Chapter X: Part 10

I have not met with any indications of the results of the legislation which thus combined the influence of the temporal and ecclesiastical authorities. That it effected little, however, is apparent from the evidence afforded by Dalmatia, at that time a province of Hungary. Shortly before it lost its independence, its duke, Dimitri, resolved to assume the crown of royalty, and purchased the assent of Gregory VII. at the price of acknowledging him as feudal superior. Gregory took advantage of Dimitri’s aspirations to further the plans of reform, of which he never lost sight; for, in the coronation oath taken in 1076 before Gebizo, the papal legate, the new king swore that he would take such measures as would insure the chastity of all ecclesiastics, from the bishop to the subdeacon.[595] The new dynasty did not last long, for before the end of the century St. Ladislas united the province of Dalmatia to the kingdom of Hungary; but neither the oath of Dimitri, the laws of Coloman, nor the canons of the national councils succeeded in eradicating the custom of priestly marriage. When we find, in 1185, Urban III. in approving the acts of the synod of Spalatro, graciously expressing his approbation of its prohibiting the marriage of priests, and desiring that the injunction should be extended so as to include the diaconate,[596] we see that marriage must have been openly enjoyed by all ranks, that the synod had not ventured to include in the restriction any but the highest order, and that Urban himself did not undertake to apply the rule to subdeacons, although they had been specially included in Dimitri’s oath. Yet still pope and synod labored in vain, for fourteen years later, in 1199, another national council complained that priests kept both wives and benefices. It therefore commanded that those who indulged in this species of adultery should either dismiss their partners in guilt, and undergo due penance, or else should give up their churches; while no married man should be admitted to the diaconate, unless his wife would take a vow of continence before the bishop.[597] Even yet, however, the subdiaconate is not alluded to, although the legates who presided over the council were those of Innocent III.

Of how little avail were these efforts is shown by the national council held at Vienna as late as 1267, by Cardinal Guido, legate of Clement IV. It was still found necessary to order the deprivation of priests and deacons who persisted in retaining their wives; while the special clauses respecting those who married after taking orders prove that such unions were frequent enough to require tender consideration in removing the evil. The subdiaconate, also, was declared liable to the same regulations, but the resistance of the members of that order was probably stubborn, for the canons were suspended in their favor until further instructions should be received from the pope.[598]

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Poland was equally remiss in enforcing the canons on her clergy. The leaning of the Slavonic races towards the Greek church rendered them, in fact, peculiarly intractable, and marriage was commonly practised by the clergy at least until the close of the twelfth century.[599] At length the efforts of Rome were extended to that distant region, and in 1197 the papal legate, Cardinal Peter of Capua, held the synod of Lanciski, when the priests were peremptorily ordered to dismiss their wives and concubines, who, in the words of the historian, were at that time universally and openly kept.[600] The result of this seems to have amounted to little, for in 1207 we find Innocent III. sharply reproving the bishops of the province of Gnesen because married men were publicly admitted to ecclesiastical dignities, and canons took no shame in the families growing up around them. The children of priests were brought up to the sacred profession of their fathers, assisted them in their ministrations, and succeeded to their benefices. Whether or not the other disorders which Innocent designated as infecting the churches were the result of the carnal affections which thus superseded the spiritual we may fairly doubt, in view of the abuses still prevailing in more favored regions.[601] The effort was continued, and was apparently at length successful, at least in the western portions of the Polish church, for at the council of Breslau, held in 1279, there is no mention of wives, and the constitution of Guido, legate of Clement IV., is quoted, depriving of benefices those who openly kept concubines.[602]

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The church of Sweden was no purer than its neighbors. That the rule was recognized there at a tolerably early period is shown by the fact that when the people of Scania, about the year 1180, revolted against the exactions of Waldemar I. of Denmark, they demanded to be released from the oppression of tithes and that the clergy should be married. Singularly enough, the clerks stood by their bishop, Absalom, when he laid an interdict on the province, and the arms of Waldemar speedily subdued the revolt.[603] Not much, however, was gained for church discipline by this. In 1204, the Archbishop of Lunden reported to Innocent III. that he had used every endeavor to enforce the canons and had brought many of his priests to observe chastity, but that there still were many who persisted in retaining their women, whom they treated as though they were legitimate wives, with fidelity and conjugal affection. To this Innocent replied that the recalcitrants must be coerced by suspension, and, if necessary, by deprivation of benefice.[604] How little result this achieved is evident when we find the archbishop again writing to Innocent III. complaining that the Swedish priests persisted in living with their wives, and that they moreover claimed to have a papal dispensation permitting it. Innocent, in reply, cautiously abstained from pronouncing an opinion as to the validity of these pretensions until he should have an opportunity of examining the document to which they appealed.[605] The efforts at this time were fruitless, for, in 1248, we find the Cardinal of St. Sabina as legate of Innocent IV. holding a council at Schening, of which the principal object was to reform these abuses, and so firmly were they established, that the Swedes were considered as schismatics of the Greek church, in consequence of the marriage of their priests. The council supported by the royal power, succeeded in forcing the Swedish ecclesiastics to give up their wives, by a liberal use of all the punishments then in vogue, together with the significant threat of abandoning them to the tender mercies of the secular tribunals.[606]

