courts in the
Forest of Vincennes ; from the middle class had
begun to spring up an aristocracy of the robe, men
who were neither nobles nor clerics, and who dis
covered in the Crown an authority which they soon
learned to manipulate. They were " knights of the
law," masters in chicanery, hard as iron ; these were
the new order that " with texts and quotations " from
Old Rome transformed the Middle Age to the
despotism of the sixteenth and later centuries.
Old Rome meant the city of the Caesars. Papal
Rome had long been falling into ruin, its ways
desolate, a thousand towers looking down on the
Seven Hills, inhabited by robber-chiefs who preyed
on every sort of pilgrim, cleric or lay, and lifted their
banners against the Pope, though enraged when he
fled .from them. But Paris was the capital of civilisa
tion. Philip Augustus had done great things for it ;
he may be said to have founded the city that has
ever since included the Palace, the People, and
the University, as in a ring fence. Thanks to Robert
de Curzon in 12 15, to Gregory IX. in 123 1, the
University was self-governing ; and with its four
36

386 ROMAN LAW VERSUS ROMAN PONTIFF
nations, its twenty or thirty thousand scholars, offered
to later times a picture of that, fierce intellectual
democracy which has made Athens immortal. Seven
Popes, in the thirteenth century, were among its,
students. Thither came. the most brilliant, of the!
Schoolmen, Peter Lombard, who died Bishop of >
Paris, Alexander Hales, Albert the Great, St. Bona-
venture, St. Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, — all^
Mendicant Friars, devoted to the Papacy; as the
lawyers, clergy, and doctors were to the Crown.
What did their coming portend?
At first, if we believe the pious Tillemon-t, , they
were received with joy. St. Dominic had never
forbidden his friars to cultivate learning and take.
degrees. But St. Francis had other thoughts ; hej
would not have one of his disciples, seated in a
teacher's chair; they were to be bumble saints rather $
than Canonists or divines. The torrent swept them
on ; it was a century of ambition to know, to read
Aristotle, to lecture on the Sentences, of the
Lombard. In 1228, when the wild young scholars
rebelled and fled from Paris, the Dominicans set
up their first chair ; in 1244 Innocent IV. commanded^
that the Begging Friars should be . admitted to'
academic honours. They carried all before them.
Genius and success were theirs ; opposition broke
out ; the Dominicans were expelled, reinstated by
Innocent, but put under episcopal authority (1254).
Alexander IV revoked this unusual clause. Then
William de St. Amour attacked the friars in a
pamphlet which is the medieval equivalent of Pascal's
Provincial Letters, He published his Perils of the

I
<3

O•J a

388 ROMAN LAW VERSUS ROMAN PONTIFF
Last Times, an invective in which all alike,
Dominicans, Spiritual Franciscans, and Moderates,
wejre denounced as false prophets, believers in the
'' Eternal Gospel " of Abbot Joachim, Beghards and
heretics, shameless in their rapacity, sworn enemies
of the clerical order. His book was condemned by a
Papal commission. St. Amour appealed. At Anagni, ¦
in presence of Alexander IV., the. case was debated,
Albert the Dominican acting on behalf of the friars.
Pope Alexander would not convict St. Amour of
heresy ; but he censured the writing as a libel, having
already deposed John of Parma, the mystic General
of the Franciscans. St. Thomas Aquinas, with his
prodigious memory, reduced the discussion to order
and answered St. Amour. But in popular estimation
the University had won. During the latter years of
the thirteenth century, trials, dissensions, and. dis
credit clouded over the great hopes which, at its
beginning, had dawned on the Mendicants. Their
eclipse darkened the^ Papacy, which could no longer
rely upcfi them in the crisis that was rapidly
approaching. Amid these never-ending disputes between the old
order and the new, symptoms at once of death and
birth, came the horrid intelligence that the Egyptians
were seizing in Palestine whatever had escaped the
Mongol ravages. Caesarea, Jaffa, Antioch had fallen ;
seventeen thousand Christians were slain, a hundred
thousand sold. King Louis resolved on taking the
cross ; he did his utmost to draw in the neighbouring
States ; he led with him a great company of barons ;
but he could not persuade his people. Clement IV.,

LAST CRUSADE 389
though willing to raise subsidies for the Holy War,
neither approved nor encouraged this expedition. It
seemed to be a blind man's stroke, aimless, vacant.
For twenty days the army was at sea ; Charles of
Anjou advised his brother to land in Tunis. Eight
days after, the plague fell on the defenceless host ;
the marshals died ; the King's youngest son died ;
it was the end. Louis, calm as ever, had himself laid
out on ashes ; he blessed his followers ; and sighing
forth his lifelong aspiration, "Jerusalem, ah Jeru-
- salem ! " passed away (August, 1 270).
The last Crusade ! Glance for a moment at
Edward of England drawing his sword, in those
sacred fields, against the infidel ; then look westward
again. Never any more will the chivalry of the
Franks mount the walls of Zion, to the cry of
Dieu le veult. Christians, Saracens, are doomed to
flee before an enemy from the salt Asiatic steppes,
fiercer than the Arab, impregnable to civilisation ;
the Turk is coming who will seize Egypt with one
hand, Byzantium with the other. He will advance to
Belgrade, plunder Otranto, besiege Vienna ; he will
last on, century after century, till Holy Russia has
gained strength to grapple with him. Islam survived
the Crusades. By an undreamt-of revolution, the
Moslem world, which two hundred years' hard
fighting left everywhere except in Spain as it had
been, was to be subdued or ringed round about with
fire, by England, after it had thrown off its allegiance
to Rome, and by the Orientalised Muscovites who
revere the Church of Constantinople. What the
Crusades did for Europe ; how they opened larger

390 ROMAN LAW VERSUS ROMAN PONTIFF
horizons, broke feudalism, gave an entrance to
Eastern art, philosophy, science, and superstition ;
how they first exalted the Pope, and then tempted to
the multiplication of Holy Wars which were but civil
butcheries, the reader has doubtless been considering,
and there is no space to tell. With St. Louis they
ended, once for all. The conquests of England or
Russia in the East have drawn their motives from
commerce, policy, and adventure, but never from
religion.

XXIV
PHILIP THE FAIR AND POPE BONIFACE
( 1 287-1 300)
THAT new world, which was so unlike the old, is
painted by Michelet in forbidding colours — " attorney,
usurer, Gascon, Lombard, Jew " ; such are the
epithets under which he presents it to modern
students for whom the Middle Age possesses a com
plex charm derived from its poetry, art, romance,
knight-errantry, and a religion the most picturesque,
naive, and heroic. Feudalism travestied with purple
patches of the grand old Roman Law ; Kings, in
make and descent barbarian, styling themselves
Caesars ; litigious Gauls, professing the eloquence of .
Cicero, and outdoing in hypocrisy the augurs whose
technique they imitated ; we cannot admire all this,
even if it brought mankind a stage further on its
way. The lawyer-King is Philip the Fair, that mere
" handsome image," said Bernard de Saisset ; and his
task may be summed up as the establishment on
a free secular basis of the Civil Order. What

392 PHILIP THE FAIR AND POPE BONIFACE
Frederick II. meant to do, but could not succeed in,
Philip the Fair did. In 1287 he ordained that all
those who had temporal jurisdiction in France, from
Dukes, Counts, and Archbishops down to simple
gentlemen, should institute laics for their bailies,
provosts, and officers of justice ; that they should by
no means appoint clerics, who in case of delinquency
would have pleaded their " clergy " ; and that no
Churchman should act as procurator in the royal or
baronial courts. At one stroke the Parliament, the
tribunals, were taken out of sanctuary. It is the
Roman Law come to life again, not in the Pope but
in the King.
Let us keep firm hold of this clue ; without it we
shall never understand why Philip and Boniface
quarrelled. But to sketch the ground on which they
fought their battle, we must take up the story of the
Popes where we left it on the death of Honorius IV.
(April, 1287). The conclave was long and stormy;
broken up in the hot months, it lasted till February,
1288, when the Bishop of Palestrina was elected.
Nicholas IV. had been General of the Grey Friars ;
poverty mounted the Papal Chair with him ; but his
short reign was a chapter of misfortunes. He abro
gated to no purpose the treaty of Campo Franco, by
which Charles II., the lame King of Naples, gave up
Sicily to Arragon. Though raised to the purple
by Nicholas, the Orsini Pope, he greatly advanced
the Colonnas, by this time more powerful than any
other Roman house. In 1291 Acre fell, and no
Crusade avenged the shame of Christians. The
Powers made war and peace without regard to the

