Chapter VIII: Part 8

In the revolution which thus may date its successful commencement at this period the two foremost figures are Damiani and Hildebrand. Damiani the monk, with no further object than the abolition of simony and the enforcement of the austerities which he deemed indispensable to the salvation of the individual and to the purity of the church, looked not beyond the narrow circle of his daily life, and sought merely to level mankind by the measure of his own stature. Hildebrand, the far-seeing statesman, could make use of Damiani and his tribe, perhaps equally fervent in his belief that the asceticism of his fellow laborer was an acceptable offering to God, but yet with ulterior views of transcendently greater importance. In his grand scheme of a theocratic empire, it became an absolute prerequisite that the church should hold undivided sway over its members; that no human affection should render their allegiance doubtful, but that their every thought and action should be devoted to the common aggrandizement; that they should be separated from the people by an impassable barrier, and should wield an influence which could only be obtained by those who were recognized as superior to the weaknesses of common humanity; that the immense landed possessions of the church should remain untouched and constantly increasing as the common property of all, and not be subjected to the incessant dilapidations inseparable from uxorious or paternal affections at a time when the restraints of law and of public opinion could not be brought to bear with effect. In short, if the church was to assume and maintain the position to which it was entitled by the traditions of the canon law and of the False Decretals, it must be a compact and mutually supporting body, earning by its self-inflicted austerities the reverence to which it laid claim, and not be diverted from its splendid goal by worldly allurements or carnal indulgences and preoccupations. Such was the vision to the realization of which Hildebrand devoted his commanding talents and matchless force of will. The temporal success was at length all that he could have anticipated. If the spiritual results were craft, subtlety, arrogance, cruelty, and sensuality, hidden or cynical, it merely proves that his confidence in the strength of human nature to endure the intoxicating effects of irresponsible power was misplaced. Meanwhile he labored with Damiani at the preliminary measures of his enterprise, and together they bent their energies to procure the enforcement of the neglected rules of discipline.

The new pope, Nicholas II. by name, entered unreservedly into their views. Apparently taught by experience the fruitlessness of additional legislation when the existing canons were amply sufficient, but their execution impossible through the negligence or collusion of the ecclesiastical authorities, he assembled, in 1059, a council of a hundred and thirteen bishops, in which he adopted the novel and hazardous expedient of appealing to the laity, and of rendering them at once the judges and executioners of their pastors. A canon was promulgated forbidding all Christians to be present at the mass of any priest known to keep a concubine or female in his house.[475] This probably remained, like its predecessors, a dead letter for the present, but we shall see what confusion it excited when it was revived and put effectually in force by Gregory VII. some fifteen years later. Meanwhile I may observe that it trenched very nearly on the Donatist heresy that the sacrament was polluted in polluted hands, and it required the most careful word-splitting to prevent the faithful from drawing a conclusion so natural.[476]

In addition to this, the council ordered, under pain of excommunication, that no priest who openly took a concubine (or rather a wife), or who did not forthwith separate himself from such a connection already existing, should dare to perform any sacred function, or enjoy any portion of ecclesiastical revenue.[477] Hildebrand, who was all-powerful at the papal court—his enemies accused him of keeping Nicholas like an ass in the stable, feeding him to do his work—has the credit of procuring this legislation.[478] Nicholas, whether acting under the impulsion of Hildebrand and Damiani, or from his own convictions, followed up the reform with vigor. During the same year he visited Southern Italy, and by his decided proceedings at the council of Melfi endeavored to put an end to the sacerdotal marriages which were openly practised everywhere throughout that region, and the Bishop of Trani was deposed as an example and warning to others.[479] Damiani was also intrusted with a mission to Milan for the same purpose, of which more anon.

Nor did Nicholas confine his efforts to Italy. His legates in other countries endeavored to enforce the canons, and apparently had little difficulty in obtaining the adoption of stringent regulations—the more easily acceded to that they were utterly disregarded. Thus his legate Stephen, early in 1060, held councils at Vienne and Tours, where the prohibitions of the synod of Rome were agreed to, and those who did not at once abandon either their women or their benefices were declared to be degraded forever, without hope of restitution.[480]

In practice, however, all these measures of reform were scarcely felt except by the lower grades of the ecclesiastical body. The prelates, whose lives were equally flagitious, and far more damaging to the reputation and purity of the church, were enabled virtually to escape. The storm passed beneath them, and with few exceptions persecuted only those who were powerless to oppose anything but passive resistance. The uncompromising zeal of Damiani was not likely to let a temporizing lenity so misplaced and so fatal to the success of the cause remain unrebuked; and he calls to it the attention of Nicholas, stigmatizing the toleration of episcopal sins as an absurdity no longer to be endured.[481] The occasion of this exhortation was a commission intrusted by the pope to Damiani, to hold a friendly conference with the prelates, and to induce them to reform their evil ways without forcing the authorities to the scandal of public proceedings. The fear of such results and the fiery eloquence of Damiani were alike unheeded. The bishops confessed themselves unequal to the task of preserving their chastity, and indifferent to the remote contingency of punishment which had so often been ineffectually threatened that its capacity for exciting apprehension had become exhausted. With all the coarseness of monastic asceticism, Damiani describes the extent of the evil, and its public and unblushing exhibition; the families which grew and increased around the prelates, the relationships which were ostentatiously acknowledged, and the scandals perpetrated in the church of God. In the boldest strain he then incites the pope to action, blames his misplaced clemency, and urges the degradation of all offenders, irrespective of rank, pointing out the impossibility of reforming the priesthood if the bishops are allowed full and undisturbed license.[482]

