The Church and the Empire Part 3

At present neither side in the Empire was sufficiently honest in its intentions to be willing to accept so reasonable a settlement. But the fact that the Pope had felt himself obliged to allow it in one case sensibly weakened his position and correspondingly strengthened that of the German King. It was typical of Pascal's position in general.

Though strongly Gregorian in principle, he was neither clever nor courageous, and was inclined to take up a position which he could not maintain. Intent on renewing the prohibition of lay invest.i.ture and afraid of Henry, Pascal determined to support himself upon France.

Here, at any rate, Philip I had gradually dropped the practice of invest.i.ture of bishops. The papal censures of his scandalous private conduct uttered by Gregory and Urban had had no effect. Pascal accepted professions of amendment and acts of humiliation, and ceased to trouble himself further about Philip's private affairs. A Council of French bishops was held at Troyes (1107), where the decrees against lay invest.i.ture were renewed. The one gleam of hope for the future appeared in Pascal's deliberate abstention from any p.r.o.nouncement against the King in person. Henry, occupied on the eastern border, could not pay his first visit to Italy until the beginning of 1111, and it was not without significance that on the eve of setting out he betrothed himself to the daughter of Henry I of England. He was more fortunate than his father had been in the moment of his visit. The Lombard cities quarrelling among themselves were quickly forced to submission; the Countess Matilda, grown old and tired of strife, sent her envoys to do homage for the imperial fiefs; the Normans had just lost their Duke. Pope Pascal, finding himself isolated, did not dare to meet by a simple negative Henry's demand for the right of invest.i.ture as well as for his coronation as Emperor.

[Sidenote: His proposal.]

By way of escaping from his difficulty he sent to the King an astonis.h.i.+ng proposal. The King was to renounce the right of invest.i.ture and all interference in the elections, in return for which the prelates should give up all imperial lands and rights with which they were endowed, retaining merely the right to t.i.thes, offerings, and private gifts: the papal rights over the Patrimony of St. Peter and the Norman lands were specially excepted. It has been pointed out that this was the policy which Count Cavour made famous as "a free Church in a free State." It seems almost impossible that Pascal should have thought that the German bishops would accept this solution: he may have hoped that they could be coerced into it. But in contracting himself out of the obligations to be imposed on all other ecclesiastical dignitaries, he practically renounced any claim to set the policy of the Church. Henry may have aimed at digging an impa.s.sable ditch between the Pope and the German bishops. It was an impossible agreement; for neither bishops nor lay n.o.bles would wish to see so large an addition to the King's resources, while Henry himself could not afford to surrender the right of invest.i.ture, since it would stultify his claim to a voice in the election of the Pope.

[Sidenote: Henry's success.]

The publication of the agreement at Rome caused great tumults, Henry contriving that all the odium should fall upon the Pope. Then, since Pascal could not fulfil the part of the agreement which he had made on behalf of the Church, Henry forced him, the successor of Gregory, to acquiesce in the exercise by the German King of the right of invest.i.ture with ring and staff. Henry was crowned Emperor, though with very maimed ceremonial, and returned in triumph to Germany.

[Sidenote: Pascal's withdrawal.]

But his triumph was short, for he was immediately threatened with danger from two quarters. On the one side the leaders of the Ultramontane party were naturally most wrathful at this betrayal of their cause, and Pascal, threatened with deposition, placed himself in their hands. At the Lenten Synod of 1112 he confirmed all the decrees of his predecessor against lay invest.i.ture, thus annulling his own agreement with Henry. But he avoided issuing any sentence of excommunication against Henry in person. His own legates, however, had no such scruples, and in France Cardinal Conon took advantage of the strong feeling among the clergy to launch excommunications against the Emperor in several ecclesiastical Councils during 1114 and 1115.

Guido, Archbishop of Vienne, presiding over a Council of Henry's own subjects at Vienne in 1112, had already condemned their sovereign and forced Pascal to acquiesce in the resolution.

[Sidenote: Henry's difficulties.]

Henry's right policy would no doubt have been to compel the Pope to observe the agreement. But it was more than three years before he could return to Italy. For revolt had broken out again in Germany. The n.o.bles had their own grievances; the Saxons were always ready to take arms; the Church was roused because Henry dealt with ecclesiastical property as if the Pope's original proposal had been allowed to stand.

The royal bailiffs acted in such a manner with the cathedrals that of a house of prayer they made a den of thieves.