PAPA ANGELICA 393
Holy See. But Nicholas, like earlier Pontiffs, was
said to have died of a broken heart on hearing
the disastrous news from Palestine.
Another Conclave, April, 1292; twelve Cardinals
debating in Rome till summer chases them away ;
two rival Senators, with their ruffians set in array and
blood flowing, — a year of interregnum. The Electors
meet again at Perugia ; Charles the Neapolitan
comes to overawe them, and is himself overawed by
Benedict Gaetani ; but no decision follows. Then,
with dramatic suddenness — the character of this
time — a hermit-saint and visionary is dragged from
his cave and acclaimed Pope. Peter Morone had
lived the austerest life, hidden in the Apennines
above Sulmona, revered by the people and the
spiritual Franciscans, in whose eyes he practised
the poverty and was absorbed in the contemplation
dear to their dead master. It was a scene worthy of
the pre-Raphaelite canvas when Cardinals in their
purple came, with wild crowds about them, to the
barred window of this white-bearded anchorite,
bringing him the Papal crown. He looked up from
his ecstasy, wept, submitted ; he suffered the crimson
mantle to be thrown over his sackcloth, and rode on
an ass into Aquila where he was hailed with joy by
enormous crowds. Then he was taken by King
Charles, virtually a prisoner, to Naples.
>„.. Extraordinary scenes followed ; touching, yet
^grotesque. Ccelestine V. could converse with angels ;
" among men he was lost. Like a child he gave what
ever they asked to friends at hand ; he knew only
faces from the Abruzzi ; the regular officials, broken

394 ' PHILIP THE FAIR AND POPE BONIFACE
in to Canon Law, were aghast," angry, dexterous in
undoing what he had done, as the witty Jacobus a
Voragine said, " in the fulness of his simplicity."
Charles II. compelled or persuaded (it was much the
same) this good Pope to create thirteen Cardinals, of
whom seven where French. But he longed for his
cave in the mountains ; and rumour, it is probable,
lied when it asserted that Gaetani, who had come
to Naples, terrified the hermit with nightly warnings,
feigned of Heaven, and brought him to abdicate.
" From cowardice he made the grand refusal," sings
Dante in undying scorn. He resolved on laying
down the tiara. This was without parallel. Could
it be lawfully done? Ccelestine, in a solemn pro
nouncement, said yes, it could ; he would do it ; and
in his old sackcloth he went back rejoicing to the
barred cell. Who should be Pope in his stead ?
In that lofty place the Franciscan ideal had shone
for a moment, only to be eclipsed. Now the Canon
Law, personified in Gaetani, was to have its turn.
By what sleight of hand Boniface VIII. outdid his
competitors we know not. He was chosen, despite
the King, at Naples ; or was it after a bargain with
the King, as Villani affirms ? Chosen, however
(December 23, 1294), he "came in like a fox, ruled
like a lion, died like a dog." How much of his
legend can we believe ? " Of all the Roman Pontiffs,"
says Milman, "Boniface VIII. has left the darkest
name for craft, ambition, even for avarice and cruelty."
But names prove nothing. Who are the witnesses
against Boniface? Unhappy man, it was his mis
fortune to find himself at war with all the Catholic

GAETANI THE CANONIST 395
Kings ; with the Religious Orders, with the Roman
nobility, with Florence, and the Italian Democrats.
In the popular songs and lampoons of Jacopone da
Todi he was held up to satire ; his good fame was
blasted by sworn accusations in French Parliaments ;
Philip the Fair would not let him rest in a dis
honoured grave, but pursued his memory as if it had
been a living thing, to be transfixed with arrows ;
and, beyond all this, he awakened the sad and terrible
spirit of Dante, sublime but pitiless, to hate him with
an everlasting hatred, amid the flames of which
Boniface looks upon us, in the deep gloom of the
Inferno. Most miserable of Popes ; not therefore
most guilty ! His remembrance will never fade ;
long, long he will be banned, and scarcely at all
find apologists, in the debate which his pretensions,
even more than his acts, cannot cease to provoke.
But in the great arena he fell vanquished — he and his
Canon Law ; some pity is due to the dying gladiator ;
some pathos stirs at the passing of a sovereignty
which, contested or triumphant, had lasted down
from Charlemagne five hundred years.
Benedict Gaetani was a native and noble of the
little mountain-city, Anagni, to which our history
alludes so often. An old man now, but vigorous and
even violent, he had gone through every stage of
Roman training. With Ottobuoni in England he
saw, but surely did not see into, the revolution led
by Simon de Montfort which, by Charter and Parlia
ment, was to create an English Constitution. He
was sent to adjust the quarrel over Provence which
divided Charles of Anjou and the Emperor Rudolph,

396 PHILIP THE FAIR AND POPE BONIFACE
l on which occasion he took the . Cardinal's hat. He
had dealt with the affairs of Portugal. Lately, in
Paris where as a youth he studied law, he had gone
on a message to Philip the Fair ; had offered, in the
name of Pope Nicholas, to arbitrate between him and
Edward I. ; and at Tarascon had determined articles
of peace between Naples and Arragon. There is no
reason to cast a shadow on his morals, or to charge
him with impiety. Such accusations, made after
wards by his deadliest foes, and never proved, were
the disgraceful weapons with which Italian factions
did not scruple to assail adversaries. Boniface
showed neither the meekness of a saint nor the self-
control of a statesman on the Papal throne ; but that
he was a profligate has never been asserted on
grounds worthy of consideration.
His vigour was at once apparent. In majestic
terms he granted Naples once more to King Charles
as vassal of the Holy See. Returning to Rome, he
had himself crowned magnificently. He consigned
the Abbot of Monte Cassino to a dungeon beneath
the waters of Lago di Bolsena. He acted as liege
Lord of Hungary on the death of its young prince.
By an official declaration he made sure that Ccdes-
tine's claim should not be revived. That poor
solitary, fleeing across the Adriatic, was brought
back, lay prostrate before his successor, and was
kept in the Castle of Fumone till he died (May, 1 296).
That he underwent harsh treatment does not seem
likely ; the Fraticelli noised abroad his virtues,
miracles, and sufferings ; but only their efforts could
have made him formidable, and Boniface condemned

QUARRELS WITH EDWARD I. 397
them as heretics, who aimed at suppressing the
Papacy itself. Their "reign of the Holy Ghost,"
foreshadowed in commentaries on the Abbot
Joachim, would, it is certain, have been a reign of
the Spiritual Friars, the end of Canon Law, the
abolition of the clergy. But in these wild schemes
Ccelestine had neither lot nor part ; he was a saint
of the Eastern type, to be canonised for his simple
goodness ; none of these Fifth Monarchy visions, we
may be sure, ever haunted his lonely cell.
Boniface dreamt his dream, too ; and that scarcely
a sober one. Europe had need of peace ; he would
restore the truce of God, Outraged by Edward and
Philip at war over Guienne ; by the Arragonese in
Sicily ; by Albert of Austria, who would not
recognise the penniless Adolphus of Nassau as
German Emperor. In Sicily, as we do not require
to learn, he failed. Adolphus, the soldier of fortune,
having won his crown by large and shameful "capitu
lations," which surrendered Imperial rights in all
quarters, especially on the Rhine, was to be killed
not far from Worms by Albert in 1298 ; so that here,
in like manner, Boniface suffered defeat. His argu
ment with Edward I. demands more notice ; it led
up to the decisive hour when Philip of France,
staking his kingdom on the issue, met and overthrew
the medieval system, under which no monarch could
be absolute, and Rome was the ultimate Court of
Appeal between the nations and their rulers.
That Edward I. proved himself ablest of the
English Kings is now universally admitted.
Religious, brave, hard, resolute, he meant to leave at

39§ PHILIP THE FAIR AND POPE BONIFACE
his death a united Kingdom in these islands ; but
without war and some chicanery it could not be done.
He subdued Wales ; what havoc he wrought in Scot
land needs no recalling. For his wars he required
personal service from the barons, subsidies from, the
clergy, hateful to both. Edward annulled his
people's debts to the Jews and banished them.
But still he wanted money. Against the Friars
chiefly, as it is said — they had grown exceedingly rich
—he passed the celebrated Statute of Mortmain,
which was to hinder the absorption of real estate
into hands that yielded little to the Crown, and that
only as a gift. But he went further still. He
asserted the right of taxing the clergy ; obtained
from Nicholas IV. a tenth of their income (1291) ;
and three years afterwards demanded one-half.
They attempted to excuse themselves ; the Dean >
of St. Paul's, who was to speak for them, fell dead
at the King's feet. It was a principle of Magna
Charta that the Crown could not raise, taxes without
the consent of Parliament ; the clergy had, in
addition, their own privilege ; but they were forced
to submit. Soon afterwards, the troubles which had
long been threatening in France came to a head ;
Boniface, without an ally, wedded to his Canon
Law, found the two mightiest Kings in Christendom
setting at naught clerical immunities,, laying what
he deemed sacrilegious hands on spiritual rights.
It did not occur to him to yield. He fought.
Among the strong sayings of Gregory VII. is this,
"Kings and dukes are descended from men who,
with pride, robbery, and perfidy, usurped a tyrant's

EDWARD I., KING OF ENGLAND.