This shows that even if the machinery of ecclesiastical authority was at work to correct the errors of the plebeian clergy, it was only local and sporadic in its efforts. In some favored dioceses, perhaps, blessed with a puritan bishop, the decrees of the innumerable councils may have been put in force, but in the great body of the church the evil remained unaltered. During this very year, 1060, Nicholas again found it necessary to promulgate a decretal ordering priests to quit their wives or resign their position, and this in terms which prove how utterly futile had been all previous fulminations. He also manifested some consideration for temporal necessities by allowing the discarded wives to live with their husbands under proper supervision.[483]

How complete was the disregard of these commands is well illustrated by an epistle which about this time Damiani addressed to the chaplains of Godfrey the Bearded, Duke of Tuscany. From this we learn that these prominent ecclesiastics openly defended sacerdotal marriage, pronounced it canonical, and were ready to sustain their position in controversy.[484] As Duke Godfrey, with the pious Beatrice his wife, was the leading potentate in Italy, and as his territories were in close proximity to Rome itself, it is evident that the reform so laboriously prosecuted for the previous ten or fifteen years had thus far accomplished little.

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Parties were now beginning to define themselves. The reformers, irritated by their want of success, were for more stringent measures, and when the canonical punishments of degradation and excommunication were derided and defied, they were ready, as we shall see hereafter at Milan, to have recourse to the secular arm, and to invoke the aid of sword and lance. The clergy, finding that passive resistance did not wear out the zeal of their persecutors, that the storm promised to be endless, and warned by the fate of the Milanese, were prepared to adopt an aggressive policy, and to seek their safety in revolutionizing the central authority. Perhaps the bishops, whose silence had been secured by the toleration so distasteful to Damiani, began to feel the pressure which he was bringing to bear upon them, and to look forward with apprehension to the unknown evils of the future. If so, they were ready to make common cause with their flocks, and throw into the scale the immense influence due to their sacred character and temporal power. Thus only the occasion was wanting for an open rupture, and that occasion was furnished by the death of Nicholas in July, 1061.

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The factions of the day had alienated a powerful portion of the Roman barons from the papal party as represented by Hildebrand. They at once united with the Lombard clergy in addressing a deputation to the young Henry IV., who was still under the tutelage of his mother Agnes, offering him a golden crown and the title of Patrician. The empire was not indisposed to vindicate its old prerogatives, recently annulled by the initial act of Nicholas limiting the right of papal election to the Roman clergy. The overtures were therefore welcomed, and while Anselmo, Bishop of Lucca, was chosen in Rome, October 1st, 1061, assuming the name of Alexander II., on the 28th of the same month a rival election took place in Germany, by which Cadalus, Bishop of Parma, was invested with the perilous dignity of Antipope, and divided the allegiance of Christendom under the title of Honorius II. At least two Italian bishops lent their suffrages to these proceedings—those of Vercelli and Piacenza—as representatives of the Lombard interest; and, if the testimony of Damiani is to be believed, they were men whose dissolute lives fitly represented the license which the reformers asserted to be the principal object of the schismatics.[485]

The married or concubinary clergy were now no longer merely isolated criminals, to be punished more or less severely for infractions of discipline. They were a united body, who boldly proclaimed the correctness of their course, and defended themselves by argument as well as by political intrigues and military operations. They thus became offenders of a far deeper dye, for the principles of the church led irrevocably to the conclusion, paradoxical as it may seem, that he who was guilty of immorality, knowing it to be wrong, was far less criminal than he who married, believing it to be right.[486] What before had been a transgression, to be redeemed by penance and repentance, became heresy—an awful word in those fierce times. The odious name of Nicolites was speedily fastened on the schismatics, and the Apocalyptic denunciations of St. John were universally held applicable to them. According to Damiani, they supported Cadalus in the expectation that his success would lead to a modification in the discipline of the church, by which the license to marry would be accorded to all ecclesiastics.[487]

That support was efficient, and it was shortly needed. A revolution suddenly occurred in the politics of Germany. Some dissatisfied nobles and prelates conspired to obtain power by overthrowing the regency of the dowager Empress Agnes. A stroke of daring treachery put them in possession of the person of the boy-king, and the arch-conspirator Hanno of Cologne earned his canonization by reversing at once the policy of the previous administration. In a solemn council held at Osber in 1062, the pretensions of Cadalus were repudiated, and Alexander II. was recognized as pope. Still Cadalus did not despair, but with the aid of the Lombard clergy he raised forces and marched on Rome, relying on his adherents within the walls. They admitted him into the Leonine city, where he threw himself into the impregnable castle of San Angelo. Immediately besieged by the Romans, he resolutely held out for two years, in spite of incredible privations, but at length he sought safety in flight with but a single follower. Meanwhile his party, as a political body, had become broken up, and though Henry, Archbishop of Ravenna, still adhered to him, he was powerless to maintain his claims. Finally, in 1067, Alexander held a council at Mantua, cleared his election of imputed irregularity, and was universally recognized.