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In Denmark and along the northern coasts of Germany, there was equal delay in enforcing the canon of celibacy. It is suggestive of some powerful intercession in favor of the married clergy when we see Paschal II., in 1117, writing to the King of Denmark that the rule was imperative, and that he could admit of no exceptions to it.[607] His insistence, however, was of little avail. In 1266, Cardinal Guido, legate of Clement IV., held a council at Bremen, where he was obliged to take rigorous measures to put an end to this Nicolitan heresy. All married priests, deacons, and subdeacons were pronounced incapable of holding any ecclesiastical office whatever. Children born of such unions were declared infamous, and incapable of inheritance, and any property received by gift or otherwise from their fathers was confiscated. Those who permitted their daughters, sisters, or other female relatives to contract such marriages, or gave them up in concubinage to priests, were excluded from the church. That a previous struggle had taken place on the subject is evident from the penalties threatened against the prelates who were in the habit of deriving a revenue from the protection of these irregularities, and from an allusion to the armed resistance, made by the married and concubinary priests with their friends, to all efforts to check their scandalous conduct.[608]

In Friesland, too, the efforts of the sacerdotalists were long set at naught. In 1219 Emo, Abbot of Wittewerum, describing the disastrous inundations which afflicted his country, considers them as a punishment sent to chastise the vices of the land, and among the disorders which were peculiarly obnoxious to the wrath of God he enumerates the public marriage of the priests, the hereditary transmission of benefices, and the testamentary provision made by ecclesiastics for their children out of the property which should accrue to the church; while his references to the canon law inhibiting these practices, show that these transgressions were not excusable through ignorance.[609] The warning was unheeded, for Abbot Emo alludes incidentally, on various subsequent occasions, to the hereditary transmission of several deaneries as a matter of course.[610] The deans in Friesland were ecclesiastics of high position, each having six or more parishes under his jurisdiction, which he governed under legatine power from the Bishop of Munster. When, in 1271, the people rose against them, exasperated by their intolerable exactions, in some temporary truce the deans gave their _children_ as hostages; and when, after their expulsion, Gerard of Munster came to their assistance by excommunicating the rebels, the latter defended the movement by the argument that the deans had violated the laws of the church by handing down their positions from father to son, and that each generation imitated the incontinence of its predecessor.[611] Hildebrand might have applauded this reasoning, but his days were past. The church by this time had gained the position to which it had aspired, and no longer invoked secular assistance to enforce its laws. Even Abbot Menco, while admitting the validity of the popular argument, claimed that such questions were reserved for the decision of the church alone, and that the people must not interfere.

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After thus marking the slow progress of the Hildebrandine movement in these frontier lands of Christendom, let us see what efforts were required to establish the reform in regions less remote.

XVI.

FRANCE.

Gregory VII. had not been so engrossed in his quarrels with the Empire as to neglect the prosecution of his favorite schemes of reform elsewhere. If he displayed somewhat less of energy and zeal in dealing with the ecclesiastical foibles of other countries, it was perhaps because the political complications which gave a special zest to his efforts in Germany were wanting, and because there was no organized resistance supported by the temporal authorities. Yet the inertia of passive non-compliance long rendered his endeavors and those of his successors equally nugatory.

As early as 1056 we find Victor II., by means of his vicars at the council of Toulouse, enjoining on the priesthood separation from their wives, under penalty of excommunication and deprivation of function and benefice.[612] This was followed up in 1060 by Nicholas II., who sought through his envoys to enforce the observance of his decretals on celibacy in France, and under the presidency of his legate the council of Tours in that year adopted a canon of the most decided character. All who, since the promulgation of the decretal of 1060, had continued in the performance of their sacred functions while still preserving relations with their wives and concubines were deprived of their grades without hope of restoration; and the same irrevocable penalty was denounced against those who in the future should endeavor to combine the incompatible duties of husband and minister of Christ.[613]

In what spirit these threats and injunctions were likely to be received may be gathered from an incident which occurred, probably about this time. A French bishop, as in duty bound, excommunicated one of his deacons for marrying. The clergy of the diocese, keen to appreciate the prospect of future trouble, rallied around their persecuted brother, and rose in open rebellion against the prelate. The latter, apparently, was unable to maintain his position, and the matter was referred for adjudication to the celebrated Berenger of Tours. Although, in view of the papal jurisprudence of the period, the bishop would seem to have acted with leniency, yet Berenger blamed both parties for their precipitancy and quarrelsome humor, and decided that the excommunication of a deacon for marrying was contrary to the canons, unless rendered unavoidable by the contumacy of the offender.[614]

Even more significant was the scene which occurred in 1074 in the council of Paris, where the holy St. Gauthier, Abbot of Ponthoise, undertook to sustain the decretal by which Gregory VII. prohibited attendance on the masses of married and concubinary priests. The assembly manifested its disapprobation of the measure in a manner so energetic that its unlucky advocate, after being furiously berated and soundly pummelled, was glad to escape with his life from the hands of his indignant brethren.[615]