Henry's forces were worsted in battle and he had recourse to his father's tactics, seeking in Italy, by personal dealings with the Pope, to recover the moral prestige which he had lost in Germany. He had a pretext in the death of the Countess Matilda (1115); for the Papacy was claiming not only her allodial lands, which she might have a right to bequeath, but also her imperial fiefs, which were not hers to dispose of. Henry occupied the dominions of Matilda without opposition. His presence in Italy caused Pascal still to refrain from personal condemnation of the Emperor, and a year later a party friendly to Henry opened the gates of Rome to him. Pascal fled to Albano, and only returned to Rome on Henry's departure, a dying man (January, 1118). His successor, Gelasius II, refused Henry's advances, and the Emperor resorted to the old and discredited policy of setting up an anti-Pope in the person of the Archbishop of Braga, in Portugal, who took the name of Gregory VIII. Gelasius excommunicated Henry and his Pope; but finding himself threatened in Rome, fled to Burgundy, and died at Cluny a year after his election (January, 1119). So far Henry's attempts to deal with the Pope had failed, and the publication of the new Pope's excommunication in Germany made the opposition so strong that Henry found it advisable to return.

[Sidenote: Calixtus II (1119-24)]

Gelasius' successor chosen at Cluny was Archbishop of Vienne, who took the t.i.tle of Calixtus II. He was the first secular priest who had occupied the papal chair since Alexander II, and he was related to the royal families of France and England. Thus he had a wider outlook than the monks who preceded him, and the n.o.bles would be likely to listen to a man of their own rank. He had been the most uncompromising of all Henry's opponents; but this was a guarantee to the Church that her position and power would not again be placed in jeopardy, for events were at length tending towards a conclusion of the weary strife. The views of the reformers had gained general acceptance as the doctrine of the Church. The obligation of clerical celibacy was acknowledged: simony had much diminished; Henry was the only King in Western Europe who still claimed to invest his prelates. Although it was some time before all the great French feudatories yielded to the spirit of reform, the French King himself had abandoned the practice of invest.i.ture for those bishops who were under his control. He retained, however, certain of his rights. The election could not take place without his permission, the newly elected bishop took an oath of fealty to the King, and during the vacancy of the see the revenues were paid to the Crown. It was more important still that in England the question of invest.i.ture had been settled by a compromise which recognised the twofold nature of the episcopal office, and that this compromise had received the sanction of the Pope. Henceforth it was practically impossible for the Church to maintain the position of the extreme reformers. When Pope Pascal was forced to grant the right of invest.i.ture to the Emperor, Henry I of England, as Anselm complained to Pascal, threatened to resume the practice. Already William I of England had defined the limits of papal power in his dominions without a protest from Rome, and Urban II had actually found himself obliged to endow Roger of Sicily and his successors with the authority of a papal legate within their own dominions. It was clear that the papal authority could do little against a really strong lay ruler. Moreover, the influence of the Church had greatly diminished. There was scarcely a see or abbey to which, during the last forty years, there had not been rival claimants: King and n.o.bles alike had not only ceased to increase the endowments of the Church, but had caught at almost every opportunity of encroaching on them.

[Sidenote: Concordat of Worms.]

The accommodation was very gradual, for much suspicion of insincerity on both sides had to be overcome. The first step was taken in October, 1119. After the failure of direct negotiations between Pope and Emperor, a Council at Rheims, presided over by the Pope, renewed the anathema against Henry and his party, but only consented to a modified prohibition of invest.i.tures, since the office alone was mentioned and all reference to the property of bishop or abbot was omitted. It was two years before the next stage was reached, and meanwhile the anti-Pope had fallen into the hands of Calixtus, and Henry was still in difficulties in Germany. Finally, in October, 1121, the German n.o.bles brought about a conference of envoys from both sides at Wurzburg, where in addition to an universal peace it was arranged that the invest.i.ture question should be settled at a General Council to be held in Germany under papal auspices. The Council met at Worms in September, 1122, and the papal legates were armed with full powers to act. The result was a Concordat subsequently ratified at the first Council of the Lateran in March, 1123, which is reckoned as the ninth General Council by the Roman Church. By this agreement the Emperor gave up all claim to invest ecclesiastics with the ring and staff. In return it was allowed by the Church that the election of prelates should take place in presence of the Emperor's representatives, and that in case of any dispute the Emperor should confirm the decision arrived at by the Metropolitan and his suffragans. The Emperor on his part undertook that the prelate elect, whether bishop or abbot, should be invested with the regalia or temporalities pertaining to his office by the sceptre, in Germany the invest.i.ture preceding the ecclesiastical consecration, whereas in Burgundy and the kingdom of Italy the consecration should come first.

