A.D. 1047.

A.D. 1048.

man of devout feeling, and rigidly attached to canonical order. When Gregory VI., compelled to abdicate the Papacy, retired into Germany, he was followed by Hildebrand; on Gregory's death Hildebrand returned for a short time to his beloved retreat at Clugny. But during all this period, as a resident in France and in Germany, he was acquiring that knowledge of men and of affairs, which he was hereafter to employ in his great scheme of dominant churchmanship. It was the Italian and the Churchman surveying the weakness of the enemy's position. From Clugny he emerged, having cast his spell on the congenial mind of Leo IX., and admonished him to maintain the dignity and independence of the Papal election. From this time he was Pope, or becoming so. On every great occasion he was the legate he was commissioned to encounter and suppress the daring Berengar; he was, no doubt, the adviser of Nicolas II. in the change of the Roman policy, the assumption of the power of election by the Cardinals, and the Norman alliance. He created Alexander II., and discomfited his rival, Cadalous. The strongest indication, indeed, of his superiority, his prophetic consciousness of his own coming greatness, was the self-command with which he controlled his own ambition. There was no eager or premature struggle for advancement; offices, honours, laid themselves at his feet. He was content to labour in a subordinate capacity, to have the substance without the pomp of authority, the influence without the dignity of the Papal power. For a long period in the Papal annals, Hildebrand alone seems permanent; Pope after Pope dies, disappears; Hildebrand still stands unmoved, or is rising more and more to eminence. The Italian might even seem to trust, not without stern satisfaction, to the fatal climate of his country, to wear out the rapid succession of German pontiffs, who yet were rendering the great service of regenerating the Popedom. One by one they fall off, Clement, Damasus, Leo, Victor, Nicolas. The only one who rules for ten years is the Italian, Alexander II.

While Hildebrand was thus rising to the height of power, and becoming more and more immersed in the

CHAP. I.

PETER DAMIANI.

103

affairs of the world, which he was to rule, his aged colleague in one of his important missions, the sup- Damiani. pression of the married clergy in Lombardy, Peter Damiani, beheld his progress with amazement, with friendly terror and regret. The similitude and contrast between these two men is truly characteristic of the age. Damiani was still a monk at heart; he had been compelled by Pope Stephen, his persecutor, as he called him, rather than his patron, to take upon him the episcopate. He had been invested by the same gentle violence in the rank of a Cardinal; and in that character had wrought his temporary triumph in Milan. Already had he addressed an earnest argument to Pope Nicolas II., to be allowed to abdicate the weary, unthankful, unmonastic office. Damiani saw the monk, in all but its personal austerity, departing from the character of Hildebrand. Hildebrand could not comprehend the pusillanimity, and, as it were, spiritual selfishness with which Damiani, in anxious apprehension for his own soul, would withdraw from the world, which himself would confront and cope with, not seek his safety in cowardly flight. Damiani trembled even for the stern virtue of Hildebrand, when raised to the pomp, and at least able to command the luxuries of a magnificent prelate. His argument is a bitter satire against the Bishops, and, of course, the still loftier dignitaries of the Church. "What would the bishops of old have done, had they to endure the torments which now attend the episcopate? To ride forth constantly attended by troops of soldiers, with swords and lances; to be girt about with armed men, like a heathen general! Not amid the gentle music of hymns, but the din and clash of arms! Every day royal banquets, every day parade! The table, loaded with delicacies, not for the poor, but for voluptuous guests; while the poor, to whom the property of right belongs, are shut out, and pine away with famine."

From that time Gregory and Damiani trod their opposite paths: Damiani to subdue the world within himself"

In one passage Damiani declares no single clerk fit to be a bishop; one is a little better (meliusculum) than another. The Bishop of Fano he calls "latro Fanensis."Opuscul.

See Damiani's black account of the

sins which he had to struggle against. Those which clung to him were scurrility (Damiani was not wanting in selfknowledge) and disposition to laughter. - Epist. v. 2.

104

LATIN CHRISTIANITY.

with more utter aversion, more concentered determination; Hildebrand to subdue the world without-how far within his own heart God alone may judge.

Views of

Hildebrand.

The first, the avowed object of Gregory's pontificate, was the absolute independence of the clergy, of the Pope, of the great prelates throughout Latin Christendom, down to the lowest functionary, whose person was to become sacred; that independence under which lurked the undisguised pretension to superiority. His remote and somewhat more indistinct vision, was the foundation of a vast spiritual autocracy in the person of the Pope, who was to rule mankind by the consentient, but subordinate authority of the clergy throughout the world. For this end the clergy were to become still more completely a separate, inviolable caste; their property equally sacred with their persons. Each in his separate sphere, the Pope above all and comprehending all, was to be sovereign arbiter of all disputes; to hold in his hands the supreme mediation in questions of war and peace; to adjudge contested successions to kingdoms; to be a great feudal lord, to whom other kings became Beneficiaries. His own arms were to be chiefly spiritual, but the temporal power was to be always ready to execute the ecclesiastical behest against the ungodly rebels who might revolt from its authority; nor did the Churchman refuse altogether to use secular weapons, to employ armies in its own name, or even to permit the use of arms to the priesthood.

caste.