When such was the spirit of the ecclesiastical body, there was little to be expected from any internal attempt at reform. At the stormy synod of Poitiers, in 1078, the papal legate, Hugh, Bishop of Die, succeeded in obtaining the adoption of a canon which threatened with excommunication all who should knowingly listen to the mass of a concubinary or simoniacal priest,[616] but this seems to have met with little response. Coercion from without was evidently requisite, and in this case, as we have seen, Gregory did not shrink from subjecting the church to the temporal power. In Normandy, for instance, a synod held at Lisieux in 1055 had commanded the degradation of priests who resided with wives or concubines. This was, of course, ineffective, and in 1072 John, Archbishop of Rouen, held a council in his cathedral city, where he renewed that canon in terms which show how completely all orders and dignitaries were habitually liable to its penalties.[617] The Norman clergy were not disposed to submit quietly to this abridgement of their accustomed privileges, and they expressed their dissent by raising a terrible clamor and driving their archbishop from the council with a shower of stones, from which he barely escaped alive.[618] At length, in view of the utter failure of all ecclesiastical legislation, the laity were called in. William the Conqueror, therefore, in 1080, assisted the Archbishop of Rouen in holding a synod at Lillebonne, where the stern presence of the suzerain prevented any unseemly resistance to the adoption of most unpalatable regulations. All who were in holy orders were forbidden, under any pretext, to keep women in their houses, and if, when accused of disobedience, they were unable to prove themselves innocent, their benefices were irretrievably forfeited. If the accusation was made by the ecclesiastical officials, the offender was to be tried by the episcopal court, but if his parishioners or feudal superior were the complainants, he was to be brought before a mixed tribunal, composed of the squires of his parish and the officials of the bishop. This startling invasion of the dearest privileges of the church was declared by William to proceed from no desire to interfere with the jurisdiction of his bishops, but to be a temporary expedient, rendered necessary by their negligence. Nor was this remarkable measure the only thing that renders the synod of Lillebonne worthy of note, for it affords us the earliest authoritative indication of a practice which subsequently became a standing disgrace to the church. The fifth canon declares that no priest shall be forced to give anything to the bishop or to the officers of the diocese beyond their lawful dues, and especially that no money shall be exacted on account of women kept by clerks.[619] A tribute known as “cullagium” became at times a recognized source of revenue, in consideration of which the weaknesses of human nature were excused, and ecclesiastics were allowed to enjoy in security the society of their concubines. We shall see hereafter that this infamous custom continued to flourish until the sixteenth century, despite the most strenuous and repeated endeavors to remove so grievous a scandal.

It is probable that the expedient of mixed courts for the trial of married and concubinary priests was not adopted without the concurrence of Gregory, who was willing to make almost any sacrifice necessary to accomplish his purpose. That they were organized and performed the functions delegated to them is shown by a reference in a charter of 1088 to one held at Caumont, which required a priest to abandon either his wife or his church.[620] So far, indeed, was Gregory from protesting against this violation of ecclesiastical immunities, that he was willing even to connive at the abuses which immediately crept into the system, and to purchase the assistance of the laity by allowing them to lay sacrilegious hands on the temporalities of the church. Many of the nobles who thus assisted in expelling the offending clergy seized the tithes and retained them. The papal legate, Hugh, Bishop of Die—better known by his subsequent primatial dignity of Lyons—proceeded against these invaders of church property in the usual manner, and excommunicated them as a matter of course. Gregory, however, who under ordinary circumstances would have promptly consigned the spoilers to the bottomless pit, now virtually took their side. He discreetly declined to confirm the excommunication, reproved his legate for superserviceable zeal, and ordered him in future to be more guarded and temperate in his proceedings.[621]

Church and state—the zeal of the ecclesiastic and the avarice of the noble—vainly united to break down the stubbornness of the Norman priesthood, for marriage continued to be enjoyed as openly as ever. The only effect of the attempted reform, indeed, appeared to be that when a priest entered into matrimony he took a solemn vow never to give up his wife, a measure prompted doubtless by the fears of the bride and her kindred. The nuptials were public; male issue succeeded to benefices by a recognized primogeniture, and female children received their fathers’ churches as dower, when other resources were wanting. About the beginning of the twelfth century, three enthusiastic ascetic reformers, the celebrated Robert d’Arbrissel, founder of Fontevrault, Bernard Abbot of Tiron, and Vitalis of Mortain traversed Normandy and preached with great earnestness against these abuses, the result of which was that they nearly came to an untimely end at the hands of the indignant pastors and their more indignant spouses. On one occasion, when Bernard was preaching at Coutances, a married archdeacon assailed him, with a crowd of priests and clerks, asking how he, a monk, dead to the world, presumed to preach to the living. Bernard replied that Samson had slain his foes with the jaw-bone of a dead ass, and then proceeded with so moving a discourse on Samson, that the archdeacon was converted, and interfered to save him from the mob.[622]

If William the Conqueror found his advantage in thus assisting the hopeless reform within his duchy of Normandy, he had no hesitation in obstructing it when his policy demanded such a course in his subject province of Britanny. During the three and a half centuries through which the Breton church maintained its independence of the archiepiscopal see of Tours, its metropolis was Dol. Judhaël, who occupied its lofty seat, not only obtained it by simony, but sullied it by a public marriage; and when the offspring of this illicit union reached maturity he portioned them from the property of the church. This prolonged violation of the canons attracted the attention of Gregory soon after his accession, and in 1076 he informed William that he had deposed the offender. William, however, saw fit to defend the scandal, and refused to receive Evenus, Abbot of St. Melanius, whom Gregory had appointed as a successor.[623] Judhaël, indeed, was no worse than his suffragans. For three generations the diocese of Quimper was held by father, son, and grandson; while the Bishops of Rennes, Vannes, and Nantes were openly married, and their wives enjoyed the recognized rank of countesses, as an established right.[624] How much improvement resulted from the efforts of Gregory and his legate Hugh may be estimated from the description, in general terms, of the iniquities ascribed to the Breton clergy, both secular and regular, in the early part of the next century, by Paschal II. when granting the pallium to Baldric, Archbishop of Dol. All classes are described as indulging in enormities hateful to God and man, and as having no hesitation in setting the canons at defiance. In Britanny, as in Wales and Spain, the centralizing influence of Rome was at fault, and priestly marriage was persevered in long after it had been abrogated elsewhere.[625]

