The World's Greatest Books - Volume 12 Part 27

Gregory the Great had not long pa.s.sed away when there arose in the East that new religion which was to shake the world, and to bring East and West once more into a prolonged conflict. Mohammedanism, born in Arabia, hurled itself first against Asia, then swept North Africa. By the end of the seventh century it was threatening the Byzantine Empire on one side of Europe, and the Gothic dominion in Spain on the other. On the other hand, in the same period, Latin Christianity had decisively taken possession of England, driving back that Celtic or Irish Christianity which had been beforehand with it in making entry to the North.

Similarly, it was the Irish missionaries who began the conversion of the outer Teutonic barbarians; but the work was carried out by the Saxon Winfrid (Boniface) of the Latin Church.

The popes, however, during this century between Gregory I. and Gregory II. again sank into a position of subordination to the imperial power.

Under the second Gregory, the papacy rea.s.serted itself in resistance to the Emperor Leo the Isaurian, the "Iconoclast," the "Image-breaker," who strove to impose on Christendom his own zeal against images. To Leo, images meant image-wors.h.i.+p. To his opponents, images were useful symbols. Rome defied the emperor's attempt to claim spiritual dictators.h.i.+p. East and West were rent in twain at the moment when Islam was a.s.saulting both West and East. Leo rolled back the advancing torrent before Constantinople, as Charles Martel rolled it back almost simultaneously in the great battle of Tours; but the Empire and the West, Byzantium and Rome, never presented a united front to the Moslem.

The Iconoclastic controversy threw Italy against its will into the hands of the image-wors.h.i.+pping Lombards; and hate of Lombard ascendancy turned the eyes of Gregory's successors to the Franks, to Charles Martel; to Pepin, who obtained from Pope Stephen sanction for his seizure of the Frankish crown, and in return repressed the Lombards; and finally to Charles the Great, otherwise Charlemagne, who on the last Christmas Day of the eighth century was crowned (Western) emperor and successor of the Caesars.

_II.--The Western Empire and Theocracy_

Charlemagne, the first emperor of the restored or Holy Roman Empire, by his conquests brought into a single dominion practically all Western Europe from the Elbe and the Danube to the Ebro. He stood the champion and the head of Western Christendom, palpably the master, and not even in theory the subordinate, of the Pontiff from whom he received the imperial crown. But he established ecclesiastics as a territorial n.o.bility, counteracting the feudal n.o.bility; and when the mighty emperor was gone, and the unity of what was nominally one empire pa.s.sed away, this ecclesiastical n.o.bility became an instrument for the elevation of the spiritual above the temporal head of Christendom. The change was already taking place under his son Louis the Pious, whose character facilitated it.

The disintegration of the empire was followed by a hideous degradation of the papacy. But the Saxon line of emperors, the Ottos, sprung from Henry the Fowler, once more revived the empire; the third of them established a worthy pope in Silvester II. But both emperor and pope died just after the eleventh century opened. Elections of popes and anti-popes continued to be accompanied by the gravest scandals, until the Emperor Henry III. (Franconian dynasty) set a succession of Germans on the papal throne.

The high character of the pontificate was revived in the persons of Leo IX. and Victor II. (Gebhard of Eichstadt); many abuses were put down or at least checked with a firm hand. But Henry's death weakened the empire, and Stephen IX. added to the rigid enforcement of orthodoxy more peremptory claims for the supremacy of the Holy See. His successor, Nicholas II., strengthened the position as against the empire by securing the support of the fleshly arm--the Normans. His election was an a.s.sertion of the right of the cardinals to make their own choice.

Alexander II. was chosen in disregard of the Germans and the empire, and the Germans chose an anti-pope. At the back of the Italian papal party was the great Hildebrand. In 1073 Hildebrand himself ascended the papal throne as Gregory VII. With Hildebrand, the great struggle for supremacy between the empire and the papacy was decisively opened.

Gregory's aim was to establish a theocracy through an organised dominant priesthood separated from the world, but no less powerful than the secular forces; with the pope, G.o.d's mouthpiece, and vice-regent, at its head. The temporal powers were to be instruments in his hand, subject to his supreme authority. Clerical celibacy acquired a political value; the clergy would concentrate on the glory of the Church those ambitions which made laymen seek to aggrandise their families.

