graded, or rather not recognised as bishops. Who may imagine the fierceness of the more rude and profligate, thus sternly and almost suddenly interrupted in their licentiousness; whose secret but ill-concealed voluptuousness was dragged to light and held up to shame and obloquy, perhaps to the now unawed vengeance of the injured husband and father. In proportion to their unprincipled looseness would be the passion of their resentment, the depth of their vindictiveness. But these, it may be charitably, and as far as the documents show, justly concluded, were the few. What must have been the bitterness of heart of those, the far larger part of the clergy, whose marriage, or at least an implied and solemn engagement almost as sacred as marriage, had been endeared by the sweet charities of life, by the habits of mutual affection, the common ties of parental love. Their wives were to be torn from them and treated with the indignity of prostitutes; their children to be degraded as bastards. In some cases these wretched women were driven to suicide: they burned themselves, or were found dead in their beds from grief, or by their own hands; and this was proclaimed as the vengeance of God upon their sins. With some of the married clergy there may have been a consciousness, a misgiving of wrong, at least of weakness inconsistent with the highest clerical function; but with others it was a deliberate conviction, founded on the authority of St. Paul; on the usage of the primitive Church, justified by the law of Eastern Christendom, and in Milan asserted to rest on the authority of St. Ambrose; as well as on a conscientious assurance of the evils, the manifest and flagrant evils, of enforced clerical celibacy. And these men, even when they acknowledged their weakness, and were content with the lower stations in religious estimation, were to be mingled up in one sweeping anathema with the worst profligates; to Letter to Adela Countess of Flanders, iv. 10, and to Robert, iv. 11. 8 Paul Bernried triumphs in the misery of these women, many of them the wives, as he acknowledges, of the clergy. Interea super ipsas quoque uxores, seu concubinas Nicolaitarum sævit divina ultio. Nam quædam illarum in reprobum sensum traditæ, se metipsas incendio tradiderunt; aliquæ dum sanæ cubitum issent mortuæ repertæ sunt in matutino absque ullo præeunte infirmitatis indicio; aliquarum etiam corpora, post evulsas animas, maligni spiritus rapientes et in sua latibula reponentes, humanâ sepulturâ privaverunt. In what shape did these malignant spirits appear? Vit. Gregory VII. Murat. S. I. iii. CHAP. II. RESISTANCE TO DECREE. 143 be condemned to poverty and shame, to be thrown loose to the popular judgment, the popular jealousy, the popular fury. i k It was not indeed in Germany or Lombardy alone that the opposition to one or both the Hildebrandine decrees against lay investiture and the marriage of the clergy encountered fierce opposition. The latter, as of more immediate operation, excited the most furious passion. It was about this time that the Archbishop of Rouen, venturing to read the decree in his cathedral, was driven from the pulpit with a shower of stones. At the Council of Paris," when the decree was read, there was a loud outcry of appeal to St. Paul's Epistle to Timothy. The Abbot of PontIsère dared to say that the Pope's commands, just or unjust, must be obeyed. He was dragged out of the assembly, spat upon, struck in the face by the King's servants, hardly rescued alive. Everywhere, in Italy, in Rome itself, in France, throughout Germany, the decrees were received with the most vigorous or stubborn oppugnance; Gregory acknowledges the reluctance with which it was submitted to by the great mass of the clergy, the tardiness of the bishops to enforce its penalties." This, doubtless, more than the strife with the empire, the collision between the Italian and German party, was the chief source of the deep and wide-spread rancour excited in the hearts of men, rancour almost unprecedented, against Gregory VII. Later history shows Hildebrand, if not an object of Hatred against admiration, of awe. Those who most deprecate Hildebrand. his audacious ambition, his assumption of something bordering on divinity, respect the force and dignity of his character. The man who by the mere power of mind, by spiritual censures, without an army, except that which he levied by his influence over others, with enemies in his own city, aspired to rule the world, to depose the mightiest sovereigns, to raise up a barrier against the dominion of h Mansi, sub ann. Orderic Vital. If the bishops of France, writes Gregory, are lukewarm in enforcing these decrees, we hereby interdict the people from attending the ministrations of such false priests. iv. 20. Epist. Theodor. Virdunens. ad Gregor. VII. Martene et Ducand. i. 218. Epistola cujusdam, p. 231. The populace sometimes took the other side. The people of Cambray burned a man for venturing to say that the Simoniac or married clergy were not to be allowed to say mass. So writes Gregory. The clergy of Cambray were generally married. Gregory would make this man a martyr. m Ad hæc tamen inobedientes, exceptis perpaucis, tam execrandam consuetudinem (simony and marriage) nullâ studuerunt prohibitione decidere, nullâ districtione punire.—Ad Rodolph. ii. 45. mere brute force and feudal tyranny, is contemplated, if by some with enthusiastic veneration, by others if with aversion, as the Incarnation of anti-Christian spiritual pride, nevertheless not without the homage of their wonder, and wonder not unmingled with respect. But in his own day the hostility against his name did not confine itself to indignant and vehement invectives against his overweening ambition, severity, and imperiousness; there is no epithet of scorn or debasement, no imaginable charge of venality, rapacity, cruelty, or even licentiousness, which is not heaped upon him, and that even by bishops of the opposite party." The wilful promoting of unnatural sins is retorted by the married clergy on the assertor of clerical chastity; even his austere personal virtue does not place him above calumny; his intimate alliance with the Countess Matilda, the profound devotion of that lofty female to her spiritual Father, his absolute command over her mind, is attributed at one time to criminal intercourse, at another to magic. Even at the time at which Hildebrand was thus declaring war against the empire, and