400 PHILIP THE FAIR AND POPE BONIFACE
power." But the Church had gained her vast
dominions by the bequest of her grateful children.
On those riches monarchs and nobles had ever
looked with a covetous eye. No sooner did a
bishopric or an abbey fall vacant than its lands and
goods were seized, to be rendered in worse condition
when the new appointment was made. Much of the
usage known as the " regale " in various European
countries resembled the Highland custom of black
mail. In the Middle Ages, that wonderful machine
of taxation with which we are familiar did not exist.
But dues, charges, impositions grew with the growth
of a complex society ; and general causes contributed
to make the King a universal, but for many years an
odious, tax-gatherer. Nobles, clergy, free towns alike
resisted the movement. In Papal Bulls, no less than
in English Charters, the claim of a monarch to lay
on fresh taxes, was condemned under the same
anathema which struck at piracy or at those who
furnished arms to Saracens. But especially was it a
crime to invade the patrimony of the poor, with which
Church property was identified. Not that the clergy
refused their gifts when the country was in danger,
or the Crown in distress. They gave largely ; but as
a benevolence, as constrained by charity, on the
higher ground of freedom not of legal necessity.
,Above all, they did not wish to be confounded in one
assessment with lay folk, and thus abandoned to the
mercy of a power which, in pursuing its own designs,
would show them scant indulgence. The history of
Europe proves that they were not mistaken. Church
property has been confiscated, again and again,

CLERICIS LAICOS

401

during the last five hundred years, to secular purposes,
and on the plea of State necessity. That it should
be surrendered without a protest would be too
much to expect from human nature, and among
those who have defended it as Divini juris are not
the least noble of Christians.
Undoubtedly Boniface had law on his side — law,
and custom, and admitted privilege. Philip did not
love war ; but he had retained Guienne by an
attorney's trick ; he saw an alliance formed against
him by Edward between the Empire, Flanders,
Burgundy, and Bretagne ; money he must procure,
and his ministers were apt in devices. All sprang
from the middle class. The brothers Marigny were
Normans ; Nogaret was of Languedoc, Paterine by
descent, ferociously antipapal. Pierre Flotte and
Plasian were plebeians ; the bankers Francesi had
^migrated from Florence. These were the men that
imagined and collected the " maltdte," the evil excise,
with every circumstance of harshness and cruelty,
from an afflicted people. They clipped the currency
which had been struck from silver-plate seized all
over his kingdom by Philip, and deposited "for
security" in the Louvre, now little else than a
coiner's den. Their bailiffs were in evety house,
making a spoil of industry. The " maltote," says
Michelet, sucked out the marrow of the nation. But '
at first it spared the Estates of the Church. In 1296
it struck them in the general assault. Then Boniface
VIII. published his defiance to Philip, the Bull
"Clpricis Laicos." thrice unhappy in name and
fortunes. 27

402 PHILIP THE FAIR AND POPE BONIFACE
Imprudent, headlong, but in its main contention
founded on history, this extraordinary State-paper
declared that the laity_had always been hostile to the
clergy, and were so now as much as ever. But they
possessed nojurisdi' tion oyer the persons, no^claims
onjthe property of the Church, though they had dared
to exact a tenth, nay, even a half, of its income for
secular objects, and time-serving prelates had not
resisted. Now, on no title whatsoever from henceforth
should such taxes be levied without permission of the
Holy See. Every layman, though King or Emperor,
receiving these moneys, fell by that very act under
anathema ; every churchman paying them was
deposed from his office ; Universities, guilty of the
like offence, were struck with interdict.
Robert of Winchelsea, Langton's successor as
Primate, shared Langton's views. He was at this
moment in Rome, and had doubtless urged Boniface
to come to the rescue of a frightened downtrodden
clergy, whom Edward I. would not otherwise regard.
In the Parliament at Bury, this very year, the clerics
refused to make a grant. Edward sealed up their
barns. The Archbishop ordered that in every
cathedral the Pope's interdiction should be read.
Hereupon the Chief Justice declared the whole
clergy outlawed ; they might be robbed or murdered
without redress. Naturally, not a few gave way ; a
fifth, and then a fourth, of their revenue was yielded
up. But Archbishop Robert, alone, with all the
prelates except Lincoln against him, and the Domi
nicans preaching at Paul's Cross on behalf of the
King, ^tood out, lost his lands, was banished to a

ORDINANCES OF PHILIP 403
country parsonage. War broke out in Flanders. It
was the saving of the Archbishop. At Westminster
Edward relented and apologized. He confirmed
the two great Charters ; he did away with illegal
judgments that infringed them. Next year the
Primate excommunicated those royal officers who
. had seized goods or persons belonging to the clergy
and all who had violated Magna Charta. The Church
came out of this conflict exempt, or, more truly, a
self-governing Estate of the Realm. It must be con
sidered as having greatly concurred towards the
establishment of that fundamental law, invoked long
after by the thirteen American Colonies, " No taxa
tion without representation," which is the corner-stone
of British freedom.
In France the issue was different. There arose no
Robert of Winchelsea to stay the King's proceedings :
Magna Charta did not exist. By a double Ordinance
Philip forbade his subjects to leave the kingdom or
send specie abroad without licence from the Crown,
and foreigners to enter or carry on trade. This was /
equivalent to cutting off appeals, supplies, petitions for
graces, to Rome, which in no small measure lived on
such benevolences or juridical fees. Boniface could'
not draw back. His policy, the old Guelf tradition,
leaned on France; he would still be looking to
Charles of Valois, Philip's brother, inviting him to
settle the dissensions of Italy, to carve out for him
self a new Eastern Empire. But the Canonist proved
not unequal to the occasion. In a second, devout
and politic letter addressed to the King, he asserted the
Church's freedom, the subjection of all persons under

404 PHILIP THE FAIR AND POPE BONIFACE
the moral law to his Pontifical judgment ; he rebuked
the royal Council; he swept away as insane prohibitions
which would affect the clergy in their relations with
himself; he charged on Philip the war now raging;
yet, in fact, he was open to a reconciliation. Philip
replied with no less subtlety, with some flashes of
sarcasm, a glance towards the Roman Emperors who
had granted their privileges to the Roman Bishops,
and the strong assertion of his own right to subsidies
from the clergy whom he was protecting. At that
point the quarrel was interrupted by events nearer
home, which cost Boniface a bitter payment in the
sequel. Perhaps he had tricked the Colonna Cardinals into
electing him Pope. At any rate, they were Ghibel
lines, masters of strong castles down in the Campagna,
plotters, or like to be such, with the Imperial, Arrago-
nese faction in Sicily. Two brothers were in the
Sacred College. It was always possible that they
would challenge the validity of an election which had
taken place while an undoubted Pontiff was alive.
For these and other reasons now debatable, the rash
Pope determined on ending the Colonnas root and
branch. It was a desperate move. Pretexts, good or
bad, were never yet wanting to Italian diplomacy ;
and these princes, like their neighbours, played at
brigandage, not sparing even Boniface. He asked
them to surrender their strongholds. They refused.
Thereupon he issued a Bull, depriving the two
Cardinals as rebels, and marking their partisans with
the brand of heresy and schism. In reply they denied
his right to the Papal Chair ; accused him of circum-

THE COLONNAS 405
venting his saintly predecessor ; and appealed to
a General Council.
But they had no forces in Rome at that time.
Boniface answered by excommunicating the prelates
in unmeasured language, and — a thing unheard
of — by confiscating the estates and interdicting
the persons of the whole family, sons, brothers,
kinsfolk, to the last generation. They were to be
delivered up to his vengeance, wherever found ; a
crusade, yea, in sight of the Lateran, cries Dante,
was proclaimed against the late Cardinals. Their
fortresses were taken ; Palestrina was got by absolute
treachery, by " long promises and short perfor
mance," as Guy of Monte Feltro counselled. In
-these events we seem to be flung back from the
close of the thirteenth century to the days when
Popes and prelates strangled one another. To
explain, or even understand, this horrible business
would be impossible to us. Whatever the Cardinals
had done, their kindred were not wolves or tigers to
be exterminated ; yet every step which Boniface took
.proves that he thought them his deadly foes. No
wonder that people asked whether he had not coerced
Ccelestine after all ?
He demolished Palestrina, and talked of sowing its
place with salt. The wretched Cardinals knelt humbly
before him at Rieti ; they were given some kind of
absolution ; after which they hid themselves till better
times. Their relatives fled. Stephen appeared at the
French Court. Sciarra was taken by pirates, ransomed
by King Philip, and reserved for a dreadful fame.
Others, fleeing to Sicily, strengthened the suspicion

' 406 PHILIP^ THE FAIR AND POPE BONIFACE
against them. This catastrophe it was which had
delayed the rupture with France, and now led to the
-suspension of " Clericis Laicos." Philip had paused
in his attack on the clergy. Boniface, " interpreting "
his own law, declared that even Church fiefs were
bound to suit and service ; the King might not exact;
but he was free to request benevolences, and if the
State_were in danger, he might lay equaLtaxes_on all.
By way of splendid peace-offering the Pope now
canonised St. Louis (1297).
Like many impetuous statesmen, Boniface had
entered into a quarrel without seeing his way out.
Allies he had none. But Philip, or his lieutenant,
Charles of Valois, was carrying all before him in
Flanders ; the wealthy citizens revolted to him from
their Count ; and Edward I., deserted by his barons,'
had lost Bruges, nor was in a position to attempt
a fresh campaign. Scotland in arms called him to the
North. Under these circumstances the two Kings were
willing to accept truce and arbitration ; but the French
lawyers would not allow Boniface as Pope to exercise
a sort of masterdom over France, which by and by
might be called suzerainty. The peacemaker was to
be Gaetani, the man, not the Pontiff. An agreement
was signed in Rome (June, 1297) equitable in its pro
visions, with restitution on both sides. Guienne was
to be English ; Edward was to marry Philip's sister,
and his son Philip's daughter Isabel, the " she-wolf
of France," well known to our history. Until all
differences were settled, Papal officers would ad-
minster the debated territories. In such terms, and
amid his Cardinals at Rome, did Boniface pronounce

tree !»'afcm»tW fgaut crailnt t'mcipni fai* qm .unnif njirnooliMtE n-jn.inf
ijalliimir.iqnil.iTc)'liinur jjtalfal* r.iqUi ruupfliin .ntfccr (vrclfetre columbine nine
4 lit nmh[v.rie oluif iifttitframnntomdifianf ctiiYcainciPcuuiijfrlofdtamn
qiiirim.\IItcnn«UUuloniaim{iiiapjtuq'.U'c*tuiacmm)etnif.fonrninilhimiiin ¦nuuliiUTitti mtrafh poanmiwndfa, gnnciis ineump :-~

POPE BONIFACE VIII.
(A Satirical Portrait from Joachim 's "Pope Book.")

