Маргарет Олифант
The Makers of Modern Rome, in Four Books

"Things being thus arranged [writes the Pope] in order to secure, by the help of God, the peace of the Church and the union of the Kingdom, which we have so long desired, we are anxious to pursue our journey into your countries on the first occasion possible; for we desire you to know, as you may perceive from the written engagements, that everything is still in suspense, so that our arrival among you and the unanimity of your council is absolutely necessary to settle matters. Therefore be very attentive to continue as you have begun in faith and the love of justice, and understand that we have done nothing for the king, except to tell him that he might trust to us to help him in such things as may touch his salvation and his honour, with justice and with mercy, without putting our soul and his in peril."

In the meantime Henry had enough to do in winning back again to his side the rebellious Lombards, who considered his submission to the Pope, however artificial, a desertion of their cause, and shut upon him the gates of their cities, which before his visit to Canossa had been thrown wide open. He had apparently, though only for a moment, lost them, while he had not regained the sympathies of Germany. There was nothing for it but a new apostasy, throwing over of his promises, and reassumption of the leadership of the schismatic party, which made the position of Gregory, surrounded by that angry sea of Lombard rebellion which beat against the base of his rocky stronghold, a very dangerous one. Through the whole spring of 1077 the Pope was more or less confined to the Castle of Canossa or other similar fortresses, under the vigilant care of Matilda; and it was from these strong places that he wrote a succession of remarkable letters to the nobles of Germany, who, strongly set upon the Diet in which the affairs of the kingdom were to be placed on a permanent footing, were proceeding to carry out their intention without waiting either for the presence of Gregory which they had invited, or Henry whose interests were at stake. Gregory did everything that was possible to delay the Diet until he could be present at it. He was anxious also to delay whatever great step might be in contemplation until the mind of the country was a little less anxious and disturbed: and he desired to be present, not only in the position of Arbitrator, but also to moderate with his counsels the excited spirits, and prevent if possible any great catastrophe.

We may allow, as it is one of the conventionalities of history to assert, that Gregory's intention was to establish in such matters the jurisdiction of the Popes and make it apparent to the world that thrones and principalities were at the disposition of the Church. But at the same time Gregory was, like all men, chiefly moved by the immediate question before him, and he was a man sincerely occupied with what was best for both Church and State, fearing the rashness of an angry and excited assembly, and remembering his promise to do what he could for his most unworthy penitent; and we see no reason to believe that his purposes were not, according to his perception of his duty, honest and noble. He retained his hope of proceeding to Germany as long as that was possible, asking again and again for the guide and escort promised, even asking from Henry a safe conduct through the territory now held by him. Even after the election at Forchheim of Rudolf of Suabia as king in the place of Henry, he continued to urge upon the legates whom he had sent to that assembly the necessity for his presence. And he undoubtedly did this on the highest ground possible, putting forth his right to judge in the matter in the very clearest words. He bids his messengers in the name of St. Peter to summon the heads of both parties, Henry and Rudolf, to make his journey possible.

"With the advice of the clergy and laymen fearing God, we desire to judge between the two kings, by the grace of God, and point out which of the two parties is most justly to be entrusted with the government of the State. You are aware that it is our duty, and that it appertains to the providential wisdom of the Apostolic See, to judge the governments of the great Christian kingdoms and to regulate them under the inspiration of justice. The question between these two princes is so grave, and the consequences may be so dangerous, that if it was for any reason neglected by us, it would bring not only upon us and upon them, but on the Church entire, great and lamentable misfortune. Therefore, if one or other of these kings refuses to yield to our decision and conform to our counsels, and if, lighting the torch of pride and human covetousness against the honour of God, he aspires in his fury to the desolation of the Roman Empire, resist him in every way, by every means, to the death if necessary, in our name and by the authority of the blessed Peter."

The Pope in another letter makes his appeal no longer to the ruling class but to the entire people. He informs "all the faithful of Christ in the Teutonic empire" that he has sent his legates to both kings to demand of them both "either in their own persons or by sufficient messengers" to open the way for his journey to Germany in order with the help of God to judge the question between them.

