Chapter IV: Theology and Its Battles (3)

§ 94.1. =The First Crusade, A.D. 1096.=--In the spring of
A.D. 1096 vast crowds of people gathered together, impatient
of the delays of the princes, and put themselves under the
leadership of Walter the Penniless. They were soon followed by
Peter of Amiens with 40,000 men. A legend, unworthy of belief,
credits him with the origin of the whole movement. According
to this story, the hermit returning from a pilgrimage described
to the holy father in vivid colours the sufferings of their
Christian brethren, and related how that Christ Himself had
appeared to him in a dream, giving him the command for the
pope to summon all Christendom to rescue the Holy Sepulchre.
The legend proceeds to say that, by order of the pope, Peter
the Hermit then went through all Italy and France, arousing
the enthusiasm of the people. The hordes led by him, however,
after committing deeds of horrid violence on every side, while
no farther than Bulgaria, were reduced to about one half,
and the remnant, after Peter had already left them because of
their insubordination, was annihilated by the Turks at Nicæa.
Successive new crusades, the last of them an undisciplined mob
of 200,000 men, were cut down in Hungary or on the Hungarian
frontier. In August a regular crusading army, 80,000 strong,
under the leadership of Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine,
passing through Germany and Hungary, reached Constantinople.
There several French and Norman princes joined the army, till its
strength was increased to 600,000. After considerable squabbling
with the Byzantine government, they passed over into Asia. With
great labour and heavy loss Nicæa, Edessa, and Antioch were
taken. At last, on 15th July, 1099, amid shouts of, It is God’s
will, they stormed the walls of Jerusalem; lighted by torches
and wading in blood, they entered with singing of psalms into
the Church of the Resurrection. Godfrey was elected king. With
pious humility he declined to wear a king’s crown where Christ
had worn a crown of thorns. He died a year after, and his brother
Baldwin was crowned at Bethlehem. By numerous impropriations
crowds of greater and lesser vassals were gathered about the
throne. In Jerusalem itself a Latin patriarchate was erected,
and under it were placed four archbishoprics, with a corresponding
number of bishoprics. The story of these proceedings enkindled
new enthusiasm in the West. In A.D. 1101 three new crusades
of 260,000 men were fitted out in Germany, under Welf, duke
of Bavaria, and in Italy and in France. They marched against
Bagdad, in order to strike terror into the hearts of Moslems by
the terrible onslaught; the undisciplined horde, however, did
not reach its destination, but found a grave in Asia Minor.

§ 94.2. =The Second Crusade, A.D. 1147.=--The fall of Edessa in
A.D. 1146, as the frontier fortress of the kingdom, summoned the
West to a new effort. Pope Eugenius III. called the nations to
arms. Bernard of Clairvaux, the prophet of the age, preached
the crusade, and prophesied victory. =Louis VII. of France= took
the sign of the cross, in order to atone for the crime of having
burnt a church filled with men; and =Conrad III. of Germany=,
moved by the preaching of Bernard, with some hesitation followed
his example. But their stately army fell before the sword of the
Saracens, the malice of the Greeks, and internal disorders caused
by famine, disease, and hardships. Damascus remained unconquered,
and the princes returned humbled with the miserable remnant of
their army.