The collision between Rome and the emperor came quickly. The victory at the outset fell to the pope, and Henry IV. was compelled to humble himself and entreat pardon as a penitent at Canossa. Superficially, the tables were turned later; when Gregory died, Henry was ostensibly victor.

But Gregory's successor, Urban, as resolute and more subtle, retrieved what had only been a check. The Crusades, essentially of ecclesiastical inspiration, were given their great impulse by him; they were a movement of Christendom against the Paynim, of the Church against Islam; they centred in the pope, not the emperor, and they made the pope, not the emperor, conspicuously the head of Christendom.

The twelfth century was the age of the Crusades, of Anselm and Abelard, of Bernard of Clairvaux, and Arnold of Brescia. It saw the settlement of the question of invest.i.tures, and in England the struggle between Henry II. and Becket, in which the murder of the archbishop gave him the victory. It saw a new enthusiasm of monasticism, not originated by, but centring in, the person of Bernard, a more conspicuous and a more authoritative figure than any pope of the time. To him was due the suppression of the intellectual movement from within against the authority of the Church, connected with Abelard's name.

Arnold of Brescia's movement was orthodox, but, would have transformed the Church from a monarchial into a republican organisation, and demanded that the clergy should devote themselves to apostolical and pastoral functions with corresponding habits of life. He was a forerunner of the school of reformers which culminated in Zwingli.

In the middle of the century the one English pope, Hadrian IV., was a courageous and capable occupant of the papal throne, and upheld its dignity against Frederick Barbarossa; though he could not maintain the claim that the empire was held as a fief of the papacy. But the strife between the spiritual and temporal powers issued on his death in a double election, and an imperial anti-pope divided the allegiance of Christendom with Alexander III. It was not till after Frederick had been well beaten by the Lombard League at Legnano that emperor and pope were reconciled, and the reconciliation was the pope's victory.

_III.--Triumph and Decline of the Papacy_

Innocent III., mightiest of all popes, was elected in 1198. He made the papacy what it remained for a hundred years, the greatest power in Christendom. The future Emperor Frederick II. was a child entrusted to Innocent's guardians.h.i.+p. The pope began by making himself virtually sovereign of Italy and Sicily, overthrowing the German baronage therein.

A contest for the imperial throne enabled the pope to a.s.sume the right of arbitration. Germany repudiated his right. Innocent was saved from the menace of defeat by the a.s.sa.s.sination of the opposition emperor. But the successful Otho proved at once a danger.

Germany called young Frederick to the throne, and now Innocent sided with Germany; but he did not live to see the death of Otho and the establishment of the Hohenstaufen. More decisive was his intervention elsewhere. Both France and England were laid under interdicts on account of the misdoings of Philip Augustus and John; both kings were forced to submission. John received back his kingdom as a papal fief. But Langton, whom Innocent had made archbishop, guided the barons in their continued resistance to the king, whose submission made him Rome's most cherished son. England and the English clergy held to their independence. Pedro of Aragon voluntarily received his crown from the pope. In every one of the lesser kingdoms of Europe, Innocent a.s.serted his authority.

Innocent's efforts for a fresh crusade begot not the overthrow of the Saracen, but the subst.i.tution of a Latin kingdom under the Roman obedience for the Greek empire of Byzantium. In effect it gave Venice her Mediterranean supremacy. The great pope was not more zealous against Islam than against the heterogeneous sects which were revolting against sacerdotalism; whereof the horrors of the crusade against the Albigenses are the painful witness.

Not the least momentous event in the rule of this mightiest of the popes was his authorisation of the two orders of mendicant friars, the disciples of St. Dominic, and of St. Francis of a.s.sisi, with their vows of chast.i.ty, poverty, and obedience, and their principle of human brotherhood. And in both cases Innocent's consent was given with reluctance.

It may be said that Frederick II. was at war with the papacy until his death in the reign of Innocent III.'s fourth successor, Innocent IV.