"Our heart is full of sadness and sorrow to think that for the pride of one man so many thousands of Christians may be delivered over to death both temporal and eternal, the Christian religion shaken to its foundations, and the Roman Empire precipitated into ruin. Both of these kings seek aid from us, or rather from the Apostolic See, which we occupy, though unworthy; and we, trusting in the mercy of Almighty God, and the help of the blessed Peter, with the aid of your advice, you who fear God and love the Church, are ready to examine with care the right on either side and to help him whom justice notoriously calls to the administration of the kingdom…

"You know, dear brethren, that since our departure from Rome we have lived in the midst of dangers among the enemies of the faith; but neither from fear nor from love have we promised any help, but justice to one or other of these kings. We prefer to die, if necessary, rather than to consent by our own will that the Church of God should be put from her place; for we know that we have been ordained and set upon the apostolic chair in order to seek in our life not our own interests but those of Christ, and to follow through a thousand labours in the steps of the fathers to the future and eternal repose, by the mercy of God."

The reader must remember that Gregory had very good reason for all that he said, and that irrespective of the claims of the Church a wise and impartial umpire at such a moment might have been of the last importance to Germany; also that his services had been asked for in this capacity, and that therefore he had a right to insist upon being heard. The position which he claimed had been offered to him; and he was entitled to ask that such an important matter should not be settled in his absence.

The remonstrances which the Pope continued to make by his own voice and those of his legates as long as any remonstrance was possible, were however regarded by neither party. Neither the authority of Rome nor the visible wisdom of settling a question which must convulse the world and tear Germany in pieces, peacefully and on the foundation of justice if that were possible, as urged by Gregory – could prevail, nor ever has prevailed on any similar occasion against the passions and ambitions of men. It was a devout imagination, appealing to certain minds here and there by the highest motives, and naturally by very different ones to all the interested souls likely to be advantaged by it, which always form the reverse of the medal; but men with arms in their hands and all the excitements of faction and party, of imperial loss and gain around them, were little like to await a severe and impartial judgment. The German bishops made a curious remonstrance in their turn against the reception by Gregory of Henry's professions of penitence, and on either side there was a band of ecclesiastics, presumably not all good or all bad perplexing every judgment.

We have fortunately nothing to do with the bloody struggles of Rudolf and Henry. When the latter made his way again over the Alps, to defend his rights, carrying with him the Iron Crown which Gregory's refusal had prevented him from assuming – he carried it away however, though he did not dare to put it on, a curious mixture of timidity and furtive daring – the Pope, up to that moment virtually confined within the circle of the mountain strongholds of Tuscany, returned to Rome: where he continued to be assailed by constant and repeated entreaties to take up one or the other side, his own council of the Lateran inclining towards Henry. But nothing moved him from his determination that this question should be decided by a Diet under his own presidence, and by that alone. This question runs through the entire story of the period from year to year. No council – and in addition to the usual yearly council held always in the beginning of Lent, at the Lateran, there seem to have been various others between whiles, made compulsory by the agitation of the time – could take place without the arrival of the two bands of German ambassadors, one from Henry and the other from Rudolf, to plead the cause of their respective masters, both professing all obedience, and inviting a decision in their favour by every argument: but neither taking a single step to bring about the one thing which the Pope demanded – a lawful assembly to settle the question.