408 PHILIP THE FAIR AND POPE BONIFACE
the final award. He was acting on the best tradi
tions of the Holy See ; but he published the judg
ment as Pope in the form of a Bull, and thus broke
his solemn pledge to arbitrate as a private person.
This man never could forget that he had been a
lawyer. With Edward I. his disputes, carried on in the
haughtiest language, had been successful, although
from Edward's accession the feudal tribute of a thou
sand marks to Rome was no longer paid. The Scots,
in extremity, appealed to him now, maintaining that
Scotland was a fief of Rome and therefore could
not be subject to the Crown of England — which
proves for the last time that the suzerainty of the
Pope, a juridical fiction in this case, implied real
independence and was far from dishonourable when
countries at a distance, like Scotland or Denmark, .
gloried in it. The Pope accepted their view;
laid his imperious commands on Edward to release
certain Scottish prelates ; denied the feudal claims of
England; and summoned the King by his am
bassadors to appear in the Curia. Robert of Win-
chelsea did not deliver this challenging document till
some time after it reached him ; the great Jubilee
came between ; and Edward held Scotland in his
eagle's claws.

xxv
DANTE'S VISION— ANAGNI— END OF THE MIDDLE
AGE
(13OO-I303)
This Jubilee, first of its kind, to mark the passing,
to welcome the new century, was very splendid,
famous, and triumphant, but it need not detain us.
Dante saw it, among the thousands of pilgrims who
passed to the Apostle's shrine over the bridge of St.
Angelo ; it is the date which he assigns to his journey
through the Kingdoms of the Invisible World ; and
that perhaps gives its true significance. The great
Jubilee was a vision and a farewell. The whole'
Middle Ages were passing. Princes and poets, friars,
canonists, lawyers, the Pope himself, bore witness to a
change from sacerdotal to secular' supremacy, from
the hieratic to the modern or absolute State. One
moment suspended, the contest with Philip was
speedily resumed, and went on to its fatal issue.
Edward and his Parliament at Lincoln cast aside
the Pope's claim to interfere with Scotland. Charles

4IO DANTE'S VISION — ANAGNI
of Valois, descending upon Italy as an avowed
champion of the Holy See, permitted the Neri
faction to rage in Florence, made Dante a Ghibelline,
and roused the country to strong detestation of himself
and the Pontiff who had called him across the Alps.
With the Fraticelli Boniface had always been at war.
He now, by an inconceivable oversight, took from the
Franciscans for his own use forty thousand ducats
which they had left in his hands, thereby alienating
his most devoted followers, of whom he would soon
be in need as never before. He abandoned the
Scots ; but he did not secure the assistance of King
Edward. In earlier days, if the Pope was at enmity
with one sovereign he could rely upon another to
take up his quarrel. Not so now ; by a succession of
arrogant, though not always ill-meant practices, Boni
face had lost every friend who might have come
beween him and the least scrupulous monarch that
ever sat on the throne of France.
We shall never know the whole story ; it is obscure
and half-drowned in picturesque falsehoods, told at the
time or invented not long after. During the Jubilee,
as rumour went, Boniface appeared on one day in the
Papal vestments, on the next in those of the Emperor.
Before him were carried two swords and the golden
orb ; he called himself successor of Peter and Charle
magne, the universal monarch. Again, he sent into
France his Bull of Arbitration, sealed in the Pope's
name ; Robert of Artois flung it into the fire while
Philip looked on. These are incredible fictions.
But there were unpleasant facts. Robert, in spite of
censures, held half the city of Cambrai against its

VIOLENT MEASURES

411

Archbishop. The King sequestrated Laon, because
its Bishop had gone to Rome. He would not give
back its full estates to the Church of Rheims. He
had opened his palace to the Colonna exiles. On the
other hand, at Narbonne, conquered long ago from
the Albigenses, Viscount and Archbishop were dis
puting over the feudal homage. Saisset, Bishop of
Pamiers, despatched by the Pope on a mission to
King Philip, acquitted himself so insolently that on
returning to his diocese he was arrested by the royal
order, brought to Senlis and put in custody of his
Metropolitan. To imprison a Papal Legate was the
height of audacity. If it be true that Peter Flotte,
arriving in Rome, defended the step in such language
as we find attributed to him, we cannot feel surprise
at the Pope's indignation. On one single day he put
forth, in rapid succession, letter upon letter, demand
ing that Saisset should be sent immediately to Rome;
enacting again the Bull " Clericis Laicos " ; citing 1
Bishops, Archbishops, and the leading French clergy \
to appear in Curia on next All Saints' Day, then and
there " to take counsel touching the excesses, crimes, '
and acts of violence committed by the King of France
and his officers," on the Church of God. These four
documents appeared in December, 1301. Never, in
any previous controversy, had the like of them been
published on French soil. What else could they be
aiming at, men argued, than to stir up civil war and
depose the King ?
But Nogaret, Flotte, and the. lawyers, did not wait
until Boniface had struck the blow. They scattered
far and wide an insolent brief paper in which the

412 DANTE S VISION — ANAGNI
Pope was brought in saying to Philip, " We do you to
wit that you are subject to us in temporals as in
spirituals. Your collations to benefices are null and
void. All who disbelieve us are heretics." Philip, in
a genuine counterblast, replied immediately. " To

PHILIP THE FAIR, KING OF FRANCE.
Boniface, who calls himself Pope, little or no greeting.
We do your Fatuity to wit that in temporals we are
subject to no man. We will uphold the collations we
have made. Those who think otherwise are out of
their minds." Such were the amenities which ushered
in that authentic and sufficiently dignified letter, the

PAPAL BRIEF PUBLICLY BURNT 413
" Ausculta Fill." " Let no one persuade you," said
the Pope, " that you are not subject to the chief of the
heavenly Hierarchy." What did this mean ? Spiritual
jurisdiction, acting with spiritual weapons? Or a
feudal supremacy, backed up by the arms of this
world? There lay the point of antagonism. Boniface
went on to tell Philip of his injustice and oppressions,
which had lost him the people's love ; he repeated, in
set terms, that no layman had any power over an
ecclesiastic ; and he still summoned the French clergy
to his presence. Philip's answer was emphatic. On
January 26^1302, he had this solemn document
publicly burnt before his eyes, all Paris crowding to
see the thing done, and its execution announced by
sound of trumpet. In April he called the States-
General, nobles, clergy, burgesses. They met in Notre
Dame. The King was appealing from the Pope to
the nation.
In a skilful address Peter Flotte charged Boniface
with maintaining that the King held France, not from
God but from the Holy See. It was a question of
feudal sovereignty. So the nobles understood ; so the
Third Estate, which seems to have cherished anti-
papal sentiments. The clergy knew better but held
their peace. Remonstrances were drawn up in
French and Latin, signed, and sent to the Cardinals,
to the Pope himself, all on the King's side, though in
varying tones. Boniface rebuked the clergy for their
cowardice, reviled Peter Flotte and branded his
doctrine as Manichaean ; for such offences he might
depose Philip as if he were a groom — had not his
predecessors taken their crowns from three French