[Sidenote: Results of struggle in Empire.]

We are naturally tempted to enquire who was the gainer in this long struggle? Writers on both sides have claimed the victory. It is clear, however, that neither side got all that it demanded. Considering the all-embracing character of the papal claim, the limitation of its pretensions might seem to carry a decided diminution of its position.

Calixtus' advisers strongly urged that all over the imperial lands the consecration of prelates should precede the invest.i.ture of temporalities by the lay power. But the German n.o.bles would not budge.

In Burgundy and Italy conditions were different: in the former the power of the Crown had been almost in abeyance; in Italy the bishops had found themselves deserted by the Crown and had submitted to the Pope. The Crown had therefore to acquiesce in a merely nominal control over appointments in those lands. But in Germany the King perhaps gained rather than lost by the Concordat. His right of influence in the choice was definitely acknowledged, and by refusing the regalia he could practically prevent the consecration of any one obnoxious to him. The prelates of Germany, therefore, remained va.s.sals of the Crown.

[Sidenote: on Papacy.]

On the other hand, the Papacy had definitely shaken itself free from imperial control. Henry III was the last Emperor who could impose his nominee Papacy upon the Church as Pope; the proteges of his successors are all cla.s.sed among the anti-Popes. At the same time the papal privilege of crowning the Emperor and the papal weapon of excommunication were very real checks upon the German King; while the success of those principles for which the Cluniac party had striven established the theoretical claim of the Pope to be the moral guide, and the part which he played in starting the Crusades put him in the practical position of the leader of Christendom in any common movement. It was no slight loss to the Emperor that he had been the chief opponent of the Pope and the reformers, and that in the matter of the Crusades he and his whole nation had stood ostentatiously aloof.

CHAPTER IV

THE SECULAR CLERGY

[Sidenote: The work of the Church reformers.]

The great movement in favour of Church reform, which had emanated from Cluny, had worked itself out along certain definite lines. It is important to ask how far it had succeeded in achieving its objects. We have seen that it was a movement of essentially monastic conception aimed at the purification of the secular clergy. And we have seen that the evil to be remedied had arisen from the imminent danger that the Church would be laicised and feudalised. From the highest to the lowest all ecclesiastical posts were at the disposition of laymen who treated them as a species of feudal fief, so that the holders, even if they were in Holy Orders (which was not always the case), regarded their temporal rights and obligations as the first consideration and, like all feudal tenants, tried to establish the right of hereditary succession in their holdings. Thus the work of the reformers had been of a double nature; it was not enough that they should aim at exorcising the feudal spirit from the Church, at banis.h.i.+ng the feudal ideal from the minds of ecclesiastics: it was necessary to effect what was indeed a revolution, and to shake the whole organisation of the Church free from the trammels which close contact with the State had laid upon it. It began as a reformation of morals; it developed into a const.i.tutional revolution. There was involved in the movement both an interference with what might be distinguished as private rights and also a readjustment of public relations. The reformers headed by the Pope ultimately decided to concentrate their efforts on the latter.

Hence we may begin by enquiring how far they had succeeded in freeing episcopal elections from lay control.

[Sidenote: Episcopal appointments.]

There were three several acts of the lay authority in connection with the appointment of bishops to which the Church reformers took exception. The King or, by usurpation from him, the great feudal lord had acquired the right of nominating directly to the vacant see, to the detriment, and even the exclusion, of the old electoral rights of clergy and people; and while in some cases n.o.bles nominated themselves without any thought of taking Holy Orders, frequently they treated the bishoprics under their control as appanages or endowments for the younger members of their family. Then, before the consecration, the bishop-nominate obtained invest.i.ture from the lay authority by the symbolic gifts of a ring and a pastoral staff or cross, not only of the lands and temporal possessions of the see, but also of the jurisdiction which emanated from the episcopal office. Finally, the prospective bishop took an oath to his lay lord, whether King or other, which was not only an oath of fealty such as any subject might be called upon to take, but was also an act of homage, and made him an actual feudal va.s.sal and his church a kind of fief.

[Sidenote: Right of election.]