There is no pretence that Gregory treated them with anything but the severest impartiality, or that he at any time departed from the condition he had proposed from the first – the only preference given to one above the other being that he is said to have sent his apostolical blessing to Rudolf, a virtuous prince and his friend, and not to Henry the apostate and false penitent, which is scarcely wonderful. But it is easy to understand the agitation in which the constant arrival of these ambassadors must have kept Rome, a city so prone to agitation, and with so many parties within its own walls, seditious nobles and undisciplined priests, and the ever-restless, ever-factious populace, struggling continually for some new thing. The envoys of Henry would seem to have had more or less the popular favour: they were probably a more showy band than the heavier Saxons: and Henry's name and the prestige of his great father, and all those royal shows which must still have been remembered in the city, the coronation of the former Henry in St. Peter's, and all its attendant ceremonials and expenses, must have attached a certain interest to his name. Agnes too, the empress, who had died so recently in the odour of sanctity among them, must have left behind her, whether she loved him or not, a certain prepossession in favour of her son. And the crowd took sides no doubt, and in its crushing and pressing to see the strangers, in the great Lateran square or by the gates of their lodging, formed itself into parties attracted by a glance or a smile, made into enemies by a hasty word, and preparing for the greater troubles and conflicts which were about to come.

In the midst of these continual arrivals and departures and while the trumpets of the Saxon or the German party were still tingling in the air, and the velvet and jewels of the ambassadors had scarcely ceased to gleam among the dark robes of the clergy, there came up other matters of a nature more suitable to the sacred courts and the interests of the Church. Berengarius of Tours, a mild and speculative thinker, as often convincing himself that he was wrong as proving himself to be right, appeared before the council of 1079 to answer for certain heresies respecting the Eucharist, of which there had often already been question. His opinions were those of Luther, of whom he is constantly called the precursor: but there was little of Luther's strength in this gentle heretic, who had already recanted publicly, and then resumed his peculiar teachings, with a simplicity that for a time disarmed criticism. Gregory had always been his friend and protector, tolerating if not sharing his opinions, which were not such as moved or interested deeply the Church at the moment: for the age was not heretical, and the example of such a candid offender, who did not attempt to resist the arguments brought against him, was rather edifying than otherwise. At least there were no theological arguments of fire and sword, no rack or stake for the heretic in Gregory's day. The pressure of theological judgment, however, became too strong for the Pope to resist, preoccupied as he was with other matters, and Berengarius was once more compelled to recant, which he did cordially, with the same result as before.

It was a more congenial occupation for the vigilant head of the Church to watch over the extension of the faith than to promote the internal discipline of the fold of Christ by prosecutions for heresy. His gaze penetrated the mists of the far north, and we find Gregory forestalling (as indeed his great predecessor the first Gregory had done before him) the missionaries of our own day in the expedient of training young natives to preach the faith among their countrymen, over which there was much modern rejoicing when it was first adopted in recent days, as an entirely new and altogether wise thing. Gregory the Great had already practised it with his Anglo-Saxon boys: and Gregory VII. recommended it to Olaf, king of Norway, to whom he wrote that he would fain have sent a sufficient number of priests to his distant country: "But as this is very difficult because of the great distance and difference of language, we pray you, as we have also asked from the king of Denmark, to send to our apostolical court some young nobles of your country in order that being nourished with care in divine knowledge under the wings of St. Peter and St. Paul, they may carry back to you the counsels of the Apostolical See, arriving among you, not as men unknown, but as brothers – and preaching to you the duties of Christianity, not as strangers and ignorant, but as men whose language is yours, and who are yet trained and powerful in knowledge and morals." Thus, while the toils were gathering round his feet at home, and the most ancient centre of Christianity was ready to cast him out as a fugitive, the great Pope was extending the invisible links of Christian fealty to the ends of the earth.