414 DANTE S VISION — ANAGNI
Kings ? The prelates must appear at his bidding or
they would be deprived. Thus he spoke in Consistory.
The States-General had met in April, 1302.
Almost immediately after, Flanders was up in arms
against Philip, the most intolerable of oppressors ; and
on July nth a company of "weavers and fullers," as
Villani exclaims, beat and scattered the choicest
French chivalry at Courtrai. Artois was killed, with
Chatillon, Brabant, a crowd of knights whose golden
spurs became a spoil. Peter Flotte was left dead on
the field. This severe blow compelled Philip to make
peace with England ; but it did not bring him to his
knees before the Pope. All Saints' Day arrived.
Forty-five French bishops and abbots attended the
meeting in Rome. On November 18th, Boniface,
who had all along denied the interpretation put on
his words by the lawyers, published the Bull " Unam
Sanctam," in which he insisted that there were two
swords at the Church's disposal ; that the clergy
wielded the sword of the spirit ; but that kings and ,
soldiers must wield the sword of the flesh at theirL
bidding ; that the temporal order must be judged by
the spiritual ; and that every human creature was
subject to the Roman Pontiff. This language was
not new ; it had been taken from Innocent III. But
Philip's counsellors, dominated by Nogaret, and with
the Colonnas to urge them on, had resolved on a
definite and perhaps irrevocable break with the
Papacy. Both sides prepared for the last struggle. Philip
made peace with England ; endeavoured to conciliate
his own people by concessions and fair speeches ;

APPEAL TO GENERAL COUNCIL 415
confiscated the goods of those Bishops who had gone
to Rome ; and drew the nation together in a common
bond. The Pope, reluctant but compelled, was
making terms with Albert of Austria, whom, in
May, 1303, he recognised as German Emperor. He
consented to the separation of Sicily from Naples.
To Philip himself he sent fourteen articles, fierce and
peremptory, by Cardinal Lemoinne, which the King
answered, not without evasion. In May he was ex
communicated, three months' grace being allowed for
submission. Again the States-General were convoked
in the Louvre, June 13, 1303, "to take counsel on the
crimes and disabilities of Benedict Gaetani, calling him
self Pope Boniface VIII." In that assembly, Plasian,
the royal Attorney-General, produced his charges ; he
swore on the Gospels that Gaetani was a heretic,
infidel, notorious evil-liver, who had a familiar spirit,
and had committed every possible crime. His
repeated attacks on the King of France showed an
implacable hatred towards their realm and nation.
All which could and would be proved by this same
William of Plasian at a General Council. Philip
assented to the requisitions made ; he appealed on his
own behalf to a Council and the next lawful Pope.
The clergy sat silent. But they were compelled to
do more. After the King had signed the document,
five Archbishops, twenty-one Bishops, eleven of the
greater Abbots, among them Cluny, Pr6montre,
Citeaux, St. Victor, and the Visitors of the Temple
and the Hospital Knights, subscribed to these |
monstrous fictions, in which it is safe to say that
not a man there believed.

416 Dante's vision — anagni
Still the lawyers were not satisfied. King, nobles,
clergy, had all agreed not only to promote the hold
ing of a Council, but to suffer no interdict within the
bounds of France, and to disregard every mandate
from Rome. The appeal was sent out to every
chapter, convent, and religious house, to be signed by
clerics and friars. Seven hundred acts of adhesion
were thus obtained. Franciscans, Dominicans,
military Orders, — including one of the doomed
Templars, — all said ay at the King's behest. The
University of Paris did not hold out ; it was earnest
and loud in the same cause. " The unanimous voice
of the national conscience," says a German historian,
had " grown strong against Papal arrogance." But
it is not easy to believe that the clergy, taxed and
galled by their opponents, Nogaret, Plasian, and the
other lawyers, signed at the bidding of conscience.
They may not have loved Boniface ; they had every
reason to fear King Philip. Their unbroken silence
in the States-General is the best explanation of what
they felt but dared not say. In a like dilemma the
Convocation of Canterbury, challenged by Henry
VIII., took refuge in the same silence and allowed
the title of Supreme Head of the Church to pass.
We cannot describe such cowardly surrenders as acts
of the national conscience.
Boniface had gone out to Anagni. It was told him
what had been done at the Louvre. He called his
Cardinals about him ; brushed aside with infinite scorn
I the accusation of heresy, — " We were sound Catholics
as long as we favoured King Philip," he said with a
grim smile — and fixed on Stephen CoJoona as the man

THE STORM BREAKS 417
who had raised this tempest. He suspended through
out France the right of election to benefices ; he
deprived the Universities of their teaching privileges.
Then, from the exalted throne of St. Peter, he struck
Philip with his two-edged sword. He was excom
municate ; his people were forbidden to obey him ;
the clergy must take no preferment from his hand ;
all oaths sworn to him were abrogated, and leagues in
which he had a share were dissolved. On September
8th next ensuing, he would cease to be King of
France. In this lightning-like manner did the spiritual sword
glance and gleam round Philip's head. But where
was the sword of flesh? Boniface, without even a
|household guard, was weak and defenceless. He
might have been aware that Philip's messengers, cit
ing him to the General Council, were on the way to
Anagni. We cannot tell. All we know is that the
Paterine, Nogaret, with Sciarra Colonna and one of
the Francesi bankers, had arrived near Siena ; that
they were buying up cut-throat barons in Romagna ;
and that much intrigue was rife, close to the Pope's
person. The French envoys bought their cut-throats^
and came on. Nogaret had received from Philip a
sign-manual which gave him unlimited powers. What
to do? Evidently to prevent the execution of a
Bull which would leave Philip at the mercy of his
enemies. September 7th had arrived ; not a moment
was to be lost.
On that black and memorable day, Boniface was
seated with his Cardinals, feeling how near the crisis
: had drawn, when they heard the narrow streets of
28

41 8 dante's vision — anagni
Anagni resounding with shouts, hoofs clattering, and
three hundred horse rushing on as to an assault.
" Death to the Pope ! life to the King ! " That was
the battle cry which told them what had happened.
Sciarra was there, the banner of the fleur de lys over
him ; and in his train the kinsfolk of men whom
Boniface had banished or cast into prison. The city
bell rang ; the people assembled ; they found them
selves under command of Arnulf, a Ghibelline, and
were led against the Pope. His palace was assaulted;
likewise that of his nephew and the Cardinals loyal to
him. But all the Cardinals fled through subterranean
passages, and only Boniface held out. He demanded
a truce. Eight hours were given. On what terms
must he surrender? "Restore the Colonnas to their
rank and possessions ; abdicate ; and yield yourself to
Sciarra." He refused with sobs. The assault began
once more ; Sciarra set the neighbouring Church.
gates on fire ; the Pope's nephew surrendered, making
terms for himself and his family, and left Boniface to
make his own.
In this hour the sense of his sacred office did not
desert him. Arraying himself in stole and crown,
bearing the cross keys, he sat in the Papal Chair to
await. these French ambassadors. They approached
and did no homage. With insult they told him he
must abdicate. " Here is my neck," said the daunt
less old man. Nogaret threatened him with the
Council ; Boniface cast in his teeth the name of
Paterine. But Sciarra, like the ruffian he was, would
have killed the Pope with his own hands, had not the
less brutal Frenchman interposed. It is said that lie.

LAST HOURS OF BONIFACE

419

struck Boniface on the cheek with his iron gauntlet.
Then they set him on a restive horse, paraded him
about the streets, and plundered his treasures. At
length, after a passion which lasted three days, the
people of Anagni came to his relief, when the
soldiers were gone. " Good people," he said, " give
me a morsel of bread and a cup of wine ; I am
dying of hunger." He had yielded nothing ; but in
his desolate palace, which was stripped bare of all it
contained — infinite riches, as the tale went — he found
no one except the crowd of peasants on whom to
bestow absolution.
He was now taken by the Orsini with a mounted
squadron back to Rome. But he remained a prisoner.
The Colonnas he would not restore to the Sacred
| College. His spirit was yet, perhaps, unbroken.
Calumny has pursued him to the end, telling how he
died of rage or poison, or beat out his brains against
the wall. His last day in this world was October n,
1303. When his body was exhumed at the beginning
of the seventeenth century, in 1605, it was still entire,
and no marks of violence could be seen upon it. We
may conclude that his death was more tranquil than
his life, and that his breath failed before his reason.
Nor can we trust the furious invectives of Dante, who f
calls this unwise, but energetic and apparently sincere 1
spirit, "the prince of the new Pharisees," and makes
St. Peter himself pronounce his doom in heaven.
But this was true, which the poet sings in tones of
pity and horror, that Philip, King of France, had(
inflicted a second time the Passion of Christ on His -
Vicar. France, which once gave its Charlemagne as

420 DANTE'S VISION — ANAGNI
a guardian to the Apostolic See, and took the Imperial
Roman crown for its reward, was now transformed to
a secular power, which in the Papacy' beheld no more
the Father and Judge of Christendom. Europe cried
out at the sacrilege — the crucifixion between two
thieves— the second Pilate. But one era had closed ;
another was opening. With Philip of France the
layman began to' rule over the clergy ; Roman Law
had conquered in temporals the Roman Pontiff; our
eyes are henceforth set towards the Renaissance,
though it tarries in its coming ; we have bidden fare-
vve'.l to the Middle Age.