With Honorius the emperor's relations were at first friendly; both were honestly anxious to take a crusade in hand. The two were brought no further than the verge of a serious breach about Frederick's exercise of authority over rebellious ecclesiastics. But Gregory IX., though an octogenarian, was recognised as of transcendent ability and indomitable resolution; and his will clashed with that of the young emperor, a brilliant prince, born some centuries too early.

Frederick was pledged to a crusade; Gregory demanded that the expedition should sail. Frederick was quite warranted in saying that it was not ready; and through no fault of his. Gregory excommunicated him, and demanded his submission before the sentence should be removed. Frederick did not submit, but when he sailed it was without the papal support.

Frederick endeavoured to proceed by treaty; it was a shock to Moslems and to Christendom alike. The horrified Gregory summoned every disaffected feudatory of the empire in effect to disown the emperor. But Frederick's arms seemed more likely to prosper. Christendom turned against the pope in the quarrel. Christendom would not go crusading against an emperor who had restored the kingdom of Jerusalem. The two came to terms. Gregory turned his attention to becoming the Justinian of the Church.

But a rebellion against Frederick took shape practically as a renewal of the papal-imperial contest. Gregory prepared a league; then once more he launched his ban. Europe was amazed by a sort of war of proclamations.

Nothing perhaps served the pope better now than the agency of the mendicant orders. The military triumph of Frederick, however, seemed already a.s.sured when Gregory died. Two years later, Innocent IV. was pope. After hollow overtures, Innocent fled to Lyons, and there launched invectives against Frederick and appeals to Christendom.

Frederick, by attaching, not the papacy but the clergy, alienated much support. Misfortunes gathered around him. His death ensured Innocent's supremacy. Soon the only legitimate heir of the Hohenstaufen was an infant, Conradin; and Conradin's future depended on his able but illegitimate uncle, Manfred. But Innocent did not live long to enjoy his victory; his arrogance and rapacity brought no honour to the papacy.

English Grostete of Lincoln, on whom fell Stephen Langton's mantle, is the n.o.blest ecclesiastical figure of the time.

For some years the imperial throne remained vacant; the matter of first importance to the pontiffs--Alexander, Urban, Clement--was that Conradin, as he grew to manhood, should not be elected. Manfred became king of South Italy, with Sicily; but with no legal t.i.tle. Urban, a Frenchman, agreed with Charles of Anjou, brother of St. Louis, that he should have the crown, on terms. Manfred fell in battle against him at Beneventum, and with him all real chance of a Hohenstaufen recovery. Not three years after, young Conradin, in a desperate venture after his legitimate rights, was captured and put to death by Charles of Anjou.

A temporary pacification of Western Christendom was the work of Gregory X.; his aim was a great crusade. At last an emperor was elected, Rudolph of Hapsburg. But Gregory died. Popes followed each other and died in swift succession. Presently, on the abdication of the hermit Celestine, Boniface VIII. was chosen pope. His bull, "Clericis laicos," forbidding taxation of the clergy by the temporal authority, brought him into direct hostility with Philip the Fair of France, and though the quarrel was temporarily adjusted, the strife soon broke out again. The bulls, "Unam Sanctam" and "Ausculta fili," were answered by a formal arraignment of Boniface in the States-General of France, followed by the seizure of the pope's own person by Philip's Italian partisans.

_IV.--Captivity, Seclusion, and Revival_

The successor of Boniface was Benedict IX. He acted with dignity and restraint, but he lived only two years. After long delays, the cardinals elected the Archbishop of Bordeaux, a subject of the King of England.

But before he became Clement V. he had made his pact with the King of France. He was crowned, not in Italy, but at Lyons, and took up his residence at Avignon, a papal fief in Provence, on the French borders.

For seventy years the popes at Avignon were practically the servants of the King of France.

At the very outset, Clement was compelled to lend his countenance to the suppression of the Knights Templars by the temporal power. Philip forced the pope and the Consistory to listen to an appalling and incredible arraignment of the dead Boniface; then he was rewarded for abandoning the persecution of his enemy's memory by abject adulation: the pope had been spared from publicly condemning his predecessor.