The result of the long struggle was that in the matter of episcopal appointments, speaking generally, the right of election was not restored to clergy and people, in whom by primitive custom it had been vested, but that the laity, with the possible exception of the feudatories of the see, were banished altogether, the rural clergy ceased to appear, and, after the a.n.a.logy of the papal election by the College of Cardinals, the canonical election of the bishop in every diocese tends to be concentrated in the hands of the clergy of the cathedral. It was a long time, however, before the rights of the cathedral chapters were universally recognised. Henry I of England in his Concordat with Anselm (1107) and the Emperor Henry V in the Concordat of Worms (122) both promised freedom of election. Philip I and Louis VI of France seem to have conceded the same right without any formal agreement. But many of the great French feudal lords clung to their power over the local bishoprics, and in Normandy, in Anjou, and in some parts of the south nearly a century elapsed before the duke or count surrendered his custom of nominating bishops directly.

But the freedom of election by the Canons of the cathedral, even when it was conceded, was little more than nominal. In England, France, and the Christian kingdoms of Spain no cathedral body could exercise its right without the King's leave to elect, nor was any election complete without the royal confirmation. By the Concordat of Worms elections were to take place in the presence of the King or his commissioners.

By the Const.i.tutions of Clarendon (1164) English bishops must be elected in the royal chapel. King John tried to bribe the Church over to his side in the quarrel with the barons which preceded Magna Carta, by conceding that elections should be free--that is, should take place in the chapter-house of the cathedral; but even he reserved the royal permission for the election to be held, and the _conge d'elire_ in England and elsewhere was accompanied by the name of the individual on whom the choice of the electoral body should fall.

It was not the rights of the electors but the all-pervading authority of the Pope which was to prove the chief rival of royal influence in the local Church.

[Sidenote: Invest.i.ture.]

The quarrel between Church and State had centred round the ceremony of invest.i.ture, because in the eyes of the reformers the most scandalous result of the feudalisation of the Church was the acceptance at the hands of a layman of the spiritual symbols of ring and crozier. But as Hugh of Fleury had acknowledged in his tract on "Royal Power and Priestly Office," invest.i.ture there must be so long as ecclesiastics held great temporal possessions. Here again some of the French n.o.bles clung to the old anomalous form of invest.i.ture, but otherwise the example of the imperial lands, of the royal domain of France and of England was generally followed, the gifts of ring and staff were conceded to the Metropolitan, and where no special form of invest.i.ture by the sceptre was retained it was confused with the ceremony of homage. But in Germany and England invest.i.ture with the lands of the see preceded consecration, so that while on the one hand it was not a bishop who was being invested by a layman, on the other hand the refusal of invest.i.ture would practically prevent the consecration of any one obnoxious to the Crown.

[Sidenote: Homage and fealty.]

With regard to the feudal ceremony of homage a distinction came to be drawn by writers on the Canon Law between homage and fealty, and ecclesiastics were supposed to limit themselves to the obligations of the latter, which were those of every subject. The ceremony was not precisely the same as in the case of a lay n.o.ble being invested with a fief; but in France, at any rate, the Crown never really abandoned its claim to a feudal homage, and in any case ecclesiastics were expected to fulfil their feudal obligations. Even Innocent III acknowledged this in a decree (--43) of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), and in interceding with Philip II of France on behalf of two bishops who had been deprived of their temporal possessions for some neglect of military duty, he argues that they were "ready to submit to the judgment of your Court, as is customary in such matters."

[Sidenote: Regale.]

Arising out of these feudal relations certain rights over the possessions of ecclesiastics and ecclesiastical bodies were claimed by the Crown, which were the cause of serious oppression. According to the Canon Law, the bishop was only the usufructuary of the lands and revenues belonging to his see. The lands and revenues belonged to the Church. But inasmuch as these had been originally in most cases the gift of the Crown, the King claimed to deal with them in the method applied to feudal holdings. By the right of _regale_, on the vacancy of a see through death, resignation, or deprivation of the bishop, the royal officers took possession of the temporalities, that is, the land and revenues, and administered them for the profit of the Crown so long as the see was vacant. The Crown did not hesitate to use the episcopal patronage and to fill up vacant canonries and benefices with its own followers, and it often took the opportunity to levy upon the inhabitants of the diocese a special tax--_tallagium_, _tallage_, or _taille_--which a landlord had a right of exacting from his unfree tenants. It was to the interest of the Crown to prolong a vacancy, and attempts to limit the exercise of the right were of little practical effect.

[Sidenote: Right of spoils.]