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In Flanders, Count Robert the Frisian and Adela, his mother, were well disposed to second the reformatory measures of Gregory, but, doubting their right to eject the offenders, they applied to him, in 1076, for instructions. His answers were unequivocal, urging them to the most prompt and summary proceedings.[626] The spirit in which the clergy met the attack was manifested by the incident already described, when, in 1077, an unfortunate zealot was burned at the stake in Cambrai for maintaining the propriety of the papal decretals. The same disposition, though fortunately leading to less deplorable results, was exhibited in Artois. At the instance of Adela, Robert, in 1072, had founded the Priory of Watten, near St. Omer. Despite this powerful interest and patronage, the house had a severe struggle for existence, as its prior, Otfrid, lent his influence to support the reform and to enforce the decrees of Gregory. Reproaches and curses were showered upon the infant community, and it was openly threatened with fire and sword, until the unfortunate brethren felt equally insecure within their walls and abroad. At length the Countess Adela took Otfrid with her on a pilgrimage to Rome, and there the holy man procured from Gregory a confirmation of the privileges of his house. On his return, he found that this instrument only made the persecution more vehement. Accusations of all kinds were made against the priory, and its enemies succeeded in causing the brethren to be brought for trial before the local synod, where the production of the papal charter was ordered. It was at once pronounced a forgery, was taken away by force, and was retained by the Bishop, Drogo of Terouane, in spite of all remonstrance.[627]

The opposition of the clergy was not lessened by the manner in which the secular authorities exercised the power bestowed upon them. Count Robert saw the advantages derivable from the position of affairs and seems to have been resolved to turn it thoroughly to account. Among other modes adopted was that of the “jus spolii,” by which he seized the effects of dying ecclesiastics, turning their families out of doors and disinheriting the heirs. These arbitrary proceedings he defended on the ground of the incontinence of the sufferers, boldly declaring that wicked priests were no priests—as if, groaned the indignant clerks, sinful men were not men.[628] In 1091, the Flemish priests complained of these acts to Urban II., and he vainly endeavored to interfere in their behalf.[629] Finding this resource fail, they appealed to their metropolitan, Renaud, Archbishop of Rheims, who by active measures succeeded in putting an end to the abuse in 1092.

Amid all this the church proved powerless to enforce its laws, and again it called upon the feudal authority for assistance—this time in a manner by which it admitted its impotence on a question so vital. In 1099, Manasses of Rheims held a provincial synod at St. Omer, which instructed the Count of Flanders, Robert the Hierosolymitan, to seize the wives of all priests who after excommunication declined to abandon their guilty partners; and in this he was not to ask or wait for the assent of the bishop of the diocese. The sturdy Crusader would doubtless have carried out this order to the letter, with all its attendant cruelty and misery, but the clergy of the province united in remonstrances so vehement that Manasses was forced to abandon his position. He accordingly requested Robert on no account to disturb the married priests and their wives, or to permit his nobles to do so, except when assistance was demanded by the bishops. He acknowledged the injustice he had committed in overslaughing the constituted authorities of the church, and deprecated the rapine and spoliation which so ill-advised a proceeding might cause. At the same time he admonished his suffragans to proceed vigorously against all who married in orders, and to call on the seigneurial power to coerce those who should prove contumacious.[630]

Harsh and violent as were the measures thus threatened, there appears to have been extreme hesitation in carrying them out. A certain clerk known as Robert of Artois committed the unpardonable indiscretion of marrying a widow, and openly resisted all the efforts of his bishop to reduce him to obedience. Not only his original crime, but his subsequent contumacious rebellion would assuredly justify the severest chastisement, yet both the secular and ecclesiastical powers of the province seem to have been at fault, for it was found necessary to ask the interference of no less a personage than Richard, Bishop of Albano, then enjoying the dignity of papal legate in France. In 1104 the legate accordingly addressed the Count of Flanders with the very moderate request that the obstinate rebel and his abettors should be held as excommunicate until they should reconcile themselves to their bishop. Robert finally appealed to Rome itself, but in the end was obliged to succumb. Similar was the case of two Artesian deacons who refused to abandon their wives until Lambert, the bishop of Artois, excommunicated them, when they travelled to Rome in hopes of reconciliation to the church. Paschal II. absolved them on their taking a solemn oath upon the Gospels to live chastely in future, and he sent them back to Lambert with instructions to keep a careful watch upon them.[631] These cases, which chance to remain on record, show how obstinately the clergy held to their wives and how difficult it was to convince them that the authorities of the church were determined to enforce the canons. We therefore need not be surprised to find Paschal II., after the year 1100, writing to the clergy of Terouane, expressing his astonishment that, in spite of so many decretals of popes and canons of councils, they still adhered to their consorts, some of them openly and some secretly. To remedy this, he has nothing but a repetition of the old threat of deprivation.[632]

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The confusion which this attempted reformation caused in France was apparently not so aggravated as we have seen it in Germany, and yet it was sufficiently serious. Guibert de Nogent relates that in his youth commenced the persecution of the married priests by Rome, when a cousin of his, a layman of flagrant and excessive licentiousness, made himself conspicuous by his attacks on the failings of the clergy. The family were anxious to provide for young Guibert, who was destined to the church, and the cousin used his influence with the patron of a benefice to oust the married incumbent and bestow the preferment on Guibert. The priest thus forcibly ejected abandoned neither his wife nor his functions, but relieved his mind by excommunicating every day, in the Mass, Guibert’s mother and all her family, until the good woman’s fears were so excited that she abandoned the prebend which she had obtained with so much labor.[633] We can readily conceive this incident to be a type of what was occurring in every corner of the kingdom, when, in an age of brute force, the reverence which was the only defence of the priesthood was partially destroyed, and the people hardly knew whether they were to adore their pastors as representatives of God or to dread them as the powerful ministers of evil.