§ 94.3. =The Third Crusade, A.D. 1189.=--The kingdom of
Jerusalem before a century had past was in utter decay. Greeks
or Syrians and Latins had a deadly hatred for one another:
the vassals intrigued against each other and against the crown.
Licentiousness, luxury, and recklessness prevailed among the
people; the clergy and the nobles of the kingdom, but especially
the so called Pulleni,[268] descendants of the crusaders born in
the Holy Land itself, were a miserable, cowardly and treacherous
race. The pretenders to the crown also continued their intrigues
and cabals. Such being the corrupt condition of affairs, it was
an easy thing for the Sultan Saladin, the Moslem knight “without
fear and without reproach,” who had overthrown the Fatimide
dynasty in Egypt, to bring down upon the Christian rule in
Syria, after the bloody battle of Tiberias, the same fate.
Jerusalem fell into his hands in October, A.D. 1187. When this
terrible piece of news reached the West, the Christian powers
were summoned by Gregory VIII. to combine their forces in order
to make one more vigorous effort, Philip Augustus of France and
Henry II. of England forgot for a moment their mutual jealousies,
and took the cross from the hands of Archbishop William of Tyre,
the historian of the crusade. Next the =Emperor Frederick I.=
joined them, with all the heroic valour of youth, though in
years and experience an old man. He entered on the undertaking
with an energy, considerateness, and circumspection which
seemed to deserve glorious success. After piloting his way
through Byzantine intrigues and the indescribable fatigues of
a waterless desert, he led his soldiers against the well-equipped
army of the sultan at Iconium, which he utterly routed, and took
the city. But in A.D. 1190 the heroic warrior was drowned in an
attempt to ford the river Calycadnus. A great part of his army
was now scattered, and the remnant was led by his son Frederick
of Swabia against Ptolemais. At that point soon after landed
=Philip Augustus= and =Richard Cœur de Lion= of England, who
after his father’s death put himself at the head of an English
crusading army and had conquered Cyprus on the way. Ptolemais
(Acre) was taken in A.D. 1191. But the jealousies of the princes
interfered with their success. Frederick had already fallen, and
Philip Augustus under pretence of sickness returned to France;
Richard gained a brilliant victory over Saladin, took Joppa and
Ascalon, and was on the eve of marching against Jerusalem when
news reached him that his brother John had assumed the throne of
England, and that Philip Augustus also was entertaining schemes
of conquest. Once again Richard won a great victory before Joppa,
and Saladin, admiring his unexampled bravery, concluded with him
now, in A.D. 1192, a three years’ truce, giving most favourable
terms to the pilgrims. The strip along the coast from Joppa
to Acre continued under the rule of Richard’s nephew, Henry
of Champagne. But Richard was seized on his return journey and
cast into prison by Leopold of Austria, whose standard he had
grossly insulted before Ptolemais, and for two years he remained
a prisoner. After his release he was prevented from thinking of
a renewal of the crusade by a war with France, in which he met
his death in A.D. 1199.[269]

§ 94.4. =The Fourth Crusade, A.D. 1217.=--Innocent III. summoned
Christendom anew to a holy war. The kings, engaged in their own
affairs, gave no heed to the call. But the violent penitential
preacher, Fulco of Neuilly, prevailed upon the French nobles to
collect a considerable crusading army, which, however, instead
of proceeding against the Saracens, was used by the Venetian
Doge, Dandolo, in payment of transport, for conquering Zaras
in Dalmatia, and then by a Byzantine prince for a campaign
against Constantinople, where Baldwin of Flanders founded
a =Latin Empire=, A.D. 1204-1261. The pope put the doge and
the crusaders under excommunication on account of the taking
of Zaras, and the campaign against Constantinople was most
decidedly disapproved. Their unexpected success, however, turned
away his anger. He boasted that at last Israel, after destroying
the golden calves at Dan and Bethel, was again united to Judah,
and in Rome bestowed the pallium upon the first Latin patriarch
of Constantinople.--The =Children’s Crusade=, which in A.D. 1212
snatched from their parents in France and Germany 30,000 boys
and girls, had a most tragic end. Many died before passing
from Europe of famine and fatigue; the rest fell into the hands
of unprincipled men, who sold them as slaves in Egypt.--King
=Andrew II. of Hungary=, urged by Honorius III., led a new
crusading army to the Holy Land in A.D. 1217, and won some
successes; but finding himself betrayed and deserted by the
Palestinian barons, he returned home in the following year. But
the Germans under Leopold VII. of Austria, who had accompanied
him remained, and, supported by a Cologne and Dutch fleet,
undertook in A.D. 1218, along with the titular king John of
Jerusalem, a crusade =against Egypt=. Damietta was taken, but
the overflow of the Nile reservoirs placed them in such peril
that they owed their escape in A.D. 1221 only to the generosity
of the Sultan Camel.

§ 94.5. =The Fifth Crusade, A.D. 1228.=--The Emperor Frederick II.
had promised to undertake a crusade, but continued to make so many
excuses for delay that Gregory IX. (§ 96, 19) at last thundered
against him the long threatened excommunication. Frederick now
brought out a comparatively small crusading force. The Sultan
Camel of Egypt, engaged in war with his nephew, and fearing that
Frederick might attach himself to the enemy, freely granted him
a large tract of the Holy Land. At the Holy Sepulchre Frederick
placed the crown of Jerusalem, the inheritance of his new wife
Iolanthe, with his own hands on his head, since no bishop would
perform the coronation nor even a priest read the mass service
for the excommunicated king. He then returned home in A.D. 1229
to arrange his differences with the pope. The crusading armies
which Theobald, king of Navarre, in A.D. 1239, and Richard
Earl of Cornwall, in A.D. 1240, led against Palestine, owing
to disunion among themselves and quarrels among the Syrian
Christians, could accomplish nothing.