An even more extraordinary claim was to the right of spoils (_jus spolii_ or _exuviarium_). The canonical law forbidding the bishop to deal by will with the property attached to his see, was interpreted as applying to everything which he had not inherited. Thus the furniture of his house and the money in his chest were claimed as of right by the canons of his cathedral, but were often plundered by the crowd of the city or by the local n.o.bles. These lawless proceedings provoked the interference of the royal officers, who succeeded in most cases in establis.h.i.+ng the right of the Crown to all movables that the bishop left. The earliest notice of this royal claim in Germany is found in the reign of Henry V. It was in full use under Frederick I. William II is probably responsible for introducing both the _regale_ and the _jus spolii_ from Normandy into England. In France these were claimed by the feudal n.o.bles as well as by the King. Bitter were the complaints made by the Church against the exercise of both rights. Kings and n.o.bles clung to the _regale_ as long as they could, for it meant local influence as well as revenue. In most cases, however, the right of spoils had been surrendered before the thirteenth century. It is to be remembered that ecclesiastics themselves exercised this right, bishops, for example, claiming the possessions of the canons and the parish priests in their dioceses. The Popes in relaxation of the Canon Law gave to certain bishops the right of leaving their personal property by will, and the canons also are found encouraging their bishop to make a will.

[Sidenote: Claims of the Clergy.]

As a set-off against these claims of the Crown upon the Church, the clergy also advanced certain claims. These touched the two important matters of taxation and jurisdiction. The Church claimed for her members that they should not be liable to pay the taxes raised by the secular authorities, nor should they have causes to which any ecclesiastic was a party tried in the secular courts.

[Sidenote: Immunity from lay taxation.]

In seeking freedom from lay taxation the Church did not ask that her members should escape their feudal obligations, nor even that they should contribute nothing to the exigencies of the State. The desire was merely that the clergy should be free from oppression and that the Church should be so far as possible self-governing. Thus Alexander III decreed in the third Lateran Council (1179), that for relieving the needs of the community, everything contributed by the Church to supplement the contributions of the laity should be given without compulsion on the recognition of its necessity or utility by the bishop and the clergy. Innocent III, in the fourth Lateran Council (1215), provided a further safeguard against lay impositions in demanding the permission of the Pope for any such levy. This does not mean that the clergy escaped taxation at the hands of the State; it merely means that while the Popes themselves heavily taxed them for purposes which it was often difficult to describe as religious, the price paid by the Crown for leave to tax the clergy was that a large portion of the money should find its way to Rome.

[Sidenote: t.i.thes from the laity.]

The clergy were not content with this merely negative position.

Besides the right of self-taxation, they claimed that the laity should contribute to the needs of the Church. The chief permanent source of such contribution was the t.i.the, both the lesser t.i.thes on smaller animals, fruits, and vegetables, and the greater t.i.thes on corn, wine, and the larger animals. The Church also claimed t.i.thes of revenues of every kind, even from such divers cla.s.ses as traders, soldiers, beggars, and abandoned women. Much of the regular t.i.the had fallen into the hands of laymen by gift from Kings to feudal tenants, or from bishops to n.o.bles and others, in return for military protection. These alienated t.i.thes Gregory VII tried to recover; but his need for the help of the n.o.bles against the Emperor forced him to stay his hand.

The third Lateran Council (1179) forbade, on pain of peril to the soul, the transfer of t.i.thes from one layman to another, and deprived of Christian burial any one who, apparently having received such a transfer, should not have made it over to the Church. This was a definite claim for t.i.thes as a right of which the Church had only been deprived by some wrongful act. But in the very next year (1180) Frederick I, at the Diet of Gelnhausen, declared that the alienation of t.i.thes as feudal fiefs to defenders of the Church was perfectly legitimate. Religious scruples, however, seem to have caused the surrender of t.i.thes by many lay impropriators, especially to monasteries.

[Sidenote: Bequests.]

There were many other sources of wealth to the Church. An enormous quant.i.ty of property was bequeathed to pious uses by testators. The attendance of the clergy at the death-bed gave them an opportunity of which they were not slow to make use. The bodies of those who died intestate, as of those unconfessed, were denied burial in consecrated ground; all questions concerning wills were heard in the ecclesiastical courts. The civil power attempted to check the freedom of death-bed bequest, especially in Germany, where it was held that a valid will could only be made by one who was still well enough to walk unsupported. Another common source of revenue came from purchases or mortgages or other arrangements made with crusaders, in which advantage was taken of the haste of the lay men to raise funds for their expedition.