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When the religious ardor of Europe rose to the wild excitement that culminated in the Crusades, and Pope Urban II. astutely availed himself of the movement to place the church in possession of a stronger influence over the minds of men than it had ever before enjoyed, it was to no purpose that the great council of Clermont, in 1095, took the opportunity to proclaim in the most solemn manner the necessity of perfect purity in ministers of the altar, to denounce irrevocable expulsion for contravention of the rule, and to forbid the children of ecclesiastics from entering the church except as monks or canons.[634] It was the weightiest exposition of church discipline, and was promulgated under circumstances to give it the widest publicity and the highest authority. Yet, within a few years, we find Gualo, Bishop of Paris, applying to Ivo of Chartres for advice as to what ought to be done with a canon of his church who had recently married, and Ivo in reply recommending as a safe course that the marriage be held valid, but that the offender be relieved of his stipend and functions.[635] His answer, moreover, is written in a singularly undecided tone, and an elaborate argument is presented as though the matter were still open to discussion, although Ivo’s laborious compilations of the canon law show that he was thoroughly familiar with the ancient discipline which the depravity of his generation had rendered obsolete.[636] Hardly less significant is another epistle in which Ivo calls the attention of Daimbert, Archbishop of Sens, to the conduct of one of his dignitaries who publicly maintained two concubines and was preparing to marry a third. He urges Daimbert to put an end to the scandal, and suggests that if he is unable to accomplish it single-handed, he should summon two or three of his suffragans to his assistance.[637] Either of these instances is a sufficient confession of the utter futility of the ceaseless exertions which for half a century the church had been making to enforce her discipline. Nor, perhaps, can her ill-success be wondered at when we consider how unworthy were the hands to which was frequently intrusted the administering of the law and the laxity of opinion which viewed the worst transgressions with indulgence. The archdeacons were the officials to whom was specially confided the supervision over sacerdotal morals, and yet, when a man occupying that responsible position, like Aldebert of Le Mans, publicly surrounded himself with a harem, and took no shame from the resulting crowd of offspring, so little did his conduct shock the sensibilities of the age that he was elevated to the episcopal chair, and only the stern voice of Ivo could be heard reproving the measureless scandal.[638]

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Equal looseness pervaded the monastic establishments. Hildebert, Bishop of Le Mans, made numerous fruitless attempts to restore discipline in the celebrated abbey of Euron, the monks of which indulged in the grossest licentiousness, and successfully defied his power until he was obliged to appeal to the papal legate for assistance.[639] Albero of Verdun, after fruitless attempts to reform the monastery of St. Paul, in his episcopal city, was obliged to turn out the monks by force and replace them with Premonstratensians, who were then in the full ardor of their new discipline.[640] The description which Ivo of Chartres gives of the convent of St. Fara shows a promiscuous and shameless prostitution, on the part of the nuns of that institution, even more degrading.[641] Instances like these could be almost indefinitely multiplied, such as that of St. Mary of Argentueil, reformed by Heloise, the great foundation of St. Denis, previous to the abbacy of Suger, and that of St. Gildas de Ruys in Britanny, as described by Abelard;[642] who, moreover, depicts the nuns of the period, in general terms, as abandoned to the most hideous licentiousness—those who were good-looking prostituting themselves for hire, those who were not so fortunate hiring men to gratify their passions, while the older ones, who had passed the age of lust, acted as procuresses.[643] Innocent III. may therefore be absolved from the charge of exaggeration when, in ordering the reform of the nuns of St. Agatha, he alludes to their convent as a brothel which infected with its evil reputation the whole country around it.[644] A contemporary chronicler records as a matter of special wonder that John of Salisbury, Bishop of Chartres, forced his canons to live in cloisters according to the Rule of St. Augustin; and he adds that, stimulated by this example, his uncle, John of Lisieux, and his successor, Geoffrey of Chartres, attempted the same reform, but without success.[645] It is true that some partial reform was effected by St. Bernard, but the austerities of the new orders founded by enthusiasts like him and St. Bruno, Robert d’Arbrissel and St. Norbert, did not cure the ineradicable vices of the older establishments.