§ 94.6. =The Sixth, A.D. 1248, and Seventh, A.D. 1270,
Crusades.=--The zeal for crusading had by this time considerably
cooled. =St. Louis of France=, however, the ninth of that name,
had during a serious illness in A.D. 1244, taken the cross. At
this time Jerusalem had been conquered and subjected to the most
dreadful horrors at the hands of the Chowaresmians, driven from
their home by the Mongols, and now in the pay of Egyptian sultan
Ayoub. Down to A.D. 1247 the rule of the Christians in the Holy
Land was again restricted to Acre and some coast towns. Louis
could no longer think of delay. He started in A.D. 1248 with a
considerable force, wintered in Cyprus, and landed in Egypt in
A.D. 1249. He soon conquered Damietta, but, after his army had
been in great part destroyed by famine, disease and slaughter,
was taken prisoner at Cairo by the sultan. After the murder of
the sultan by the Mamelukes, who overthrew Saladin’s dynasty,
he fell into their hands. The king was obliged to deliver over
Damietta and to purchase his own release by payment of 800,000
byzantines. He sailed with the remnant of his army to Acre
in A.D. 1250, whence his mother’s death called him home in
A.D. 1254. But as his vow had not yet been fully paid, he sailed
in A.D. 1270 with a new crusading force to Tunis in order to
carry on operations from that centre. But the half of his army
was cut off by a pestilence, and he himself was carried away
in that same year. All subsequent endeavours of the popes to
reawaken an interest in the crusades were unavailing. Acre or
Ptolemais, the last stronghold of the Christians in the Holy
Land, fell in A.D. 1291.

§ 95. ISLAM AND THE JEWS IN EUROPE.

The Saracens (§ 81, 2) were overthrown in the 11th century by the Normans. The reign of Islam in Spain too (§ 81, 1) came to an end. The frequent change of dynasties, as well as the splitting up of the empire into small principalities, weakened the power of the Moors; the growth of luxurious habits in the rich and fertile districts robbed them of martial energy and prowess. The Christian power also was indeed considerably split up and disturbed by many internal feuds, but the national and religious enthusiasm with which it was every day being more and more inspired, made it invincible. Rodrigo Diaz, the Castilian hero, called by the Moors the Cid, _i.e._ Lord, by the Christians Campeador, _i.e._ champion, who died in A.D. 1099, was the most perfect representative of Spanish Christian knighthood, although he dealt with the infidels in a manner neither Christian nor knightly. Also the Almoravides of Morocco, whose aid was called in in A.D. 1086, and the Almohades, who had driven out these from Barbary in A.D. 1146, were not able to stop the progress of the Christian arms. On the other hand, neither the unceasing persecutions of the civil power, nor innumerable atrocities committed on Jews by infuriated mobs, nor even Christian theologians’ zeal for the instruction and conversion of the Israelites, succeeded in destroying Judaism in Europe.

§ 95.1. =Islam in Sicily.=--The robber raids upon Italy
perpetrated by the Sicilian Saracens were put an end to by the
Normans who settled there in A.D. 1017. Robert Guiscard destroyed
the remnant of Greek rule in southern Italy, conquered the small
Longobard duchies there, and founded a Norman duchy of Apulia and
Calabria in A.D. 1059. His brother Roger, who died in A.D. 1101,
after a thirty years’ struggle drove the Saracens completely
out of Sicily, and ruled over it as a vassal of his brother
under the title of Count of Sicily. His son Roger II., who
died in A.D. 1154, united the government of Sicily and of
Apulia and Calabria, had himself crowned in A.D. 1130 king
of Sicily and Italy, and finally in A.D. 1139 conquered also
Naples. In consequence of the marriage of his daughter Constance
with Henry VI. the whole kingdom passed over in A.D. 1194 to
the Hohenstaufens, from whom it passed in A.D. 1266 to Charles
of Anjou; and from him finally, in consequence of the Sicilian
Vespers in A.D. 1282, the island of Sicily passed to Peter
of Arragon, the son-in-law of Manfred, the last king of the
Hohenstaufen line. The Normans and the Hohenstaufens granted
to the subject Saracens for the most part full religious liberty,
the Emperor Frederick recruiting from among them his bodyguard,
and they supplied the bravest soldiers for the Italian Ghibelline
war. For this purpose he was constantly drafting new detachments
from the African coast, as Manfred also had done. The endeavours
made by monks of the mendicant orders for the conversion of the
Saracens proved quite fruitless. It was only under the Spanish
rule that conversions were made by force, or persecution and
annihilation followed persistent refusal.