It was in the year 1080, three years after the events of Canossa, that the next step was taken by Gregory. In that long interval he had never ceased to insist upon the only lawful mode of settling the quarrel, i. e., the assembly in Germany of all the persons most concerned, to take the whole matter into solemn consideration and come to a permanent conclusion upon grounds more solid than the appeal to arms which ravaged the empire, and which, constantly fluctuating, gave the temporary victory now to one side, now to the other. The age was far from being ripe for any such expedient as arbitration, and the ordeal of arms was its most natural method: yet the proposal had proceeded in the first place from the Teutonic princes themselves, and it was entirely in accordance with German laws and primitive procedure. And except the Pope, or some other great churchman, there was no possible president of such a Diet, or any one who could have had even a pretence of impartiality. He was the only man who could maintain the balance and see justice done, even in theory: for the awe of his presence and of his spiritual powers might have restrained these fierce princes and barons and made some sort of reasonable discussion possible. For all these reasons, and also no doubt to assert practically the claim he had made for himself and his successors to be the judges of the earth and settle all such disputes as representatives of God, he was very unwilling to give up the project. It had come to be evident, however, in the spring of 1080 when Lent began and the usual Council of the Lateran assembled, that Henry would never consent to this Diet, the very reason for which was the discussion of claims which he held as divine and infallible. Rudolf, his rival, was, or professed to be, as anxious for it as the Pope, though he never had taken any step to make Gregory's journey across the Alps possible. But at last it would seem that all parties gave up the thought of any such means of making peace. The state of affairs in Germany was daily becoming more serious, and when the envoys of Rudolf, after many fruitless visits to Rome, appeared at last with a sort of ultimatum, demanding that some decisive step should be taken to put an end to the suspense, there was no longer any possibility of further delay. Henry also sent ambassadors on the same occasion: but they came late, and were not received. The Council of the Lateran met, no doubt with many searchings of heart and a great excitement pervading the assembly where matters of such importance were about to be settled, and such a decision as had never been asked from any Pope before, was about to be given from the chair of St. Peter to a half-believing, half-rebellious world. Whether any one really believed that a question involving the succession to the empire could be solved in this way, it is impossible to tell: but the envoys of Rudolf, whose arms had been for the moment victorious, and who had just driven Henry a fugitive before him, made their appeal to the Pope with a vehemence almost tragic, as to one whose power and responsibility in the matter were beyond doubt. The statement of their case before the Council was as follows:

"We delegates of our lord the King, Rudolf, and of the princes, we complain before God, and before St. Peter to you our father and this holy Council, that Henry, set aside by your Apostolic authority from the kingdom, has notwithstanding your prohibition invaded the said kingdom, and has devastated everything around by sword and fire and pillage; he has with impious cruelty, driven bishops and archbishops out of their sees, and has distributed their dignities as fiefs among his partisans. Werner of holy memory, archbishop of Magdeburg, has perished by his tyranny; Aldebert, bishop of Worms, is still held in prison contrary to the Apostolic order; many thousands of men have been slaughtered by his faction, many churches pillaged, burned and destroyed. The assaults of Henry upon our princes because they withdrew their obedience from him according to the command of the Apostolic See, are numberless. And the assembly which you have desired to call together, Holy Father, for the establishment of the truth and of peace, has not been held, solely by the fault of Henry and his adherents. For these reasons we supplicate your clemency in our own name and that of the Holy Church of God to do justice upon the sacrilegious violator of the Church."

It will be remarked that the whole blame of the struggle is here thrown upon the Church: – as in the remonstrance of the Saxon bishops, who say not a word of their national grievances against Henry, which nevertheless were many and great, and the real foundation of the war – but entirely attribute it to the action of Gregory in excommunicating and authorising them to withdraw their homage from the king. Nobody, we think, can read the chaotic and perplexing history of the time without perceiving how mere a pretext this was, and how little in reality the grievances of the Church had to do with the internecine struggle. The curious thing however, is that Gregory, either in policy or self-deception, accepts the whole responsibility and is willing to be considered the cause and maker of these deadly wars, as if the struggle had been one between the Church and the King alone. A sense of responsibility was evidently strong in his mind as he rose from his presiding chair on this great occasion, in the breathless silence that followed the complaint and appeal of Rudolf's emissaries. Not a voice in defence of Henry had been raised in the Council, which, as many voices were in his favour in preceding assemblies, shows the consciousness of the conclave that another and more desperate phase of the quarrel had been reached.