precipitating the inevitable conflict for supremacy over the world, he was not safe in Rome. It cannot be known whether Guibert of Parma, the Archbishop of Ravenna, the representative of the imperial interests in Italy, who in Rome had opposed all that he dared-a sullen and dissembled resistance to the Pope-was privy to the daring enterprise of Cencius. That leader, and descendant of the old turbulent barons of Romagna, had old scores of vengeance to repay against "That which in the poetical invective (I am ashamed to abuse the word poetry) of Benzo, apud Menckenium, p. 975 (be it observed a bishop), takes the coarsest and plainest form, is noticed also by the grave Lambert of Herzfeld. • Hæc est mulier illa, de qua ab obtrectatoribus fidei et concultatoribus veritatis crimen incestus sancto Pontifici objiciebatur. Hugon. Chron. apud Pertz. x. p. 462. His defenders, singularly enough, think it necessary to appeal to miracle to explain this domination of a powerful and religious mind like Hildebrand's, over perhaps a weakly religious one like Matilda's. This scandal appears in its grossest and most particular form in Cosmas of Prague, who adds, "hæc sufficit breviter dixisse, quæ utinam non dixissem." Apud Menckenium, p. 39. The age of one of the two might be enough to contradict those foul tales, if they were worth contradiction. Yet was the charge publicly made in the address of the German Bishops in the Synod at Mentz. Thus writes a bishop. Qui etiam fœtore quodam gravissimi scandali totam ecclesiam replesti de conventu et cohabitatione alienæ mulieris familiariori, quam necesse est. In quâ re verecundia nostra magis quam causa laborat, quamvis hæc generalis querela ubique personuerit omnia judicia omnia decreta per feminas in sede apostolicâ actuari denique per fœminas totum orbem ecclesiæ administrari. Udalrici Cod. apud Eccard. ii p. 172. CHAP. II. POPE SEIZED BY CENCIUS. 145 Hildebrand, the adviser of that policy which had brought down the Normans for their subjugation. Cencius had been master of the castle of St. Angelo, and the master of the castle of St. Angelo was an important partisan for the Pope. The Normans might now seem to have done their work; for some offence they were excommunicated in their turn by the fearless Gregory; the Counts of Tusculum were to be the protectors of the Roman See. But Cencius was afterwards suspected of dealings with the excommunicated Guibert. He was attacked and taken; the castle of St. Angelo for a time dismantled; the life of Cencius was spared only on the merciful intervention of the Countess Matilda. Cencius therefore had long arrears of revenge; success would make him an ally who might dictate his own terms to those who had a common interest in the degradation of Gregory. Master of the Pope's person, he might expect not merely not to be disowned, but to claim whatever reward might be demanded by his ambition. Pope seized On the eve of Christmas-day the rain had poured down in torrents. The Romans remained in their AD 1075, houses; the Pope, with but a few ecclesiastics, by Cencius. was keeping the holy vigil in the remote church of Santa Maria Maggiore. The wild night suited the wild purpose of Cencius. The Pope was in the act of administering the Holy Communion, when a fierce shout of triumph and a shriek of terror sounded through the church. The soldiers of Cencius burst in, swept along the nave, dashed down the rails, rushed to the altar, and seized the Pontiff. One fatal blow might have ended the life of Hildebrand, and changed the course of human events; it glanced aside, and only wounded his forehead. Bleeding, stripped of his holy vestments, but patient and gentle, the Pope made no resistance; he was dragged away, mounted behind one of the soldiers, and imprisoned in a strong tower. The rumour ran rapidly through the city; all the night, trumpets pealed, bells tolled. The clergy who were officiating in the different churches broke off their services, and ran about the streets summoning the populace to rescue and revenge; soldiers rushed to the gates to pre Rescue. P Cencius, according to Lambert, had been excommunicated by the Pope. 4 Bonizo. VOL. III. L vent the prisoner from being carried out of the town. At the dawn of morn the people assembled in the Capitol, ignorant whether the Pope was dead or alive. When the place of his imprisonment was known, they thronged to the siege; engines were brought from all quarters; the tottering walls began to yield. Cencius shuddered at his own deed. One faithful friend and one noble matron had followed the Pope into his dungeon. The man had covered his shivering body with furs, and was cherishing his chilled feet in his own bosom; the woman had staunched the blood, had bound up the wound in his head, and sat weeping beside him. Cencius, cowardly as cruel, had no course left but to throw himself at the feet of the Pontiff, and to implore his mercy. In the most humiliating language he confessed his sins, his sacrilege, his impiety. The Pope, thus insulted, thus wounded, thus hardly escaped from a miserable death, maintained throughout the mild dignity and self-command of a Christian Pontiff. His wisdom might indeed lead him to dread the despair of a ruffian. "Thine injuries against myself I freely pardon. Thy sins against God, against his mother, his apostles, and his whole Church must be expiated. Go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and if thou returnest alive, present thyself to us, and be reconciled with God. As thou hast been an example of sin, so be thou of repentance!" Christ himself might seem to be speaking in his Vice-gerent." Gregory was brought out; he made a motion to the people to arrest the fury with which they were rushing to storm the tower; it was mistaken for a sign of distress. They broke down, they clambered over, the walls. Gregory, yet stained with blood, stood in the midst of his deliverers; he was carried in triumph to the church from which he had been dragged, finished the service, and returned to the Lateran. Cencius and his kindred fled; their houses and towers were razed by the indignant populace. This adventure showed to Hildebrand at once his danger and his strength. It was not the signal for, it was rather simultaneous with, the final and irreparable breach with the King-a breach which, however, had been preparing Paul. Bernried, Vit. Greg. Lambert. Berthold sub ann. 1076. Arnulf, v. 6, apud Pertz. Bonizo. Lib. ad Amic. |