During this period, the “Nicolitan” clergy by no means abandoned their tenets. In 1063, as soon as he could feel reasonably assured of his eventual success, Alexander assembled more than a hundred bishops in council at Rome, where he emphatically repeated the canon promulgated in 1059 by Nicholas II., which was not only a proclamation of his fidelity to the cause of reform, but an admission that the legislation of his predecessor had thus far proved fruitless. Damiani, also, labored unceasingly with argument and exhortation, but the vehemence of his declamation only shows how widely extended and how powerful the heresy still was. We shall see hereafter that on a mission to Milan, to reduce the married clergy to obedience, he barely escaped with his life; and on another to Lodi, with the same object, the schismatics, after exhausting argument, in support of priestly marriage, threatened him with arms in their hands, and again his saintly dignity came near being enhanced by the honors of martyrdom.[488] Even the restriction upon second marriages was occasionally lost sight of, and such most irregular unions were celebrated with all the ceremony and rejoicings that were customary among laymen in their public nuptials.[489] Yet, notwithstanding the pious fervor which habitually stigmatized the wives as harlots and the husbands as unbridled adulterers, Damiani himself allows us to see that the marriage relation was preserved with thorough fidelity on the part of the women, and was compatible with learning, decency, and strict attention to religious duty by the men. Urging the wives to quit their husbands, he finds it necessary to combat their scruples at breaking what was to them a solemn engagement, fortified with all legal provisions and religious rites, but which he pronounces a frivolous and meaningless ceremony.[490] So, in deploring the habitual practice of marriage among the Piedmontese clergy, he regards it as the only blot upon men who otherwise appeared to him as a chorus of angels, and as shining lights in the church.[491]

Such considerations as these, however, had no influence in diminishing Damiani’s zeal. To Cunibert, Bishop of Turin, whose spiritual flock he thus so much admired, he addressed, about 1065, an epistle reproaching him with his criminal laxity in permitting such transgressions in his diocese, and urging him strenuously to undertake the reform which was so necessary to the purity of the church.[492] Cunibert apparently did not respond to the exhortation, for Damiani proceeded to appeal to the temporal sovereign of Savoy and Piedmont, Adelaide, widow of Humbert-aux-Blanches-Mains, who was then regent. In an elaborate epistle he urges her to attack the wives, while her bishops shall coerce the husbands; but if the latter neglect that duty, he invites her to interpose with the secular power, and thus avert from her house and her country the Divine wrath which must else overtake them.[493] That so strict a churchman as Damiani should not only tolerate but advise the exercise of temporal authority over ecclesiastics, and this, too, in a matter purely ecclesiastical, shows how completely the one idea had become dominant in his mind, since he was willing to sacrifice to it the privileges and immunities for which the church had been struggling, by fair means and foul, for six centuries. It would appear, moreover, that this was not the first time that potentates had been allowed, or had assumed, to exercise power in the matter, for Damiani cautions the Countess Adelaide not to follow the example of some evil-minded magnates and make the pretence of reformation an excuse for spoiling the church.[494]

The zeal of the indefatigable Damiani continued to be as unconquerable as the stubbornness of his adversaries, and some two years later we find him again at work. The date of 1067 is generally attributed to a letter which he addressed to Peter, Cardinal Archpriest of the Lateran, stimulating him to renewed exertions in extirpating this foul disgrace to the church, and arguing at great length in reply to the reasons and excuses with which the clerical Benedicks continued to defend their vile heresy.[495]

In all this controversy, it is instructive to observe how Damiani shows himself to be the pure model of monkish asceticism, untainted with any practical wisdom and unwarped by any earthly considerations. When Hildebrand struggled for sacerdotal celibacy, the shrewdness of the serpent guided the innocence of the dove, and he fought for what he knew would prove a weapon of tremendous power in securing for the church the theocracy which was his pure ideal of human institutions. Not a thought of the worldly advantages consequent upon the reform appears to have crossed the mind of Damiani. To him it was simply a matter of conscience that the ministers of Christ should be adorned with the austere purity through which alone lay the path to salvation. Accordingly the arguments which he employs in his endless disputations carefully avoid the practical reasons which were the principal motive for enforcing celibacy. His main reliance is on the assumption that, as Christ was born of a virgin, so he should be served and the Eucharist be handled only by virgins; and his subsidiary logic consists of mystical interpretations of passages in the Jewish history of the Old Testament. Phineas, of course, affords a favorite and oft-repeated argument and illustration. Allusions to Ahimelech can also be understood, but the reasoning based upon the tower of Sichem, the linen girdle of Jeremiah, and the catastrophe of Cain and Abel is convincing only as to the unworldliness of the recluse of Avellana.

Notwithstanding all his learning and eloquence, the authority of his name, the lustre of his example, and the tireless efforts of his fiery energy, the cause to which he had devoted himself did not advance. The later years of Alexander’s pontificate afford unmistakable indications that the puritan party were becoming discouraged; that they were disposed to abate some of their demands, and were ready to make concessions to the refractory spirit which refused obedience in both principle and practice. Thus, in 1068, a decretal addressed to the authorities of Dalmatia merely threatens suspension until satisfaction is made by those who marry in orders or who refuse to abandon their wives.[496] A somewhat different position was taken with the Venetians. An epistle to the Patriarch of Grado orders the deprivation of those who live in open and undisguised concubinage, but significantly confines its penalties to notorious infractions of the rule, and leaves to God the investigation of such as may be prudently concealed.[497] This manifests a willingness to temporize with offenders whose respect for papal authority would induce them to abstain from defiant disobedience—a pusillanimous tempting of hypocrisy to which the bolder Hildebrand could never have given his consent. A principle of great importance, moreover, was abandoned when, in 1070, Alexander assented to the consecration of the bishop-elect of Le Mans, who was the son of a priest;[498] and when he stated that this was not a precedent for the future, but merely a concession to the evil of the times, his laxity was the more impressive, since he thus admitted his violation of the canons. He subsequently even enlarged this special permission into a general rule, with merely the saving clause that the proposed incumbent should be more worthy than his competitors.[499] Alexander, moreover, maintained in force the ancient rule that no married man could assume monastic vows unless his wife gave her free consent, and entered a convent at the same time.[500] We shall see that in little more than half a century the progress of sacerdotalism rendered the sacrament of marriage powerless in comparison with the vows of religion.