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With such examples before us, it is not difficult to believe the truth of the denunciations with which the celebrated Raoul of Poitiers, whose fiery zeal gained for him the distinctive appellation of Ardens, lashed the vices of his fellows; nor can we conclude that it was mere rhetorical amplification which led him to declare that the clergy, who should be models for their flocks, were more shameless and abandoned than those whose lives it was their duty to guide.[646] Peter Cantor, indeed, deplores the superiority of the laity to the clergy as the greatest injury that afflicted the church.[647]

The natural result of such a state of morals was the prevalence of the hereditary principle against which the church had so long and so perseveringly striven. How completely this came to be regarded as a matter of course, is shown by a contemporary charter to the ancient monastery of Bèze, by which a priest named Germain, on entering it bestowed upon it his holding, consisting of certain specified tithes. This deed of gift is careful to declare the assent of the sons of the donor, showing that the title of the monastery would not have been considered good as against the claims of Germain’s descendants had they not joined in the conveyance.[648] Even as late as 1202 we find Innocent III. endeavoring to put a stop to the hereditary transmission of benefices in the bishopric of Toul, where it was practised to an extent which showed how little impression had as yet been made by the unceasing efforts of the last hundred and fifty years.[649]

When in the presence of so stiff-necked and evil disposed a generation, all human efforts seemed unavailing to secure respect for the canons of councils and decretals of popes, we need scarcely wonder if recourse was had to the miraculous agencies which so often proved efficacious in subduing the minds of men. Wondrous stories, accordingly, were not wanting, to show how offended Heaven sometimes gave in this world a foretaste of the wrath to come, awaiting those who lived in habitual disregard of the teachings of the church. Thus Peter the Venerable relates with much unction how a priest, who had abandoned himself to carnal indulgences, died amid the horrors of anticipated hell-fire. Visible to him alone, the demons chuckling around his death-bed heated the frying-pan of burning fat in which he was incontinently to be plunged, while a drop flying from the sputtering mass seared him to the bone, as a dreadful material sign that his agony was not the distempered imagining of a tortured conscience. A miracle equally significant wrung a confession of his weakness from the Dean of Minden in 1167.[650]

If Heaven thus miraculously manifested its anger, it was equally ready to welcome back the repentant sinner. In the first energy of the reforms of St. Bernard, a priest entered the abbey of Clairvaux. The rigor of the Cistercian discipline wore out his enthusiasm; he fled from the convent, returned to his parish, and, according to the general custom, (“sicut multis consuetudinis est”) took to himself a concubine, and soon saw a family increasing around him. The holy St. Bernard chanced to pass that way and accepted the priest’s warm hospitality without recognizing him. When the Saint was ready to depart in the morning he found that his host was absent performing his functions in the church, and, turning to one of the children, he sent him with a message to his father. Though the child had been a deaf-mute from birth, he promptly performed the errand. Roused by the miracle to a sense of his iniquity, the apostate rushed to the Saint, threw himself at his feet, confessed who he was, and entreated to be taken back to the monastery. St. Bernard touched by his repentance, promised to call for him on his return. To this the priest objected, on the ground that he might die during the interval, but was comforted with the assurance that if he died in such a frame of mind, he would be received by God as a monk. When St. Bernard returned, the repentant sinner was dead. Inquiring as to the ceremonies of his interment, he was told that the corpse had been buried in its priestly garments; whereupon he ordered the grave to be opened, and it was found arrayed, not in its funeral robes, but in full Cistercian habit and tonsure, showing that God had fulfilled the promises made in his name.[651]

Such was the condition of the Gallican church when, in 1119, Calixtus II. stepped from the archiepiscopal see of Vienne to the chair of St. Peter. His first great object was to end the quarrel with the empire on the subject of investitures, the vicissitudes of which rendered the papacy at the time of his accession an exile from Italy; his second was to carry out the reforms so long and so fruitlessly urged by his predecessors. To accomplish both these results he lost no time in summoning a great council to assemble at Rheims, and when it met in November, 1119, no less than fifteen archbishops, more than two hundred bishops, and numerous abbots responded to the call, representing Italy, France, Aquitaine, Spain, Germany, and England. The attempted reconciliation with the Emperor Henry V. failed, but the vices and corruptions of the church were vigorously attacked and sternly prohibited for the future. All commerce with concubines or wives was positively forbidden under pain of deprivation of benefice and function. No choice was granted the offender, for continuance in his sin after expulsion was punishable with excommunication; and the hereditary transmission of ecclesiastical dignities and property was strictly prohibited.[652] Whether it was the lofty character of the new pope, his royal blood and French extraction, or whether the solemnity of the occasion impressed men’s minds, it is not easy now to guess, but unquestionably these proceedings produced greater effect upon the Transalpine churches than any previous efforts of the Holy See. Calixtus was long regarded as the real author of sacerdotal celibacy in France, and his memory has been embalmed in the jingling verses which express the dissatisfaction and spite of the clergy, deprived of their ancestral privileges.

O bone Calliste, nunc clerus odit te;
Olim presbyteri poterant uxoribus uti;
Hoc detruxisti quando tu papa fuisti,
Ergo tuum festum nunquam celebratur honestum.[653]

Calixtus was not a man to rest half way, nor was he content with an empty promise of obedience. Under the pressure of his influence, the French prelates found themselves obliged to take measures for the vigorous enforcement of the canons. What those measures were, and the disposition with which they were received, may be understood from the resultant proceedings in Normandy. Geoffrey, Archbishop of Rouen, on leaving the council of Rheims, promptly called a synod, which assembled ere the month was out. The canon prohibiting female intercourse roused abhorrence and resistance among his clergy, and they inveighed loudly against the innovation. Geoffrey singled out one who rendered himself particularly prominent in the tumult, and caused him to be seized and cast into prison; then, leaving the church, he called in his guards, whom, with acute anticipation of trouble, he had posted in readiness. The rude soldiery fell upon the unarmed priests, some of whom promptly escaped; the rest, grasping what weapons they could find, made a gallant resistance, and succeeded in beating back the assailants. A mob speedily collected, which took sides with the archbishop. Assisted by this unexpected reinforcement, the guards again forced their way into the church, where they beat and maltreated the unfortunate clerks to their heart’s content; when, as the chronicler quaintly observes, the synod broke up in confusion, and the members fled without awaiting the archiepiscopal benediction.[654]

