CHAP. IV. CONTEST FOR ST. PETER'S. 207 were still in possession of St. Peter's; on St. Barnabas' Day he celebrated mass on the high altar. The day closed with a sudden irruption of the forces of Matilda and the Pope into the city itself, which was chiefly in the possession of the Anti-Pope. Victor was master of the whole Transteverine region, of St. Peter's, of the Castle of St. Angelo, and considerable part of Rome, with the cities of Ostia and Porto. But on St. Peter's Eve an Imperial messenger arrived; he summoned the Senators, the Consuls, and the people of Rome, on their allegiance to the crown, to abandon the cause of Victor. The versatile people rose on his side, drove out the troops of Matilda, who still from the heights above maintained possession of the Church of St. Peter. This became the centre of the bloody strife: men warred with the utmost fury as to who should celebrate the Apostle's holyday in his great church. Neither party obtained this triumph; the altar remained the whole day without light, incense, or sacrifice; for the discomfited troops of the Pope were forced to take refuge in the Castle of St. Angelo; those of the Anti-Pope did not yet venture to take possession of the Church. Guibert celebrated high mass in the neighbouring Church of Santa Maria, with the two towers or belfries, from both of which he had just smoked or burned out the garrison. The next day the partisans of Guibert took possession of St. Peter's, washed the altar clean from the pollution of the hostile mass, and then celebrated the holy Eucharist. But their triumph, too, was short; the following day they were again driven out; and Pope Victor ruled in St. Peter's. Yet Victor dared not remain in Rome; he retired again to his Monte Casino. In August a council was held at Benevento. Pope Victor III. presided in the assembly, According to the Chronicon Augustense Guibert was absent from Rome when it was thus surprised by his rival Victor. That chronicle gives the darker and Imperialist character of Desiderius and his proceedings. He is accused of buying the Norman aid, and by that purchased aid alone obtained a triumph for the monkish party.-Apud Freher., vol. i. The monks of Monte Casino boasted of a wonder which took place at the shrine of St. Benedict. Among the pil grims who approached the altar was one in ecclesiastical attire. He was asked who he was; he replied, "St. Peter. I am come to celebrate the day of my martyrdom at the altar of my brother Benedict; since I cannot stay at Rome, where my church is desecrated by strife and war. The monks of Monte Casino celebrated from thenceforth St. Peter's day with the same solemnity as that of St. Benedict, a comparison which provokes the indignant remonstrance of Cardinal Baronius. and renewed in the strongest terms the excommunication of Guibert the Anti-Pope, who, by the aid of the Imperial arms, not fearing the judgment of the great Eternal Emperor, had filled Rome with every kind of violence, crime, and bloodshed, invaded the pontifical throne, and driven forth the rightful Pope. To this excommunication was subjoined another against Hugh of Lyons and the Abbot of Marseilles. The abbot had been party to the election of Pope Victor. The archbishop had offered his allegiance, implored and received from him the legation to France. Yet their ambition, disappointed of the Papacy, had driven them into open schism; they had cut themselves off from the Roman Church, and therefore, as self-condemned heretics, were excluded from that communion. The condemnation was renewed of all who should receive the investiture to any ecclesiastical benefice whatever from the hands of the laity. But even before the close of Victor III. the council Victor was seized with a mortal malady. He had hardly time to retire to Monte Casino, to order the affairs of his monastery, to commend Oderisi as his successor to the abbacy of Monte Casino, the Bishop of Ostia to that of the Pontificate. He died in three days. Death of A.D. 1087. In those times of blind and obstinate mutual hostility no rapid death, common enough, especially in that climate, could take place without suggesting a providential judgment, or something out of the course of nature. In Germany it was rumoured and believed that the Pope, while celebrating mass, in ratification of the excommunicating decrees of the council, was seized with his mortal pains, and that his fœtid body was hardly removed from the church. Later writers, with no ground whatever, imputed his death to poison administered in the sacred chalice. e e Chronicon Augustense sub ann. f Dandulus in Chronic. T. xii. Rev. Ital. Martinus Polonus. CHAP. V. PONTIFICATE OF URBAN. 209 CHAPTER V. URBAN II. THE Pontificate of Urban II. is one of the great epochs in the history of the Papacy and of Latin Christianity. The first Crusade united Christendom in one vast warlike confederacy; and at the head of that confederacy the Pope, by common consent, took his proper place. The armies were the armies of the faith, and therefore the armies of him who represented the chief apostle of the faith. From the Pope they derived, what they believed their divine commission; they were his martial missionaries to recover, not for any one Christian prince, but for Christianity itself, that territory to which it asserted an indefeasible title. The land in which the Saviour of mankind was born and died, could not but be the domain, the seigniorial possession of the Christian Church. But the Crusade belongs to the later period of Urban's Pontificate. A.D. 1088. On the death of Victor III. the scattered and disorganised monastic or Hildebrandine party