Alexander clearly had not in him the stuff of which persecutors and reformers are made, as, indeed, his merciful liberality in extending over the Jews throughout Europe the protection of the Holy See would sufficiently demonstrate. At length he, too, was released from earthly cares, and on the day after his decease, on April 22, 1073, his place was filled by the man who of all others was the most perfect impersonation of the aggressive churchmanship of the age.

Before proceeding, however, to sketch the stormy pontificate of Hildebrand in its relation to our subject, I must pause to relate the episode of the Milanese clergy. The struggle in that city to enforce the ascetic principles of the reformers gives so perfect an inside view of the reformation itself, and its various stages have been handed down to us with so much minuteness by contemporary writers, that it deserves to be treated by itself as a disconnected whole.

XIII.

MILAN.

In the primitive ages of the church, Milan was at the head of the Northern Vicariate of Italy, as Rome was of the Southern. When the preponderance of the latter city became established, the glory of St. Ambrose shed a lustre over his capital which the true Milanese fondly regarded as rivalling that of St. Peter and the superiority of Rome was grudgingly admitted. In the eleventh century, Milan is found occupying the chief place among the Lombard cities, virtually governed by its archbishop, whose temporal as well as spiritual power rendered his position one of great influence and importance. Yet even at that early period, the republican spirit was already developed, and the city was divided into factions, as the nobles and citizens struggled for alternate supremacy.

Milan was moreover the headquarters of the hidden Manichæism which, after surviving centuries of persecution in the East, was now secretly invading Europe through Bulgaria, and had already attracted the vigilant attention of the church in localities widely separated. Its earliest open manifestation was in Toulouse, in 1018; at Orleans, in 1023, King Robert the Pious caused numerous sectaries to expiate their heresy at the stake, where their unshrinking zeal excited general wonder. At Cambrai and Liége similar measures of repression became necessary in 1025; the Emperor Henry III. endeavored at Goslar, in 1052, to put an end to them with the gallows; and traces of them are to be found at Agen about the year 1100; at Soissons in 1114; at Toulouse in 1118; at Cologne in 1146; at Périgord in 1147; in England in 1166, until we can trace their connection with the Albigenses, whose misfortunes fill so black a page in the history of the thirteenth century. Calling themselves Cathari, and stigmatized by true believers under various opprobrious names, of which the commonest was Paterins, their doctrines were those of the ancient Manichæans, their most characteristic tenets being belief in the dualistic principle, and the abhorrence of animal food and of marriage.[501] The prevalence of these dogmas among the Milanese populace furnishes a probable explanation of much that took place during the contest between Rome and the married priests.

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Eriberto di Arzago, who filled the archiepiscopal chair of Milan from 1019 to 1045, was one of the most powerful princes of Italy, and though unsuccessful in the revolt which he organized in 1034 against the Emperor Conrad the Salic, his influence was scarcely diminished after his return from the expulsion which punished his rebellion.[502] At the time of his death, Milan was passing through one of its accustomed civil dissensions. The Motta, or body of burgesses, had quarrelled with the nobles and archbishop, and, under the leadership of an apostate noble named Lanzo, had expelled them from the city—an ejection which was followed by an unsuccessful siege of three years. At length, in 1044, Lanzo obtained promise of armed assistance from Henry III., which reduced the nobles to subjection, and they returned in peace. Eriberto died the following year, and the election of his successor caused great excitement. Erlembaldo, the popular chief (dominus populi), called the citizens together to nominate candidates, and induced them to select four. One of these was Landolfo Cotta, a notary of the sacred palace, who was brother to Erlembaldo; another was Anselmo di Badagio, Cardinal of the Milanese church, subsequently Bishop of Lucca, and finally, as we have seen, pope, under the name of Alexander II.; the third was Arialdo, of the family of the capitanei of Carinate; and the fourth was Otho, another Milanese cardinal. These four were sent to the Emperor, for him to make his selection; but the faction of the nobles despatched a rival in the person of Guido di Valate, who already held the appointment of secretary from the emperor, and who had recommended himself by zealous services, which now claimed their reward. Henry gave the coveted dignity to Guido, to the great surprise and indignation of the popular nominees. Their expostulations were unavailing, and both parties returned—Guido to assume an office harassed by the opposition of the people on whom he had been forced, and the disappointed candidates to brood over the wrongs which had deprived them of the splendid prize.[503] We shall see how thoroughly three of those candidates avenged themselves.

It is observable from this transaction that Milan was completely independent of Rome. The sovereignty of the distant emperor, absorbed in the dissensions of Germany, could press but lightly on the powerful and turbulent city. Rome was not even thought of in creating the archbishop, whose spiritual and temporal power were granted by the imperial investiture. But when, soon after, the German popes had rescued the papacy from the contempt into which it had fallen, its domination over Milan became a necessary step in its progress to universal supremacy, and lent additional vigor to the desires of the reformers to restore the forgotten discipline of the church in a city so influential.

Marriage, at this time, was a universal privilege of the Milanese clergy. If we may believe the testimony of one who was almost a contemporary, the candidate for holy orders was strictly examined as to his learning and morals. These being satisfactory, he was, if unmarried, asked if he had strength to remain so, and if he replied in the negative, he could forthwith betroth himself and marry with the ordinary legal and religious ceremonies. Second marriages were not allowed, and the Levitical law as to the virginity of the bride was strictly observed. Those who remained single were objects of suspicion, while those who performed their sacred functions duly, and brought up their families in the fear of God, were respected and obeyed by their flocks as pastors should be, and were eligible to the episcopate. Concubinage was regarded as a heinous offence, and those guilty of it were debarred from all promotion[504]—in this reversing the estimate placed upon the respective infractions of discipline by the Roman church.