EPILOGUE
FOR that shameful outrage at Anagni, as the
sequel informs us, no one was ever brought to account.
Philip, who had pulled down the living Boniface from
his seat, pursued him though dead with redoubled
animosity. Still he would insist that a General
Council should try, convict, and degrade the new
Formosus. He was master now. Benedict XL, a
mild Dominican, who had been consenting neither to
the violence of the Pope nor to the treachery of his
enemies, did indeed release from censure the King as
well as the French people. He explained away the
infelicitous words of "Clericis Laicos" from which all
subsequent troubles might seem to have arisen. But
he would assemble no Council to try a dead Pope
In self-defence he excommunicated Nogaret and
some chief culprits along with him. Yet he restored
the Colonna Cardinals to their rank as before. All
would not suffice. Within the year he was himself a
corpse, poisoned, said the common talk, by Philip,
the Ghibellines, or Napoleon Orsini.
An interregnum of nine months followed. It
came to an end after Philip, in the Forest of St. Jean

CLEMENT V. 423
d'Angely, had entered into a secret compact with
Bertrand de Goth, Archbishop of Bordeaux. The
terms were known afterwards, all but one, which is
conjectured to have been the destruction of the
Templars. If he were chosen as Pope, the Gascon
Archbishop undertook to reconcile the King and his
partisans with the Church in the fullest manner ; to
condemn Boniface ; to give the Colonnas their castles
and lands again. One farther condition, not exacted
but fulfilled, of more consequence than all the rest,
was that Clement V. should never set foot in Rome.
He was elected ; crowned at Lyons ; and surrounded
himself with a Court of French Cardinals. In 1306
he abrogated the Bull "Clericis Laicos" altogether.
He interpreted the Bull, " Unam Sanctam," in a
spiritual and non-feudal sense. He released Edward
I. from his oaths to keep the Charters. He excom
municated Robert Bruce. He consented to hold a
Council at Vienne, where he would take all the
charges made by Nogaret against his deceased pre
decessor. He saw the Templars perish. This was
the Pope who in 1309 took up his abode at Avignon,
on the ieft bank of the Rhone, and began the seventy
years of Babylonish captivity. With his accession
the Papacy had fallen a prisoner into the hands of
France. At Vienne, nevertheless, Philip was, so to speak,
nonsuited ; Boniface escaped condemnation. Within
the term of a natural life, the house of Capet had
lost its male heirs, struck by some mysterious
disaster. The long war of a hundred years between
France and England broke out. And a schism,

424 EPILOGUE
which lasted down to the Council of Constance in
141 5, set up French against Italian Popes, scan
dalised all Christians, led to Wycliffite heresies, to
Lollard risings, to the deposition of three reigning
Pontiffs. From Avignon to Constance, from Con
stance to Basle, from Basle to Luther at the Diet of
Worms, we trace an ever-widening path, at the end
of which appears the Reformation.
It is wonderful how many large movements and
long-standing institutions came to an end in the
second half of the thirteenth century. With
Frederick II., as we have seen, the Holy Roman
Empire ceased to be either Holy or Roman ; it was
henceforth a name attached to some German Prince,
bold and edifying like Rudolph of Hapsburg, de
graded and despised like Louis of Bavaria. Rome
itself becomes a blank in the world's history — except
during Rienzi's brief masquerade — for a hundred and
twenty years. With Conradin on the scaffold at
Naples the Pope's deposing power may be said to
have expired. Never again did the Holy See, in
effect, transfer crowns or take them away, though
until the seventeenth century forms implying this
supreme act of jurisdiction lingered in the Roman
Courts, or were gravely set down by canonists and
theologians. The enthusiasm, purity, and charm
which had shed their lustre on St. Francis, faded or
were transmuted into less delightful visions long
before the century closed. His brethren, as the
Cluniacs, Cistercians, Templars, and many more,
gave point to the terrible saying of Lord Falkland,
"Religion brought forth riches, and the daughter

A TASK FULFILLED 42$
slew the mother." Those among them who con
quered this temptation went often to the other
extreme ; they became wild mystics with the Fra-
ticelli, schismatics with Michael da Cesena, and by
a singular course of events, Erastian or Caesarean with
their English philosopher, William of Occam.
And the Crusades were done ; Palestine was aban
doned to the Turks, while Spain was wrested from
the Moors. Other signs of an approaching con
summation of all things might be observed. The
Schoolmen drew out a perfect theory of medieval life,
thought, government. The architects enshrined it
in cathedrals erected and adorned by the people.
Dante immortalised it in his superhuman Epic, or
Pilgrim's Progress from this world to the world to
come. This was the swan song of that astonishing
age, without example before or since, when the
priesthood ruled over Europe with crozier and
sceptre, sword and pen, with Bible, Canon Law, and
prophetic oracles, sanctioned by penalties from which
neither individual nor nation could escape. It was
beyond question a Theocracy. The Pontifex Maxi
mus, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, judged all
men and was judged of none.
His temporal power, in this magnificent application
of the word, has passed away. But not until it had
fulfilled the task allotted to it. The Barbarians, free
men but destitute of culture, had been brought under
the creative influence of a humane religion ; they had
been taught the elements of Greek and Latin civilisa
tion ; and equality before the law, which was a princi
ple at once Christian and Roman, had begun to be

426 EPILOGUE
established as the foundation of modern liberty. To
the monks who made the wilderness blossom like the
rose, had succeeded industrial and republican cities —
the League of Lombardy, the Hansa towns, Venice,
Florence, Amalfi, Genoa, Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp,
London. All over Europe learning was held in
honour ; the Universities were centres of intellectual
freedom. Slaves had become serfs ; serfs had been
largely emancipated. War itself put on the graces
of chivalry. There was a Christendom, the ideals
at least of which were peace, brotherhood, holiness.
From Councils provincial or CEcumenical emerged
a sense of the nation's unity, and in due time
a Law of Nations. Every church gave shelter to
innocence, if sometimes also to guilt. Hospitals,
almshouses, cloisters opened their gates to the sick,
the aged, the outcast. Talent, without regard to
birth, might aspire, and not seldom attain, to the
highest seats in a spiritual order which held the
temporal in check and thus made for independence.
Looked at from above, the Church was a Theocracy ;
seen from below, it was a Democracy. While it
leaned on the people, its triumph was assured ; when
it submitted to the feudal system, it courted disaster.
Then the royal authority took away its rod of
dominion ; the King became Pope ; the Pontifex
Maximus retired into the holy place before him.
Crimes, abuses, usurpations, scandals, and a secret
change about religion in the thoughts of men, will
account for this latter-day revolution. But it is
difficult to imagine how Europe could have survived
from the Fall of the Empire to modern times, had

:

THE PAPAL PALACE AND ER0KEN BRIDGE OF AVIGNON.
(From -an old Steel Plate after T. Ailom.

428 EPILOGUE
there been no central, supreme, and acknowledged
power like the Papacy, guardian at once of faith,
learning, law, civilisation. That it always rose to the
height of thaf great enterprise will not be maintained
by the historian ; but its benefits outnumbered by
far its abuses ; and the glory is not dim which hangs
round its memory, when we call to mind that it con
secrated the beginnings of a peaceful, Christian
Europe, and watched beside the springs of art,
science, industry, order, and freedom. These are its
claims to our admiration and our gratitude. Rome is
the meeting-place of all history ; the Papal succession,
oldest and newest in Europe, filling the space from
Caesar and Constantine to this democratic world of
the twentieth century, binds all ages into one and
looks out towards a distant future in many Continents.
Its chronicle has been a tragedy and a romance ;
or, as the millions of its faithful believe, a prophecy
and a fulfilment. In whatever light we regard it, one
stage is marked, and a turning-point fixed, when we
stand on the broken bridge of Avignon to contem
plate that vast Palace of the Popes, now converted
into French barracks, which was for well-nigh seventy
years their gilded prison.

LIST OF THE ROMAN PONTIFFS.
(As in the Registers of the Roman Church.)
ST. PETER, PRINCE OF THE APOSTLES, 41-65-67.

Vitalian. a.D. 657

Linus.

a.d. 67

Anastasius I. a.d

¦398

Cletus.

79

Innocent I.

402

Clement I.

91

Zosimus.

417

Evaristus.

100

Boniface I.

418

Alexander I.

109

Ccelestine I.

422

Sixtus I.

119

Sixtus III.

432

Telesphorus.

128

Leo I. (the Gt.)

440

Hyginus.

138

Hilary.

461

Pius I.

142

Simplicius.

468

Anicetus.

157

Felix III.

483

Soter.

168

Gelasius I.

492

Eleutherius.

177

Anastasius II.

496

Victor I.

190

Symmachus.

498

Zephyrinus.

202

Hormisdas.

514

Callistus I.

218

John I.

523

Urban I.

222

Felix IV.

526

Pontian.

230

Boniface II.

53°

Anterus.

23S

John II.

532

Fabian.

236

Agapitus.

535

Cornelius.

251

Silverius.

53°

Lucius I.

253

Vigilius.

537

Stephen I.

254

Pelagius I.

555

Sixtus II.

257

John III.

560

Dionysius.

259

Benedict I.

574

Felix I.

269

Pelagius II.

578

Eutychian.

275

Gregory I. (the

Caius.

283

Great).

S90

Marcellinus.

296

Sabinian.

604

Marcellus I.

3°7

Boniface III.

607

Eusebius

3°9

Boniface IV.

608

Melchiades.

310

Deusdedit I.

615

Silvester I'.

3'4

Boniface V.

619

Mark.

336

Honorius I.