§ 95.2. =Islam in Spain.=--The times of Abderrhaman III.,
A.D. 912-961, and Hacem II., A.D. 961-976, were the most
brilliant and fortunate of the =Ommaiadean= khalifate. After
the death of the latter the chamberlain Almansor, who died in
A.D. 1002, reigned in the name of Khalif Hescham II., who was
little more than a puppet of the seraglio, and his rule was
glorious, powerful and wise. But interminable civil contentions
were the result of this disarrangement of government, and in
A.D. 1031, in consequence of a popular tumult, Abderrhaman IV.,
the last of the Ommaiades, took to flight, and voluntarily
resigned the crown. The khalifate was now broken up into as many
little principalities or emirships as there had been governors
before. Amid such confusions the Christian princes continued to
develop and increase their resources. Sancho the Great, king of
Navarre, A.D. 970-1035, by marriage and conquest united almost
all Christian Spain under his rule, but this was split up again
by being partitioned among his sons. Of these Ferdinand I., who
died in A.D. 1065, inherited Castile, and in A.D. 1037 added to
it Leon by conquest. With him begins the heroic age of Spanish
knighthood. His son Alfonso IV., who died in A.D. 1109, succeeded
in A.D. 1085 in taking from the Moors Toledo and a great part of
Andalusia. The powerful leader of the =Almoravides=, Jussuf from
Morocco, was now called to their aid by the Moors. On the plain
of Salacca the Christians were beaten in A.D. 1086, but soon
the victor turned his arms against his allies, and within
six years all Moslem Spain was under his government. His son
Ali, in a fearfully bloody battle at Ucles in A.D. 1107, cut
down the flower of the Castilian nobility; this marked the
summit of power reached by the Almoravides, and now their star
began slowly to pale. Alfonso I. of Arragon, A.D. 1105-1134,
conquered Saragossa in A.D. 1118, and other cities. Alfonso VII.
of Castile, A.D. 1126-1157, whose power rose so high that most
of the Christian princes in Spain acknowledged him as sovereign,
and that he had himself formally crowned emperor of Spain in
A.D. 1135, conducted a successful campaign against Andalusia, and
in A.D. 1144 forced his way down to the south coast of Granada.
Alfonso I. of Portugal, drove the Moors out of Lisbon; Raimard,
count of Barcelona, conquered Tortosa, etc. At the same time too
the government of the Almoravides was being undermined in Africa.
In A.D. 1146 Morocco fell, and with it North-western Africa,
into the hands of the =Almohades= under Abdelmoumen, while his
lieutenant Abu Amram at the same time conquered Moslem Spain and
Andalusia. Abdelmoumen’s son Jussuf himself crossed over into
Spain with an enormous force in order to extinguish the Christian
rule there, but fell in a battle at Santarem against Alfonso I.
of Portugal. His son Jacob avenged the disaster by the bloody
battle of Alarcos in A.D. 1195, where 30,000 Castilians were
left upon the field. When, notwithstanding the overthrow, the
Christians a few years later endeavoured to retrieve their loss,
Jacob’s successor Mohammed descended upon Spain with half a
million fanatical followers. The critical hour for Spain had
now arrived. The Christians had won time to come to agreement
among themselves. They fought with unexampled heroism on the
plain of Tolosa in A.D. 1212 under Alfonso VIII. of Castile.
The battlefield was strewn with more than 200,000 bodies of
the African fanatics. It was the death-knell of the rule of the
Almohad in Spain. Notwithstanding the dissensions and hostilities
that immediately broke out among the Christian princes, they
conquered within twenty-five years the whole of Andalusia. The
work of conquest was carried out mostly by Ferdinand III., the
saint of Castile, A.D. 1217-1254, and Jacob I., the conqueror
of Arragon, A.D. 1213-1276. Only in the southernmost district
of Spain a remnant of the Moslem rule survived in the kingdom
of Granada, founded in A.D. 1238 by the emir Mohammed Aben Alamar.
Here for a time the glories of Arabic culture were revived in
such a way as seemed like a magical restoration of the day of
the Ommaiades. In consequence of the marriage in A.D. 1469 of
Ferdinand of Arragon, who died in A.D. 1516, with Isabella of
Castile, these two most important Christian empires were united.
Soon afterwards the empire of Granada came to an end. On 2nd
January, A.D. 1492, after an ignominious capitulation, the
last khalif, Abu Abdilehi Boabdil, was driven out of the fair
(Granada), and a few moments later the Castilian banner waved
from the highest tower of the proud Alhambra. The pope bestowed
upon the royal pair the title of Catholic monarchs. The Moors who
refused to submit to baptism were expelled, but even the baptized,
the so-called Moriscoes, proved so dangerous an element in the
state that Philip III., in A.D. 1609, ordered them to be all
banished from his realm. They sought refuge mostly in Africa,
and there went over openly again to Mohammedanism, which they
had never at heart rejected.[270]