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The see of Lucca consoled Anselmo di Badagio for the failure of his aspirations towards the archiepiscopate, and the other disappointed candidates for a while cherished their mortification in silence. Landolfo and Arialdo were inclined to asceticism, and a visit which Anselmo paid to Milan stimulated them to undertake a reform which could not but prove a source of endless trouble to their successful competitor Guido. Leaders of the people, and masters of the art of inflaming popular passion, they caused assemblies to be held in which they inveighed in the strongest terms against the irregularities of the clergy, whose sacraments they stigmatized as the foulest corruption, whose churches they denounced as dens of prostitution, and whose property they assumed to be legitimate prey for the spoiler. Guido in vain endeavored to repress the agitation thus produced, argued in favor of the married clergy, and was sustained by the party of the nobles. In a city like Milan, it was not difficult to excite a tumult. Besides the influence of the perennial factions, ever eager to tear each other’s throats, the populace were ready to yield to the eloquence of the bold reformers. The Manichæan heresy had taken deep root among the masses, who, afraid to declare their damnable doctrines openly, were rejoiced in any way to undermine the authority of the priesthood, and whose views were in accordance with those now broached on the subject of marriage.[505] While these motives would urge forward the serious portion of the citizens, the unthinking rabble would naturally be prompt to embrace any cause which promised a prospect of disturbance and plunder. Party lines were quickly drawn, and if the reformers were able to revive a forgotten scandal by stigmatizing their opponents as Nicolites, the party of the clergy and the nobles had their revenge. The meetings of Landolfo and Arialdo were held in a spot called Pataria, whence they soon became known as Paterins—a term which for centuries continued to be of fearful import, as synonymous with Manichæans.[506]

Matters could not long remain in this condition. During an altercation in the church of San Celso, a hot-headed priest assaulted Arialdo, whom Landolfo extricated from the crowd at considerable personal risk. Thereupon the reformers called the people together in the theatre; inflammatory addresses speedily wrought up the popular passions to ungovernable fury; the priests were turned out of the churches, their houses sacked, their persons maltreated, and they were finally obliged to purchase a suspension of oppression by subscribing a paper binding themselves to chastity. The nobles, far from being able to protect the clergy, finding themselves also in danger, sought safety in flight; while the rabble, having exhausted the support derivable from intramural plunder, spread over the country and repeated in the villages the devastations of priestly property which they had committed in Milan.[507]

The suffering clergy applied for relief to the bishops of the province, and finding none, at length appealed to Rome itself. Stephen IX., who then filled the papal chair, authorized the archbishop to hold a synod for the purpose of restoring peace. It met, in the early part of 1058, at Fontaneto, near Novara. The prelates were unanimous in sustaining their clergy, and the reformers Landolfo and Arialdo were excommunicated without a dissentient voice. They disregarded the interdict, however, redoubled their efforts with the people, whom they bound by a solemn oath to adhere to the sacred cause, and even forced the priests to join in the compact. Arialdo then proceeded to Rome, where he developed in full the objects of the movement, and pointed out that it would not only result in restoring purity and discipline, but might also be used to break down the dangerous independence of the Ambrosian church and reduce it to the subjection which it owed and refused to the Apostolic see. The arguments were convincing, the excommunication was removed, and Arialdo returned to his work with zeal more fiery than ever.[508]

Meanwhile the nobles had taken heart and offered armed resistance to the Patarian faction, resulting in incessant fights and increasing bloodshed. Nicholas II., who by this time had succeeded Stephen IX., sent Hildebrand and Anselmo di Badagio on a mission to Milan, with instructions to allay the passions which led to such deplorable results, and, while endeavoring to uphold the rules of discipline, to pacify if possible the people, and to arrange such a basis of reconciliation as might restore peace to the distracted church. The milder Anselmo might perhaps have succeeded in this errand of charity, but the unbending Hildebrand was not likely to listen to aught but unconditional subjection to the canons and to Rome. The quarrel therefore waxed fiercer and deadlier; the turmoil became more inextricable as daily combats embittered both parties, and the missionaries departed, leaving Guido with scarcely a shadow of authority over his rebellious city, and the seeds of discord more widely scattered and more deeply planted than ever.[509]