625

Julius I.

337

Severinus.

640

Liberius.

352

John IV.

640

Felix II.*

355

Theodore I.

642

Damasus I.

366

Martin I.

649

Siricius.

3§4

Eugene I.

655

Deusdedit II.

672

Donus I.

676

Agatho.

678

Leo II.

682

Benedict II.

684

John V.

685

Conon.

686

Sergius I.

687

John VI.

701

John VII.

705

Sisinnius.

708

Constantine I.

708

Gregory II.

7'5

Gregory III.

73i

Zachary.

74i

Stephen IILf

752

Paul I.

757

Constantine II.

767

Stephen IV.

768

Hadrian I.

771

Leo III.

795

Stephen V.

816

Paschal I.

817

Eugene II.

824

Valentine.

827

Gregory IV.

827

Sergius II.

844

Leo IV.

847

Benedict III.

855

Nicholas I. (the 858

Hadrian II. [Gt.) 867

John VIII.

872

Marinus I.

882

Hadrian III.

884

Stephen VI.

885

Formosus.

891

Boniface VI. 89!
* Pops during exile of Liberius. i Steph. II. (751) died before consecr.
4*9

43Q

LIST OF THE ROMAN PONTIFFS

Stephen VII. A.D.
Romanus.Theodore II.
John IX. '
Benedict IV.
LeoV.
Christopher.Sergius III.
Anastasius III.
Lando.
John X.
Leo VI.
Stephen VIII.
John XI.
Leo VII.
Stephen IX.
Marinus II.*
Agapitus II.
John XII.
Leo VIII.
Benedict V.
John XIII.
Benedict VI.
Benedict VII.
John XIV.
John XV.
Gregory V.
Silvester II.
John XVII.f
John XVIII.
Sergius IV.
Benedict VIII.
John XIX.
Benedict IX.
Gregory VI.
Clement II.
Damasus II.
Leo IX.
Victor II.
Stephen X.
Nicholas II. | ,
Alexander II.
Gregory VII.
Victor III.
Urban II.
Paschal II.
Gelasius II.
Callistus II.
HpnoriusTI.. Innocent II.

897897

9009°39°3 904911 9'3914928929 931936
939 943946
955 9°3964965 973
974 9»3985996
999
10031003100910121024i°33 1045
10461048
1049 105510571059 1061107310861088 109911181119
1 124
1 130

Ccelestinell.A.D. Lucius II.
Eugene III.
Anastasius IV.
Hadrian IV.
Alexander III.
Lucius III.
Urban III.
Gregory VIII.
Clement III.
Ccelestine III.
Innocent III.
Honorius III.
Gregory IX.
Ccelestine IV.
Innocent IV.
Alexander IV.
Urban IV.
Clement IV.
Gregory X.
Innocent V.
Hadrian V.
JohnXX.(XXL) Nicholas III.
Martin IV.*
Honorius IV.
Nicholas IV.
Ccelestine V.
Boniface VIII.1I
Benedict XI.
Clement V.
John XXII.
Benedict XII.
Clement VI.
Innocent VI.
Urban V.
Gregory XI.
Urban VI.
Clement VII.
(Avignon).
Benedict XIII.
(Avignon).
Boniface IX.
Innocent VII.
Gregory XII.
Alexander V.
John XXIII.
Martin V.
Eugene IV.

143144145153 154159
181 185187187191 198
216 227241
243254261265
271 276 276
276277 2812852882942943°33°53i6334 342
352362370 378
378394 389
404
406 409
410417 43i

Nicholas V. a.d. 1447
Callistus III. 1455
Pius II. 1458
Paul II. 1464
Sixlus IV. 1471
Innocent VIII. 1484^
Alexander VI. 1492
Pius III. 1503
Julius II. 1503
Leo X. 1513
Hadrian VI. 1 522
Clement VII. 1523
Paul III. 1534
Julius III. 1550
Marcellus II. 1555
Paul IV. 1555
Pius IV. 1559
Pius V. 1566
Gregory XIII. 1572
Sixtus V. 1585
Urban VII. 1590
Gregory XIV. 1590 •
Innocent IX. 1591
Clement VIII. 1592.
Leo XI. 1605
Paul V. 1605
Gregory XV. 1621
Urban VIII. 1623
Innocent X. 1644
Alexander VII. 1655
Clement IX. 1667
Clement X. 1670
Innocent XI. 1676
Alexander VIII. 1689
Innocent XII. 1691
Clement XI. 1700
Innocent XIIL 1 72 1
Benedict XIII. 1724
Clement XII. 1730
Benedict XIV. 1740
Clement XIII. 1758
Clement XIV. 1769
Pius VI. 1775
Pius VII. 1800
Leo XII. 1823
Pius VIII. 1829
Gregory XVI. 1831
Pius IX. 1846
Leo XIII. 1878
Pius X- 1903

* Marinus I., II., were also called (Martinus) Martin II., III.
t John XVI. (097) Antipope. t Benedict X. (1058), Antipope.
t Boniface VII. (974). Antipope.

INDEX

Abelard, 247, 254-256
Adalbero, 174
Adalbert of Bremen, 204
Adalbert of Ivrea, 160, 161
Adalbert, St., 178, 212
Adelchis, 91, 98
Adelaide, Queen of Italy, 157, 163
Afiarta Paul, 86, 87, 90
Agatho, Pope, 66
Agiltrude, 148, 149
Agilulf, 51
Alaric, 2
Alberic of Camerino, 153
Alberic, Senator, 156-160
Albert of Austria, 397
Albigenses, 302-309
Alcuin, 112, 252
Alexander II., Pope, 203, 205,
268
Alexander III., 266, 270, 272,
275. 277-282
Alexander IV., 354, 358
Alexius Comnenus, 298
Alfonso, King of Castile, 358, 384
Ambrose, St., of Milan, 31; 213
Anacletus (Anti-pope), 249
Anastasius, 122, 138
Ans,elm of Badoagia, 213
Anselm, St., of Canterbury, 235,
253
Anspert, 212
Ariald, 213-215
Arichis, 97, 98
Arnold of Brescia, 258, 259, 261,
262

Arnulf of Bavaria, 147
Arnulf of Metz, 70
Astolph, King of Lombards, 6,
79,80,81-3
Athanasius, St., 29, 33, 59
Attila, 38, 43
Augustine, St., 3, 31
Augustus, 2, 13
Aurelian, 22
Aurelius, Marcus, 22, 377
B
Bardas, Caesar, 124-126
Basil, St., 59
Basil, Emperor, 127
Becket, Thomas, St., 269-277
Benedict of Aniane, 115
Benedict Levita, 134
Benedict III., Pope, 122
Benedict V, 162, 163
Benedict VI., 165, 167
Benedict VII., 167
Benedict VIII., 181
Benedict IX., 183-188
Benedict XL, 422
Benedict, St., 58, 59, 62, 192
Bernard, King of Italy, 115, 116
Bernard, St., 246, 248-250, 256-
260
Berengar of Friuli, 149
Berengar of Ivrea, 157, 163
Berengar of Tours, 198, 203
Blanche of Castile, 376
Boniface of Montferrat, 297
Boniface VI., Pope, 148

43

432

INDEX

Boniface VIII., 328, 393, 394-
397, 401-408, 410-420
Boniface, St., 77, 78
Boniface of Tuscany, 188, 200
Boris, King of Bulgaria, 146
Brancaleone, Podesta of Rome,
353, 355
Brienne, Walter de, 299
Bruce, King of Scots, 423
Brunhilde, Queen, 53
Bruno, St., 166

Caesar, Julius, 13, 14
Calixtus II., Pope, 242-244
Campulus, 95, 101, 102
Capet, Hugh,. 174
Carloman, brother of Pepin, 81
Carloman, son of Pepin, 89
Carloman, son of Charles the
Bald, 139
Carloman of Bavaria, 141
Cenci, 221
Charibert, 56
Charlemagne, 81, 89-94, 101, 102,
106, 108, 111, 113
Charles of Anjou, 360-365, 366-
371
Charles the Bald, 119, 120, 132
Charles the Fat, 142
Charles Martel, 68, 70, 72
Charles of Naples, 371, 372, 392,
393, 394
Charles of Valois, 371, 403, 410
Childeric, 78
Chrysostom, St. John, 35
Christopher, 85-88
Clement of Alexandria, 24
Clement the Scot, HI
Clement, St., 19, 21
Clement II., 188
Clement III.,Guibert(Anti-pope),
202, 205, 228, 236
Clement IV., 360, 364
Clement V., 423
Clovis, King of Franks, 54, 55,
Coelestine I., Pope, 38
Ccelestine III., 286

Ccelestine V., 393, 394
Coionna, family, 404
Colonna, Sciarra, 405
Columban, St., 59, 77
Conrad, Emperor, 182
Conrad, son of Henry IV., 233
Conrad, son of Frederick II.,
347, 351, 353
Conradin, 353, 363, 364
Constans II., Emperor, 66
Constantia, 285, 288
Constantine the Great, 27, 33
Constantine, Pope, 85, 86
Constantine V.,- Emperor, Icono
clast, 79
Crescenzio I., 167, 168
Crescenzio II., 168.
Crescenzio III., 178
Crescenzio IV., 181
Cusanus, Nicholas Card, 137
Cyprian, St., 22, 28, 30
Cyril, St., of Alexandria, 29