Gregory himself had sat silent for a moment, overwhelmed with the awe of the great crisis. When he rose it was with a breaking voice and tears in his eyes: and the form of the deliverance was as remarkable as its tenor. Gregory addressed – not the Council: but, with an extraordinary outburst of emotion, the Apostle in whose name he pronounced judgment and in whose chair he sat. Nothing could have been more impressive than this sudden and evidently spontaneous change from the speech expected from him by the awed and excited assembly, to the personal statement and explanation given forth in trembling accents but with uplifted head and eyes raised to the unseen, to the great potentate in heavenly places whose representative he believed himself to be. However vague might be the image of the apostle in other eyes, to Gregory St. Peter was his living captain, the superior officer of the Church, to whom his second in command had to render an account of his procedure in face of the enemy. The amazement of that great assembly, the awe suddenly imposed even on the great body of priests, too familiar perhaps with holy things to be easily impressed – much more on the startled laymen, Rudolf's envoys and their attendants, by this abstract address, suddenly rising out of the midst of the rapt assembly to a listener unseen, must have been extraordinary. It marked, as nothing else could have done, the realisation in Gregory's mind of a situation of extraordinary importance, such an emergency as since the Church came into being had seldom or never occurred in her history before. He stood before the trembling world, himself a solitary man shaken to the depths, calling upon his great predecessor to remember that it was not with his own will that he had ascended that throne or accepted that responsibility – that it was Peter, or rather the two great leaders of the Church together, Peter the Prince of the Apostles, Paul the Doctor and instructor of the nations, who had chosen him, not he who had thrust himself into their place. To these august listeners he recounted everything, the whole story of the struggle, the sins of Henry, his submission and absolution, his renewed rebellion, always against the Church, against the Apostles, against the Ecclesiastical authority: while the breathless assembly around, left out in this solemn colloquy, sat eager, drinking in every word, overcome by the wonder of the situation, the strange attitude of the shining figure in the midst, who was not even praying, but reporting, explaining every detail to his unseen general above. Henry had been a bad king, a cruel oppressor, an invader of every right: and it would have been the best policy of the Churchman to put forth these effective arguments for his overthrow. But of this there is not a word. He was a rebel against the Church, and by the hand of the Church it was just and right that he should fall.

One cannot but feel a descent from this high and visionary ground in the diction of the sentence that followed, a sentence not now heard for the first time, and which perhaps no one there felt, tremendous as its utterance was, to be the last word in this great quarrel.

"Therefore trusting to the judgment and to the mercy of God, and of the Holy Mother of God, and armed with your authority, I place under excommunication and I bind with the chains of anathema, Henry called King, and all his fellow sinners; and on the part of Almighty God, and of You, shutting him out henceforward from the kingdoms of Germany and of Italy, I take from him all royal power and dignity; I forbid any Christian to obey him as king; and I absolve from their sworn promises all those who have made, or may make, oaths of allegiance to him. May this Henry with his fellow sinners have no force in fight and obtain no victory in life!"

Having with like solemnity bestowed upon Rudolf the kingdom of Germany (Italy is not named) with all royal rights, the Pope thus concludes his address to the spiritual Heads in heaven of the Church on earth:

"Holy Fathers and Lords! let the whole world now know and understand that as you can bind and loose in heaven, you can also upon earth give and take away from each according to his merits, empires, kingdoms, principalities, duchies, marquisates, counties, and all possessions. You have often already taken from the perverse and the unworthy, patriarchal sees, primacies, archbishoprics, and bishoprics, in order to bestow them upon religious men. If you thus judge in things spiritual, with how much more power ought you not to do so in things secular! And if you judge the angels who are the masters of the proudest princes, what may you not do with the princes, their slaves! Let the kings and great ones of the earth know to-day how great you are, and what your power is; let them fear to neglect the ordinances of the Church! Accomplish quickly your judgment on Henry so that to the eyes of all it may be apparent that it falls upon him not by chance but by your power. Yet may his confusion turn to repentance, that his soul may be saved in the day of the Lord."