The immediate effect of the reformation thus inaugurated may perhaps be judged with sufficient accuracy by the story of Abelard and Heloise, which occurred about this period. That Abelard was a canon when that immortal love arose, was not, in such a state of morals, any impediment to the gratification of his passion, nor did it diminish the satisfaction of the canon Fulbert at the marriage of his niece, for such marriages, as yet, were valid by ecclesiastical law. In her marvellous self-abnegation, however, Heloise recognized that while the fact of his openly keeping a mistress, and acknowledging Astrolabius as his illegitimate son, would be no bar to his preferment, and would leave open to him a career equal to the wildest dreams of his ambition, yet to admit that he had sanctified their love by marriage, and had repaired, as far as possible, the wrong which he had committed, would ruin his prospects forever. In a worldly point of view it was better for him, as a churchman, to have the reputation of shameless immorality than that of a loving and pious husband; and this was so evidently a matter of course that she willingly sacrificed everything, and practised every deceit, that he might be considered a reckless libertine, who had refused her the only reparation in his power. Such was the standard of morals created by the church, and such were the conclusions inevitably drawn from them.

Nor were these conclusions erroneous, if we may judge by an incident of the period. An archdeacon of Angoulême had committed the unpardonable crime of seducing the abbess of a convent in the district under his charge. When the results of the amour could be no longer concealed, and the Count of Angoulême ventured to remonstrate with Gérard, the bishop of the diocese, that worthy prelate protected the offender by dismissing the charge with a filthy jest. Yet so far was Gérard from forfeiting the respect of his contemporaries by this laxity, that he was soon afterwards appointed papal legate.[655] Somewhat similar is the conclusion to be drawn from an occurrence about the same time in the diocese of Comminges, where a deacon was entangled in a guilty connection and was summoned with his paramour before the bishop, St. Bertrand. The reproof of the holy man reduced the deacon to contrition, but the woman was defiant. He escaped punishment, while she was seized by demons and expired on the spot.[656]

Yet there are evidences that the efforts of Calixtus, and of the fathers whose assembled authority was concentrated at Rheims, did not by any means eradicate a custom which had now become traditional. Soon afterwards King Louis-le-Gros, in granting a charter to the church of St. Cornelius at Compiègne, felt it necessary to accompany the privileges bestowed with a restriction, worded as though it were a novelty, to the effect that those in holy orders connected with the foundation should have no wives—a condition which shows how little confidence existed in the mind of the sagacious prince as to the efficacy of the canons so portentiously promulgated by the rulers, and so energetically resisted by the ruled.[657] That he was justified in this lack of confidence is evident when we see, further on in the century, an epistle of Alexander III., undated, but probably written about 1170, complaining of the canons of St. Ursmar and Antoin who openly kept concubines in their houses, while some of them did not hesitate to marry;[658] while as late as 1212 a council of Paris was obliged to adopt canons forbidding clerks married in the lower orders to hold parishes while retaining their wives, and suspending from benefice and functions all those who marry while in holy orders.[659]

XVII.

NORMAN ENGLAND.

We have already seen what was the condition of the Anglo-Saxon church when William the Manzer overran the island with his horde of adventurers. Making all due allowance for the fact that our authorities are mostly of the class whose inclination would lead them to misrepresent the conquered and to exaggerate the improvement attributable to the conquest, it cannot be doubted that the standard of morality was extremely low, and that the clergy were scarcely distinguishable from the laity in purity of life or devotion to their sacred calling.

If the reformatory efforts of the popes had not penetrated into the kingdom of Edward the Confessor, it was hardly to be expected that they would excite attention amid the turmoil attendant upon the settlement of the new order of political affairs and the division of the spoils among the conquerors. Accordingly, even the vigilance of Gregory VII. appears to have virtually overlooked the distant land of Britain, conscious, no doubt, that his efforts would be vain, even though the influence of Rome had been freely thrown upon the side of the Norman invader, and had been of no little assistance to him in his preparations for the desperate enterprise. In fact, though William saw fit to aid in the suppression of matrimony among the priests of his hereditary dominions, and had thereby earned the grateful praises of Gregory himself,[660] he does not seem to have regarded the morals of his new subjects as worthy of any special attention. It is true that in his system of transferring all power from the subject to the dominant race, when Saxon bishops were to be ejected and their places filled with his own creatures, it was necessary for him to effect his purpose in a canonical way, and to procure the degradation of his victims by the church itself, as it was impossible for him to lay unhallowed hands upon their consecrated heads, or to remove prelates from their sees on questions of mere political expediency. To accomplish this, the scandals and irregularities of their lives afforded the promptest and most effective excuse, and it was freely used. The vigor with which these changes were carried into effect is visible in the synods of Winchester and Windsor in 1070, where numerous bishops and abbots were deprived on various pleas; and the character of the prelates removed may be assumed from the description of the Bishop of Litchfield (Chester) by Lanfranc, in a letter of the same year to Alexander II., where his public maintenance of wife and children is alleged, in addition to other crimes of which he was accused.[661] Though a puritan, like Lanfranc, bred in the asceticism of the Abbey of Bec, might seek to enforce the canons in an individual case, as when he orders Arfastus, Bishop of Thetford, to degrade a deacon who refused to part with his wife,[662] yet that no general effort was made to effect a reform in the ranks of the clergy is evident from an epistle addressed in 1071 to William by Alexander II., in which, while praising his zeal in suppressing the heresy of simony, and exhorting him to fresh exertion in the good work, no mention whatever is made of the kindred error of Nicolitism, which is usually inseparable in the papal diatribes of the period.[663] Equally conclusive is the fact that when, in 1075, Lanfranc held a national council in London for the purpose of reforming the English church, canons were passed to restrain simony, to prevent incestuous marriages, and to effect other needful changes, but nothing was said respecting sacerdotal marriage, at that time the principal object of Gregory’s vigorous measures.[664]