Again, in 1059, a papal legation was sent with full authority to force the recalcitrant clergy to submission. Anselmo again returned to his native city, accompanied this time by Peter Damiani. Their presence and their pretensions caused a fearful tumult, in which Damiani and Landolfo were in deadly peril.[510] An assembly was at length held, where the legates asserted the papal preëminence by taking the place of honor, to the general indignation of the Milanese, who did not relish the degradation of their archbishop before the representatives of a foreign prelate. The question in debate hinged upon the authority of Rome, which was stoutly denied by the Lombards.[511] Peter, in a long oration, showed that Rome had christianized the rest of Western Europe, and that St. Ambrose himself had invoked the papal power as superior to his own. The pride of the Ambrosian church gave way, and the supremacy of St. Peter was finally acknowledged. This granted, the rest followed as a matter of course, and the heretical errors of simony and marriage had to be abandoned. Peter thought himself merciful in his triumph; where all alike were guilty, punishment for the past became impossible, and he restricted himself to provisions for the future. The archbishop and his clergy signed a paper expressing their contrition in the most humiliating terms, and binding themselves and their successors, under penalty of eternal damnation, to render simony thereafter unknown. As regards the Nicolitan heresy, a significant caution was observed, for its extirpation was only promised in as far as it should be found possible;[512] and when Arnolfo, the nephew of Guido, swore for his uncle that in future monks should be the only persons ordained without a preliminary oath that no money had been paid or received, it is observable that the maintenance of chastity was discreetly passed over. Then the archbishop and his clergy swore, in the hands of Damiani at the altar, their faithful observance of the pledge to destroy the simoniacal and Nicolitan heresies, under penalties the most tremendous; and Guido prostrating himself on the ground, humbly deplored his negligence in the past, imposed on himself a penitence of a hundred years (redeemable at a certain sum per annum), and vowed a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella to atone for his sin. Not content with this, Damiani mounted the pulpit and made both priests and people take an oath to extirpate both heresies; and the clergy, before being reconciled to the church and restored to the positions which they had forfeited by their contumacy, were forced individually under oath to anathematize all heresies, and especially those of simony and marriage. A penance was imposed on every one involved in simony—no allusion being made to those who were married; some, who were manifestly unfit for their sacred duties, were suspended, and the legates returned, after triumphantly accomplishing the objects of their mission.[513]

If Damiani fancied that argumentative subtlety and paper promises, even though solemnly given in the name of God and all his saints, were to settle a question involving the fiercest passions of men, the cloistered saint knew little of human nature. The pride of the Milanese was deeply wounded by a subjection to Rome, unknown for many generations, and ill endured by men who gloried in the ancient dignity of the Ambrosian church. When, therefore, in 1061, their townsman, Anselmo di Badagio, was elevated from the episcopate of Lucca to that of the Holy See, Milan, in common with the rest of Lombardy, eagerly embraced the cause of the anti-pope Cadalus. One of Anselmo’s earliest acts as pope was to address a letter to the Milanese, affectionately exhorting them to amendment, and expressing a hope that his pontificate was to witness the extinction of the heresies which had distracted and degraded the church.[514] He could scarcely have entertained the confidence which he expressed, for though Landolfo and Arialdo endeavored, with unabated zeal, to enforce the canons, the Nicolitan faction, regardless of the pledges given to Damiani, maintained the contest with equal stubbornness. Landolfo, on a mission to Rome, was attacked at Piacenza, wounded, and forced to return. Soon after this he was prostrated by a pulmonary affection, lost his voice, and died after a lingering illness of two years.[515] The Paterins, thus deprived of their leader, found another in the person of his brother, Erlembaldo, just then returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Gifted with every knightly accomplishment, valiant in war, sagacious in council, of a commanding presence, and endowed with eloquence to sway the passions of the multitude, he was the impersonation of a popular leader; while, in the cause to which he was now called, his deep religious convictions lent an attraction which was heightened by an unpardonable personal wrong—for, early in life, he had been betrothed to a young girl, who fell under the seductive wiles of an unprincipled priest. Yet Erlembaldo did not embark in civil strife without a hesitation which reflects honor on his character. He refused, at first, but was persuaded to seek counsel of the pope. Arialdo accompanied him to Rome, and urged Alexander to adopt him as military leader in the war against sacerdotal marriage. Alexander, too, shrank from the responsibility of authorizing war in such a cause, but Arialdo sought the assistance of Hildebrand, and the scruples of the pope were removed by the prospect of asserting the authority of Rome. When Erlembaldo heard the commands of the Vicegerent of God, and received a sacred banner to be borne through the expected battles, he could no longer doubt as to his duty. He accepted the mission, and to it he devoted his life.[516]

Returning to Milan with this sanction, the zeal and military experience of Erlembaldo soon made themselves felt. He enrolled secretly all the young men whom persuasion, threats, or promises could induce to follow his standard, and thus supported by an organized body, he endeavored to enforce the decretals inhibiting simony and marriage. All recalcitrant priests presuming to officiate were torn from the altars. The riots, which seem to have ceased for a time, became, with varying fortune, more numerous and alarming than ever, and the persecution of the clergy was greatly intensified. Guido, at length, after vainly endeavoring to uphold and protect the sacerdotal body, was driven from the city, and the popular reformers seemed at last to have carried their point, after a civil war which had now lasted, with short intervals, for nearly ten years.[517]

As though to confirm the victory, Arialdo, in 1066, at a council held in Rome, procured the excommunication of his archbishop, Guido, with which he returned triumphantly to Milan. Some popular revolution among the factions, however, had brought Guido back to the city, where he maintained a precarious position. Disregarding the excommunication, he resolved to officiate in the solemn services of Pentecost (June 4th, 1066), and, braving all opposition, he appeared at the altar. Excited to fury at this unexpected contumacy, the popular party, led on by Erlembaldo and Arialdo, attacked him in the church; his followers rallied in his defence, but, after a stubborn fight, were forced to leave him in the hands of his enemies, by whom he was beaten nearly to death. Shocked by this outrage, many of the citizens abandoned the party of the reformers, and the nobles, taking advantage of the revulsion of feeling, again had the ascendency. Arialdo was obliged to fly for his life, and endeavored to conceal himself, travelling only by night. The avengers were close upon his track, however; he was betrayed by a priest, and the satellites of Guido carried him to an island in Lago Maggiore, where (June 27th, 1066) they put him to death, with all the refinement of cruelty. A series of miracles prevented the attempted concealment of the martyred corpse, and ten months later Erlembaldo recovered it, fresh and untouched by corruption. Carried to Milan, it was interred with stately pomp in the monastery of San Celso, where the miracles wrought at his tomb proclaimed the sanctity of him who had died for the faith, and ere long his canonization formally enrolled St. Arialdo among the saints of Heaven.[518]