For this complete isolation of the hierarchy into a pecuHierarchical liar and inviolable caste was first necessary the reformation of the clergy in two most important preliminary matters; the absolute extirpation of the two evils, which the more rigid churchmen had been denouncing for centuries, to the suppression of which Hildebrand had devoted so much of his active energies. The war against simony and against the concubinage of the clergy (for under this ill-sounding name was condemned all connexion, however legalised, with the female sex), must first be carried to a triumphant issue, before the Church could assume its full and uncontested domination.

Like his predecessors, like all the more high-minded Churchmen, Hildebrand refused to see that simony was the

CHAP. I.

SIMONY.

105

inevitable consequence of the inordinate wealth of the clergy. It was a wild moral paradox to attempt Simony. to reconcile enormous temporal possessions and enormous temporal power, with the extinction of all temporal motives for obtaining, all temptations to the misuse of, these all-envied treasures. Religion might at first beguile itself into rapacity, on account of the sacred and beneficent uses to which it designed to devote wealth and power. Works of piety and charity might, for a short time, with the sacred few, be the sole contemplated, sole sought object. But rapacity would soon throw off the mask, and assume its real character. Personal passions and desires would intrude into the holiest sanctuary. Pious works would become secondary, subordinate, till at last they would vanish from the view; ambition, avarice, pride, prodigality, luxury, would, by degrees, supplant those rare and singular virtues. The clergy had too much power over public opinion themselves to submit to its control; they awed mankind-were under awe to none. In the feudal system, which had been so long growing up throughout Western Europe, bishops had become, in every respect, the equals of the secular nobles. In every city the bishop, if not the very first of men, was on a level with the first without the city he was lord of the amplest domains. Archbishops almost equalled kings; for who would not have coveted the station and authority of a Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, rather than that of the feeble Carlovingian monarch? The citizen might well be jealous of the superior opulence and influence of the priest; even the rustic, the serf, might behold, not without envy, his son or his brother (for from this sacerdotal caste there was no absolute exclusion either in theory or practice of the meanest) enjoying the security, the immunities, the respect paid even to the most humble orders of the clergy; and so it was throughout the whole framework of society. But if this was the nobler part of the democratic constitution of the Church, that it was a caste not of birth or race, it had its countervailing evils. There was a constant temptation; a temptation growing in proportion to its privileges and immunities; a temptation which overleaped, or trampled down every barrier, to enter the Church from

unhallowed motives. The few who assumed the sacred office with high and pure and perfectly religious views, became comparatively fewer. Men crowded into it from all quarters, and seized at once on its highest and its almost menial offices. That which had been obtained by unworthy means, or for unworthy motives, would be employed for no higher ends. We have seen the Barbarians forcing their way into the sacred ranks, and bringing with them much of their barbarity. Charlemagne himself had set the example of advancing his natural sons to high ecclesiastical dignities. His feebler descendants, even the more pious, submitted to the same course from choice or necessity. The evil worked downwards. The Bishop, who had bought his see, indemnified himself by selling the inferior prebends or cures. What was so intrinsically valuable began to have its money-price; it became an object of barter and sale. The layman who purchased holy orders bought usually peace, security of life, comparative ease. Those who aspired to higher dignities soon repaid themselves for the outlay, however large and extortionate. For several centuries, Pope after Pope, Council after Council, had continued to denounce this crime, this almost heresy. The iteration, the gradually increasing terrors of their anathemas, show their inefficacy. While the ambitious churchmen on the one hand were labouring to suppress it, by the still accumulating accessions to their power and wealth they were aggravating the evil. At this period, not merely the indignant satire of the more austere, but graver history and historical poetry, even the acts and decrees of Councils declare that, from the Papacy down to the lowest parochial cure, every spiritual dignity and function was venal. The highest bishops confessed their own guilt; the bishopric of Rome had too often been notoriously bought and sold. Sometimes, indeed, but not always, it condescended to some show of decency. Simony might veil itself under the appearance of ordinary and ancient usage. The universal feudal practice of making offerings to the sovereign, or to the liege lord, or even largesses to the people, at every act of promotion, grant, or enfranchisement, might seem to justify these donations, at first honorary and voluntary, at length exacted as a