How thoroughly, indeed, clerical marriage and the hereditary descent of benefices was received as legitimate by common consent is manifested by a case quoted by Camden from the MS. records of the Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul of Shrewsbury. Under the Conqueror, Roger de Montgomery in founding that house bestowed upon it the church of St. Gregory, subject to the life estate of the canons then holding it, whose prebends as they died should fall within the gift of the monks. The children of the canons, however, disputed the gift, claimed that they had a right to their fathers’ holdings, and actually gave rise to a great lawsuit to defend their position.[665]

* * * * *

The first steps to check the irregularities of the priesthood appear to have been taken in 1076, at the council of Winchester, and the extreme tenderness there displayed by Lanfranc for the weakness of his flock shows how necessary was the utmost caution in treating a question evidently new, and one which deprived the English clergy of a privilege to which no taint of guilt had previously been attached. We have seen by the instance related above that when Lanfranc could act according to his own convictions, he was inclined to enforce the absolute rule of celibacy, and we may therefore conclude that on this occasion he was overruled by the convictions of his brother prelates that it was impossible to obtain obedience. All that the council would venture upon was a general declaration against the wives of men in orders, and it permitted parish priests to retain their consorts, contenting itself with forbidding future marriages, and enjoining on the bishops that they should thereafter ordain no one in the diaconate or priesthood without a pledge not to marry in future.[666]

Such legislation could only be irritating and inconclusive. It abandoned the principle for which Rome had been contending, and thus its spirit of worldly temporizing deprived it of all respect and influence. Obedience to it could be therefore invoked on no higher ground than that of an arbitrary and unjustifiable command, and accordingly it received so small a share of attention that when, some twenty-six years later, the holy Anselm, at the great council of London in 1102, endeavored to enforce the reform, the restrictions which he ordered were exclaimed against as unheard of novelties, which, being impossible to human nature, could only result in indiscriminate vice, bringing disgrace upon the church.[667] The tenor of the canons of this council, indeed, proves that the previous injunctions had been utterly disregarded. At the same time they manifest a much stronger determination to eradicate the evil, though they are still far more lenient than the contemporary Continental legislation. No archdeacon, priest, or deacon could marry, nor, if married, could retain his wife. If a subdeacon, after professing chastity, married, he was to be subjected to the same regulation. No priest, as long as he was involved in such unholy union, could celebrate mass; if he ventured to do so, no one was to listen to him; and he was, moreover, to be deprived of all legal privileges. A profession of chastity was to be exacted at ordination to the subdiaconate and to the higher grades; and, finally, the children of priests were forbidden to inherit their father’s churches.[668]

One symptom of weakness is observable in all this. The council apparently did not venture to prescribe any ecclesiastical punishment for the infraction of the rules thus laid down. If this arose from timidity, St. Anselm did not share it, for, when he proceeded to put the canons in practice, we find him threatening his contumacious ecclesiastics with deprivation for persistence in their irregularities. A letter of instruction from him to William, Archdeacon of Canterbury, shows the earnestness with which he entered upon the reform, and also affords an instructive insight into the difficulties of the enterprise, and the misery which the forcible sundering of family ties caused among those who had never doubted the legality and propriety of their marriages. Some ecclesiastics of rank sent their discarded wives to manors at a distance from their dwellings, and these St. Anselm directs shall not be molested if they will promise to hold no intercourse except in the presence of legitimate witnesses. Some priests were afraid to proceed to extremities with their wives, and for these weak brethren grace is accorded until the approaching Lent, provided they do not attempt meanwhile to perform their sacred functions, and can find substitutes of undoubted chastity to minister in their places. The kindred of the unfortunate women apparently endeavored to avert the blow by furious menaces against those who should render obedience, and these instigators of evil are to be restrained by threats of excommunication.[669] Another letter to the Bishop of Hereford, who had applied for instructions on the subject, directs him to replace recalcitrant priests with monks and to stir up the laity to drive from the land the obstinate parsons and their wives.[670] In the enforcement of these reforms he seemed to meet with questions for which he was not prepared, for about this time we find him seeking instructions from Paschal II. on several knotty points: whether a priest living with his wife can be allowed to administer the viaticum at the death-bed in the absence of one professing continence; and what is to be done with him if he refuses his ministration on the ground that he is not allowed to celebrate mass. Paschal replies, sensibly enough, that it is better to have the ministrations of an unchaste priest than to die unhouselled, and that a priest refusing his offices under such circumstances is to be punished as a homicide of souls. This abandoned the Hildebrandine theory and practice, and Anselm was more consistent when he assumed that a layman could perform baptism in preference to an unchaste priest.[671]