Dagobert, 134
Damascus, John of, 67
Damasus, Pope, 31, 34, 35
Damiani, Peter, St., 186, 196,
198, 210, 213, 214
Dandolo, Henry, Doge, 297, 298
Dante, 409, 410, 419
Demetrias, 2
Desiderius or Didier, King of
Lombards, 83, 85-88, 92
Desiderata, 89
Dionysius, St., of Corinth, 19
Dominic, St., 304, 305, 316

Edward I. of England, 381, 389,
397, 4°2, 408
Edmund of Sicily, 352, 380
Elias, Franciscan, 316, 346
Enzio, 343, 347, 350
Eugenius III., Pope, 259
Eusebius of Caesarea, 17, 19
F
Flotte, Peter, 401, 411, 4r3, 414
Francis, St., 311-317, 331

INDEX

433

Frangipani, 240
Frederick I., Barbarossa, Em
peror, 261-268, 273, 279-281,
284
Frederick II., Emperor, 286,
288, 293-295, 335-342, 343-350
Formosus, Pope, 143, 146, 147,
149
Fulk of Neuilly, 296
Fulrad, 83

Gelasius II., Pope, 240
Genseric, 45
Gerbert, see Silvester II.
Giordano, Patrician, 258
Godfrey of Lorraine, 196, 200,
204
Gratian, Emperor, 14, 44
Gratian, Legist, 274
Gregory, St., the Great, Pope,
49, seq., 60, 61
Gregory II., 5, 67, 70, 72
Gregory III., 72, 79
Gregory IV., 118, 119
Gregory VI., 185-187, 188
Gregory VII., 9, 190, 193-196,
198, 202, 205, 206-225, 227,
230, 326
Gregory IX., 315, 338-342, 344-
347
Gregory X., 365
Gregory XIII., 14
Guibert, see Clement III.
Guido of Milan, 213-215
Guy of Spoleto, 145, 147
H
Hadrian I., Pope, 89-91, seq., 98,
99
Hadrian II., 137, 139, 140
Hadrian IV., 260-262, 265, 266
Hakim II., 174
Hanno of Cologne, 204, 217, 218
Henry the Fowler, 166
Henry II., Emperor, 181, 182
Henry III., 187, 196, 200
Henry IV., 203-205, 217, 218,
220-227, 228^237

Henry V., 236-240, 242-244
Henry VI., 285, 286, 287
Henry I., King of England, 235,
238
Henry II., 268-273, 274-279
Henry III., 352, 377,-38i
Heribert of Milan, 212
Herlembald, 214
Hermenegild, Martyr, 56
Hermengard, Empress, 114, 116
Hilary of Aries, 43
Hildebrand, see Gregory VII.
Hincmar of Laon, 139
Hincmar of Rheims, 128, 132,
133, 139
Hippolytus, St., 19
Honorius, Emperor, 37
Honorius I., Pope, 66
Honorius II. (Anti-pope), 203
Honorius III., 335
Hugh, Abbot of Cluny, 192
Hugh, King of Provence, 154-
157

Ignatius of Constantinople, 125,
127
Ingeburga, 317
Innocent I., Pope, 36
Innocent II., 249, 256
Innocent III., 287-295, 299, 303,
306-310, 317-323, 324-332
Innocent IV., 347, 351-354
Irenaeus, St., 19
Isidore of Seville, 134
Isidore, False, 134-137 J
James, King of Arragon, 360
Jerome, St., 2, 17, 31, 59
Joan, Pope, fable of, 146
John, St., Evangelist, 18
John the Faster, 34, 51
John VIII., Pope, 127, 140-143
John X., 150, 153, 154
John XII., 160-162
John, King of England, 278, 319-
323
Joinville, 377
Justinian, Emperor, 47

29

434.

INDEX

Lambert of Spoleto, 141
Lanfranc, 253
Langton, Stephen, 319, 322, 323
Leo, St., the Great, Pope, 25, 40,
41, seq.
Leo III., Pope, 99, 100-102, 115,
209
Leo IV., 9, 121
Leo IX., 189, 194, 196-198
Leo the Isaurian, Emperor,
Iconoclast, 67, 70, 72
Leo of Ravenna, 94
Leodevigild, 56
Liutprand, King of Lombards,
71, 72, 74, 75, 80
Liutprand of Cremona, 150, 161,
165
Loria, Roger, 370-371
Lothair I., Emperor, 116, 118,
119, 121
Lothair II. of Lorraine, 124,
131, 138
lothair the Saxon, 249
Louis le Debonnaire, Emperor,
98, 114-116, 119, 120
Louis II. of Italy, 121, 123, 131
Louis VII., King of France, 284
Louis VIII., 308, 376
Louis IX., the Saint, 348, 377-
380, 381-385, 388
Louis, King of the Germans, 120
Lucius II., Pope, 258
Lucius III., 283 M
Manfred, King of Sicily, 352-
354, 356, 360
Markwald, 289
Marozia, Senatrix, 150, 153, 154-
157
Matilda, 226, 230, 233, 237, 240
Martin, St., of Tours, 58
Martin I., Pope, 66
Martin IV., 366, 370
Mohammed, 7, 68
Montfort, Simon de, 298, 306-
308 : Amaury, 308

N
N^nrsGS 'V7
Nicholas I., Pope, 122-127, 132
Nicholas II., 202, 203
Nicholas III., 366, 368
Nicholas IV., 392
Nilus, St., 172
Nogaret, 401, 411, 417, 418, 422
Numa, 13 O
Octavian, see John XII.
Odo, Count of Paris, 145
Otho the Great, Emperor, 157,
159-167
Otho II., 167, 168
Otho III., 169-178
Otho IV., 291-295

Palaeologus, Michael, Emperor,
3^5, 367
Paschalis, 95, 101, 102
Paschal I., Pope, 116-118
Paschal II., 235, 238-240
Paul, St., 18, seq.
Paul II., Pope, 83-85
Pedro I., King of Arragon, 307-
308, 319
Pedro II., 360, 366, 367-370
Pelagius, heretic, 37, 38, 40
Pelagius II., Pope, 49
Pepin, King of France, 6, 76,
78, 81, seq. 84, 85
Peter Leone, 237, see Anacletus
Peter, St., 12, 17, seq.
Pierre of Castelnau, 305
Pietro della Vigna, 338, 345, 350
Philagathus, Antipope, 171, 172
Philip Augustas, King of France,
317, 320, 322, 385
Philip the Fair, 391, 401, 406,
410-420, 422, 423
Philip, Emperor, 290-293
Phocas, Emperor, 52
Photius of Constantinople, 124-
129
Placidia, Empress, 44
Plasian, 401, 415

INDEX

435

R
Rachis, Lombard, 75, 76, 83
Raymund of Pennafort, St., 342
Raymund VI. of Toulouse, 304-
308
Raymond VII., 308, 309
Reccared, King of Spain, 56
Remigius, St., 54
Richard I., King of England,
284, 286
Robert Guiscard, 203, 229, 232
Roger, King of Sicily, 337
Roger Loria, 370, 371
Rudolph of Suabia, 228
Rudolph of Hapsburg, Emperor,
351

Sergius, son of Christopher, 85-
88
Sergius III., Pope, 149, 150, 152
Sergius of Ravenna, 94
Silvester I., Pope, 27
Silvester II., Gerbert, 170, 173-
178
Silvester III., 183-187
Simon de Montfort, 298, 306-308
Siricius, Pope, 209
Stephen II., Pope, 79, 80, seq.,
84
Stephen III., 86-88
Stephen VI., 148
Stephen IX., 201
Stephen, St., King of Hungary,
182
Stephania, 176-178
Suger, Abbot, 260, 375
Symmachus, Pope, 97

Tertullian, II
Theodebert, 53

Theodora, Senatrix, 150-153
Theodore of Tarsus, 53
Theodoric, King of Italy, 47
Theodosius, Emperor, 14
Theophano, Empress, 170, 171
Theophylact, boy Bishop, 158
Theophylact, Senator, 144, 150
Theutberga, 130
Thomas Aquinas, St., 386, 388
Thorismund, 42
Totila, King of Goths, 48
Toto, 85, 86 U
Ulfilas, 53
Urban II., Pope, 232-235
Urban IV.,,358, 361
Valentinian III., Emperor, 44
Victor II., Pope, 200
Victor III., 229, 232
Vigilius, Pope, 47
Villehardouin, 296
Vitalian, Pope, 252
Vitiges, King of Italy, 154
W
Wala, Monk, 115, 118
Waldo, Peter, 283
Waldrada, 124
Warnehar, 82
William of Aquitaine, 192
William the Conqueror, 268
William, Prince of Sicily, 286

Zachary, Pope, 75, seq., 77, 79
Zephyrinus, 12
Ziani, Doge, 278-280

Printed in Great Britain by
UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED
HONHON AND WOKING