was struck almost with despair: yet messengers were sent on all sides to rally their ecclesiastical forces. It was not till above five months had elapsed, that a Council, summoned by a number of bishops, assembled at Monte Casino, and by the counsel of Oderisi, the Abbot, the successor March 12. of Desiderius, met at Terracina; for Rome was in the power of the enemy. The number of archbishops, bishops, and abbots was forty. The Bishop of Porto, with the bishop of Tusculum, represented the Roman clergy; the Prefect Benedict appeared, and boasted that he bore the unanimous suffrage of the Roman people. There were ambassadors from some Ultramontane prelates, March 13, and from the Countess Matilda. After a solemn 1088. fast of three days the Bishop of Ostia was elected by acclamation, arrayed in the pontifical robes, and placed on the pontifical throne. VOL. III. P 210 LATIN CHRISTIANITY. Otto, Bishop of Ostia, was by birth a Frenchman, of Rheims or of some town in the neighbourhood. He had been brought up under the severe monastic discipline of Clugny to embrace this rule he had surrendered the dignity of a canon at Rheims. His instructor had been the famous Bruno, the founder of the Carthusian Order. There was no more bold or sincere assertor of ecclesiastical power; his hostility towards the Emperor had been embittered by his imprisonment and hard usage during the time that he was in the power of Henry. Urban lost no time in proclaiming himself as the elected Pope to the sovereigns of Christian Europe." Some sudden and unexplained revolution enabled Urban to hold a council at Rome in the year after his election. It is probable that the reconciliation, through his intervention, between the sons of Robert Guiscard, Roger and Bohemond, may have placed some Norman forces at his command. One hundred and fifteen bishops ventured to assemble around the Pope. The excommunication against the Simonians and the Anti-Pope was renewed in unmitigated rigour on the Emperor he seems to have preserved a cautious silence. Guibert, shut up by the Romans in one of the strong fortresses of the city, began to enter into negotiations for his peaceful departure. But neither did Urban venture to take up his residence in Rome. He retired to the faithful south: at Amalfi he summoned another council, the decrees of which were marked by the sternly monastic character of the Hildebrandine school. Urban had all the resolute firmness of Gregory, but less aggressive, and tempered with the wisdom of the serpent. His subtler policy was more dangerous, and eventually more fatal, to the Imperial cause, than the more bold and violent oppugnancy of Hildebrand. The times needed consummate prudence. Even in the south the Normans were but uncertain allies, and protectors who rarely failed proto exact some grant or privilege in return for their tection. Rome was on that party which at the time Urbani Epist. apud Martene et Durand. A. C. i. 520. b Among Urban's first acts was the elevation of the Archbishop of Toledo, now won from the Saracens, to the Primacy of Spain.-Florez España Sagrada, vi. 347. 1089 (see c Bernold. Chron. A.D. Jaffé, in the Regesta, Stenzel). assembles the 115 bishops at Amalfi. CHAP. V. MARRIAGE OF COUNTESS MATILDA. 211 could awe her with the greatest power or win her by the most lavish wealth. The Countess Matilda still faithfully maintained the Papal interests in the north of Italy; she still firmly rejected the claims of the Anti-Pope; and had taken great part in the election, first of Victor III., now of Urban II. But Anselm of Lucca, who had ruled her mind with his religious authority, was now dead; the firmness, even the fidelity, of Matilda might yield to the overpowering strength of the Imperial party. A terrible event showed the ferocity with which the hatred of the conflicting factions raged in those cities. Bonizo, the expelled Bishop of Sutri (who had written with great vehemence in defence of Hildebrand), was received in Parma as bishop by the Papal party; the Imperial faction seized him, threw him into prison, plucked out his eyes, and put him to a horrible death by mutilation. Countess Though in this model of female perfection the clergy, especially the monastic clergy, might, in ordinary times, have expected and admired the great crowning virtue of the sex, virginity, yet it was for the Pope, with his approbation if not in obedience to his commands, that she yielded to what at first at least seemed feminine weakness. She consented, at the age of forty-three, to marry a youth of eighteen. Even this sacrifice was to be made for the welfare of the Church. Matilda wedded Guelf the Marriage of younger, the son of the powerful Duke of Ba- Matilda. varia, from the family most equal to cope with the Imperial power. This alliance not merely might give manly strength to her counsels, and a warlike leader to her arms in Italy, but it secured her an alliance in Germany itself, dangerous and menacing to King Henry. The marriage was at first kept secret from the Emperor. No sooner was it announced than Henry found it necessary to march into Italy to crush this powerful confederacy. He laid siege to Mantua; after eleven months' resistance he became master of the town by treachery. For two years the war continued, so greatly to the advantage of d A.D. 1089. Tam pro incontinentiâ, quam pro Romani pontificis obedientiâ, videlicet ut tanto virilius sanctæ Romanæ ecclesiæ contra schismaticos posset subvenire.-Berthold. Const, in Chro A.D. 1090. nic. Thus the marriage appeared at first sight to the monastic writers: the close of this connexion perhaps showed the injustice of their fears. |