Erlembaldo for a while remained quiet, but in secret he reconstructed his party, and, undaunted by the fate of his associate, he suddenly renewed the civil strife. Successful at first, he forced the clergy to bind themselves by fresh oaths, and expelled Guido again from the city; but the clerical party recovered its strength, and the war was carried on with varying fortune, until, in 1067, Alexander II. despatched another legation with orders to harmonize, if possible, the endless strife. Cardinals Mainardo and Minuto appear to have been sincerely desirous of reconciling the angry factions. They proclaimed an amnesty and promulgated a constitution which protected the clergy from abuse and persecution, and though they decreed suspension for married and concubinary priests, they required that none should be punished on suspicion, and laid down such regulations for trial as gave great prospect of immunity.[519] There must have been pressing necessity for some such regulations, if we may believe the assertion of Landolfo that when Erlembaldo found his funds running low he appointed thirty judges to examine all ecclesiastics in holy orders. Those who could not procure twelve conjurators to swear with them on the Gospels as to their immaculate purity since ordination, had all their property confiscated. At the same time the rabble used to prowl around at night and throw female ornaments and articles of apparel into priests’ houses; then, breaking open the doors, they would proclaim the criminality of the inmates, and plunder everything that they could lay their hands on.[520]

Moderate men of both parties, wearied with the unceasing strife, eagerly hailed the accommodation proposed by the papal legates, and rejoiced at the prospect of peace. Erlembaldo, however, was dissatisfied, and, visiting Rome, soon aroused a fresh cause of quarrel. At the suggestion of Hildebrand he started the portentous question of investitures, and on his return he endeavored to force both clergy and laity to take an oath that in future their archbishops should apply to the pope, and not to the emperor, for confirmation—thus securing a chief devoted to the cause of reform. Guido sought to anticipate this movement, and, in 1069, old and wearied with the unending contention, he resigned his archbishopric to the subdeacon Gotefrido, who had long been his principal adviser. The latter procured his confirmation from Henry IV., but the Milanese, defrauded of their electoral privileges, refused to acknowledge him. Erlembaldo was not slow to take advantage of the popular feeling; a tumult was readily excited, and Gotefrido was glad to escape at night from the rebellious city. Guido added fresh confusion by asserting that he had been deceived by Gotefrido, and by endeavoring to resume his see. To this end he made a treaty with Erlembaldo, but that crafty chieftain, obtaining possession of his person, imprisoned him in the monastery of San Celso, and then proceeded to besiege Gotefrido in Castiglione. The new archbishop defended himself bravely, until, in 1071, Erlembaldo was forced to abandon the enterprise.[521]

Meanwhile another aspirant, Azzo, installed by Erlembaldo, fared no better than his rivals. The people, unbidden guests, rushed in to his inaugural banquet, unearthed him in the corner where he had hidden himself, dragged him by the heels into the street, and, placing him in a pulpit, forced him to swear that he would make no further pretensions to the see; while the papal legate, who had presided over the solemnities, was glad to escape with his life. Azzo, however, was recognized by Rome; he was released from the obligation of his oath, and money was furnished to enable him to maintain his quarrel. On the other hand, Henry IV. sent assistance to Gotefrido, which enabled him to carry on the campaign with some vigor; but he was unable to obtain a foothold in Milan. Azzo fled to Rome, and the city remained without an archbishop and under an interdict launched in 1074 by Hildebrand, who, in April, 1073, had succeeded to Alexander II.[522]

The Milanese were disposed to disregard the interdict, while Erlembaldo, who now held undisputed command of the city—and, indeed, of almost all Lombardy—used every effort to enforce respect for it. At length, at Easter, 1075, he resolutely prevented the solemnization of the sacred rites, and cast out the holy chrism which the priests had persisted in preparing. This roused the populace to resistance; both parties flew to arms, and, at the very commencement of the fray, Erlembaldo fell mortally wounded under the shade of the papal banner, which was still the emblem of his cause, and in virtue of which he was canonized as a saintly martyr to the faith. The Milanese, sinking all past animosities, united in promptly sending an embassy to Henry IV. to congratulate him on the death of the common enemy, and to request the appointment of another archbishop. To this he responded by nominating Tedaldo, who was duly consecrated, notwithstanding the pretensions of his competitors, Gotefrido and Azzo. Tedaldo was the leader of the disaffected bishops who, at the synod of Pavia, in 1076, excommunicated Pope Gregory himself; and though, after the interview at Canosa, in 1077, the Lombards, disgusted with Henry’s voluntary humiliation before that papal power which they had learned to despise, abandoned the imperialists for a time, yet Tedaldo kept his seat until his death in 1085, notwithstanding the repeated excommunications launched against him by Gregory.[523]

* * * * *

In the later years of this long and bloody controversy, it is evident that the political element greatly complicated the religious ground of quarrel—that pope and emperor without made use of burgher and noble within, and the latter took sides, as respects simony and sacerdotal marriage, to further the ends of individual ambition. Still, the disputed points of discipline were the ostensible causes of the struggle, whatever might be the private aims of civic factions, or of imperial and papal rivals; and these points gave a keener purpose to the strife, and furnished an inexhaustible supply of recruits to each contending faction. Thus, about the year 1070, a conference took place at Milan between priests deputed by both sides, in which the question of marriage was argued as earnestly as though it were the source of all the intestine troubles.[524] So when, in 1073, Gregory, shortly after his accession, addressed letters to Erlembaldo urging him to persevere in the good work, and to the Lombard bishops commanding them to assist him, the object of his labors is assumed to be the extirpation of simony and the restoration of the clergy to the purity becoming their sacred office.[525] And when, in 1076, the schismatic bishops, under the lead of Tedaldo of Milan, met in council at Pavia to renounce all obedience to Gregory, one of the articles of accusation brought against him was that he separated husbands and wives, and preferred licentiousness to marriage, thus giving, in their grounds of complaint against him, especial prominence to his zeal for the introduction of celibacy.[526]