John XXII. was not, in the same sense, a tool of the last monarchs of the old House of Capet, of which, during his rule, a younger branch succeeded in the person of Philip of Valois. John was at constant feud with the Emperor Louis of Bavaria, and also, within the ecclesiastical pale, with the Franciscan Order. Louis of Bavaria died during the pontificate of Clement VI., and Charles of Bohemia, already emperor in the eyes of the pope, was accepted by Germany. He virtually abdicated the imperial claim to rule in Italy; but by his "Golden Bull" he terminated the old source of quarrel, the question of the authority by which emperors were elected. The "Babylonish captivity" ended when Gregory XI. left Avignon to die in Italy; it was to be replaced by the Great Schism.

For thirty-eight years rival popes, French and Italian, claimed the supremacy of the Church. The schism was ended by the Council of Constance; Latin Christianity may be said to have reached its culminating point under Nicholas V., during whose pontificate the Turks captured Constantinople.

LEOPOLD VON RANKE

History of the Popes

Leopold von Ranke was born at Wiehe, on December 21, 1795, and died on May 23, 1886. He became Professor of History at Berlin at the age of twenty-nine; and his life was pa.s.sed in researches, the fruits of which he gave to the world in an invaluable series of historical works. The earlier of these were concerned mainly with the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--in English history generally called the Tudor and Stuart periods--based on examinations of the archives of Vienna and Rome, Venice and Florence, as well as of Berlin. In later years, when he had pa.s.sed seventy, he travelled more freely outside of his special period. The "History of the Popes in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries" here presented was published in 1834-7. The English translation by Sarah Austin (1845) was the subject of review in one of Macaulay's famous essays. It is mainly concerned with the period, not of the Reformation itself, but of the century and a quarter following--roughly from 1535 to 1760, the period during which the religious antagonisms born of the Reformation were primary factors in all European complications.

_I.--The Papacy at the Reformation_

The papacy was intimately allied with the Roman Empire, with the empire of Charlemagne, and with the German or Holy Roman Empire revived by Otto. In this last the ecclesiastical element was of paramount importance, but the emperor was the supreme authority. From that authority Gregory VII. resolved to free the pontificate, through the claim that no appointment by a layman to ecclesiastical office was valid; while the pope stood forth as universal bishop, a crowned high-priest. To this supremacy the French first offered effectual resistance, issuing in the captivity of Avignon. Germany followed suit, and the schism of the church was closed by the secular princes at Constance and Basle. The papacy was restored in form, but not to its old supremacy.

The pontificates of Sixtus IV. and the egregious Alexander VI. were followed by the militant Julius II., who aimed, with some success, at making the pope a secular territorial potentate. But the intellectual movement challenged the papal claim, the direct challenge emanating from Germany and Luther. But this was at the moment when the empire was joined with Spain under Charles V. The Diet of Worms pointed to an accord between emperor and pope, when Leo X. died unexpectedly. His successor, Adrian, a Netherlander and an admirable man, sought vainly to inaugurate reform of the Church from within, but in brief time made way for Clement VII.

Hitherto, the new pope's interests had all been on the Spanish side, at least as against France; everything had been increasing the Spanish power in Italy, but Clement aimed at freedom from foreign domination.

The discovery of his designs brought about the Decree of Spires, which gave Protestantism a legal recognition in the empire, and also the capture and sack of Rome by Frundsberg's soldiery. Charles's ascendancy in Italy and over the papacy was secured. Clement, now almost at his beck, would have persuaded him to apply coercion to the German Protestants; but this did not suit the emperor, whose solution for existing difficulties was the summoning of a general council, which Clement was quite determined to evade. Moreover, matters were made worse for the papacy when England broke away from the papal obedience over the affair of Katharine of Aragon.

Paul III., Clement's immediate successor, began with an effort after regeneration by appointing several cardinals of the Contarini type, a.s.sociates of the Oratory of Divine Love, many of whom stood, in part at least, on common ground with avowed Protestants, notably on the dogma of justification by faith. He appears seriously to have desired a reconciliation with the Protestants; and matters looked promising when a conference was held at Ratisbon, where Contarini himself represented the pope.