Whether the ecstasy of his own rapt and abstract communion with the unseen, that subtle inspiration of an Invisible too clearly conceived for human weakness to sustain, had gone to Gregory's head and drawn him into fuller expression of this extraordinary assertion and claim beyond all reason: or whether the long-determined theory of his life thus found complete development it is difficult to tell. These assumptions were, indeed, the simple and practical outcome of claims already made and responsibilities assumed: claims which had been already put feebly into operation by other Popes before. But they had never before been put into words so living or so solemn. Gregory himself had, hitherto, claimed only the right to judge, to arbitrate at the head of a National Diet. He had not himself, so far as we can see, assumed up to this moment the supposed rights of Peter, alone and uncontrolled. He had given England to William, but only on the warrant of the bond of Harold solemnly sworn before the altar. He had made legitimate the claims already established by conquest of Robert Guiscard and others of the Norman conquerors. But the standard set up in the Lateran Council of 1080 was of a far more imperative kind, and asserted finally through Peter and Paul, his holy fathers and lords, an authority absolute and uncompromising such as made the brain reel. This extraordinary address must have sent a multitude, many of them no doubt ordinary men with no lofty ideal like his own, back to their bishoprics and charges, swelling with a sense of spiritual grandeur and power such as no promotion could give, an inspiration which if it made here and there a high spirit thrill to the necessities of a great position, was at least as likely to make petty tyrants and oppressors of meaner men. The only saving clause in a charge so full of the elements of mischief, is that to the majority of ordinary minds it would contain very little personal meaning at all.

From this time nothing was possible but war to the death between Gregory and Henry, the deposed king, who was as little disposed to accept his deposition as any anathema was able to enforce it. We have already remarked on various occasions, and it is a dreadful coming down from the height of so striking a scene, and so many great words, to be obliged to repeat it: yet it is very evident that notwithstanding the terrible pictures we have had of the force of these anathemas, they made very little difference in the life of the world. There were always schismatic or rebellious priests enough to carry on, in defiance of the Pope, those visible ceremonies and offices of religion which are indispensable to the common order of life. There were, no doubt, great individual sufferings among the faithful, but the habits of ordinary existence could only have been interfered with had every bishop and every priest been loyal to the Pope, which was far from being the case.

It was at the conclusion of this Council that Gregory is said to have sent to Rudolf the famous imperial crown bearing the inscription

Petra dedit Petro, Petrus diadema Rodolpho,

of which Villemain makes the shabby remark that, "After having held the balance as uncertain, and denied the share he had in the election of Rudolf, now that it was confirmed by success Gregory VII. claimed it for himself and the Church." – a conclusion neither in consonance with the facts nor with the character of the man.

That Henry should receive this decision meekly was of course impossible. Once more he attempted to make reprisals in an assembly held at Brixen in the following June, when by means of the small number of thirty bishops, chiefly excommunicated persons, and, of course, in any case without any right to judge their superior, Gregory himself was once more deposed, excommunicated, and cut off from the communion of these ecclesiastics and their followings. In the sentence given by this paltry company, Gregory is accused of following the heresy of Berengarius, whose recantation had the year before been received at the Lateran: and also of being a necromancer and magician, and possessed by an evil spirit. These exquisite reasons are the chief of the allegations against him, and the principal ground upon which his deposition was justified. Guibert of Ravenna, long his enemy, and one of the excommunicated, was elected by the same incompetent tribunal as Pope in his place, naturally without any of the canonical requirements for such an election; though we are told that Henry laid violent hands on the bishop of Ostia whose privilege it was to officiate at the consecration of the Popes, and who was then in foreign parts acting as legate, in order to give some show of legality to the election. Guibert however, less scrupulous than the former intruder Cadalous, took at once the title of Clement III. The great advantage of such a step, beside the sweetness of revenge, no doubt was that it practically annulled the papal interdict so far as the knowledge of the vulgar was concerned: for so long as there were priests to officiate, a bishop to preside, and a Pope to bless and to curse, how should the uninstructed people know that their country was under any fatal ban? To make such a universal excommunication possible the whole priesthood must have been subject and faithful to the one sole authority in the Church.