Yet at last the question of sacerdotal marriage sank out of sight when the civil broils of Milan merged into the European quarrel between the empire and papacy. When, in 1093, Henry IV. was driven out of Italy by the revolt of his son Conrad, and the latter was created King of Lombardy by Urban II. and the Countess Matilda, the dependence of the young king upon the pope rendered impossible any further open defiance of the laws of the church, and public marriage there, as elsewhere, was doubtless replaced by secret immorality.[527] The triumph of the sacerdotal party was consummated at the great council of Piacenza, held by Urban II. in February, 1095, to which prelates flocked from every part of Europe, and the people gathered in immense numbers. If, as the chronicler informs us, four thousand ecclesiastics and thirty thousand laymen assembled on the occasion, and the sessions were held in the open air because no building could contain the thronging masses, we may reasonably attribute so unprecedented an assemblage to the wild religious ardor which was about to culminate in the first Crusade. That council condemned Nicolitism in the most absolute and peremptory manner, and there is no reason to believe that the power of so formidable a demonstration was lightly disregarded.[528] Yet in Milan, as we shall see elsewhere throughout Europe, the custom of sacerdotal marriage had become so thoroughly established that it could not be eradicated suddenly. It continued to survive stubbornly after every attempt at repression with more or less openness as the persecution of married priests was more or less severe. A synod held in Milan in 1098 is discreetly silent as to wedlock or concubinage among ecclesiastics, though it is severe upon the concurrent vice of simony, and though its prohibition of hereditary succession in church benefices and dignities would show that marriage among their incumbents must have been by no means infrequent. Moreover, even as late as 1152, Mainerio Boccardo, a canon of Monza, in his will specifies that certain provisions for the benefit of his brother canons shall not be enjoyed by those who are married, thus proving that the Hildebrandine reforms had not yet been successful, though Rome had long since attained its object in breaking down the independence of the Ambrosian church.[529]

* * * * *

It is not to be supposed that the story of Milan is an exceptional one. Perhaps the factions there were fiercer, and the contest more prolonged, than elsewhere; but the same causes were at work in other Italian cities, and were attended with results similar in character, if differing in intensity. In Lucca, for instance, in 1051, we find Leo IX., when confirming the possessions of the canons of the cathedral church of St. Martin, expressing the hope that God would liberate them from their married priests, who dissipated the property of the foundation, while utterly unworthy of partaking of the divine oblation.[530] His desire that they would live in concord and harmony with their bishop was, however, not destined to be long gratified. When St. Anselmo, in 1073, accepted the episcopate at the urgent request of his friend, Gregory VII., he labored for years to reform the dissolute lives of his clergy, until at length finding threats and expostulations alike ineffectual, he implored the intervention of the Countess Matilda. Even the sovereign of Tuscany was unable to accomplish the submission of the recalcitrant ecclesiastics, and in 1074 St. Anselmo took advantage of the presence of Gregory VII. in the city to invoke his interposition. The resolute pope, finding his personal efforts fruitless, summoned the offenders to trial before a court of bishops, presided over by the celebrated Pietro Igneo, Bishop of Albano. Being condemned and excommunicated, they resisted by force of arms, excited a rebellion in the city, drove out St. Anselmo, and joined the imperialists; and when, in 1081, Guiberto the anti-pope came to Italy, he consecrated their leader, a subdeacon named Pietro, as bishop, in place of the exiled martyr.[531] In Piacenza, the schismatics were guilty of excesses more deplorable, for, not content with deposing Bonizo, who had been set over them as bishop, they gave him the fullest honors of martyrdom by plucking out his eyes and then cutting him to pieces.[532] Similar troubles occurred in Parma, Modena, Reggio, and Pistoia, and it was not until the death of their respective schismatic bishops that the Countess Matilda was able to recover her authority in those places.

XIV.

HILDEBRAND.

Alexander II. died April 21st, 1073, and within twenty-four hours the Archdeacon Hildebrand was elected as his successor—a promptitude and unanimity which showed the general recognition of his fitness for the high office. For more than twenty years he had been the power behind the throne which had directed and given purpose to the policy of Rome, and the assertion of his biographers that his disinclination for the position had alone prevented his previous elevation may readily be believed. Whether he was forced on the present occasion to assent to the choice of the conclave, against his earnest resistance, is, however, more problematical.

Hildebrand was the son of a poor carpenter of Soano, and had been trained in the ascetic monachism of Cluny. Gifted by nature with rare sagacity, unbending will, and indomitable spirit, imbued with the principles of the False Decretals, and firmly believing in the wildest pretensions of ecclesiastical supremacy, he had conceived a scheme of hierarchical autocracy, which he regarded not only as the imprescriptible right of the church, but also as the perfection of human institutions. To the realization of this ideal he devoted his life with a fiery zeal and unshaken purpose that shrank from no obstacles, and to it he was ready to sacrifice not only the men who stood in his path, but also the immutable principles of truth and justice. All considerations were as dross compared with the one object, and his own well-being and life were ventured as recklessly as the peace of the world.