§ 95.3. =The Jews in Europe.=--By trade, money lending and
usury the Jews succeeded in obtaining almost sole possession
of ready money, which brought them often great influence with
the needy princes and nobles, but was also often the occasion
of sore oppression and robbery, as well as the cause of popular
hatred and violence. Whenever a country was desolated by a plague
the notion of well-poisoning by the Jews was renewed. It was told
of them that they had stolen the consecrated sacramental bread in
order to stick it through with needles, and Christian children,
that they might slaughter them at their passover festival. From
time to time this popular rage exploded, and then thousands of
Jews were ruthlessly murdered. The crusaders too often began
their feats of valour on Christian soil by the slaughter of Jews.
From the 13th century in almost all lands they were compelled
to wear an insulting badge, the so called Jews’ hat, a yellow,
funnel-shaped covering of the head, and a ring of red cloth on
the breast, etc. They were also compelled to herd together in
the cities in the so called Jewish quarter (Italian=Ghetto),
which was often surrounded by a special wall. St. Bernard and
several popes, Gregory VII., Alexander III., Innocent III.,
etc., interested themselves in them, refused to allow them to
be violently persecuted, and pointed to their position as an
incontrovertible proof of the truth of the gospel to all times.
The German emperors also took the Jews under their special
protection, for they classed them, after the example of Vespasian
and Titus, among the special servants of the imperial chamber,
(_Servi camera nostræ speciales_).[271] In England and France
they were treated as the _mancipium_ of the crown. In Spain
under the Moorish rule they had vastly increased in numbers,
culture and wealth; also under the Christian kings they enjoyed
for a long time special privileges, their own tribunals, freedom
in the possession of land, etc., and obtained great influence as
ministers of finance and administration, and also as astrologers,
physicians, apothecaries, etc.; but by their usury and merciless
greed drew forth more and more the bitter hatred of the people.
Hence in the 14th century in Spain also there arose times of sore
oppression and persecution, and attempts at conversion by force.
And finally, in A.D. 1492, Ferdinand the Catholic drove more
than 400,000 Jews out of Spain, and in the following year 100,000
out of Sicily. But even the baptized Jews, the so-called “New
Christians,” who were prohibited from removing, fell under the
suspicion of secret attachment to the old religion, and many
thousands of them became victims of the Inquisition.--Many
apologetic and polemical treatises were composed for the purpose
of discussion with the Jews and for their instruction, but
like so many other formal disputations they did not succeed in
securing any good result, for the Jewish teachers were superior
in learning, acuteness, and acquaintance with the exposition
of Old Testament Scriptures, upon which in this discussion
everything turned. But an interesting example of a Jew earnestly
striving after a knowledge of the truth and working himself up to
a full conviction of the divinity of Christianity and the church
doctrine of that age, somewhere about A.D. 1150, is presented by
the story told by himself of the conversion of Hermann afterwards
a Premonstratensian monk in the monastery of Kappenberg in
Westphalia.[272] But on the other hand there are also isolated
examples of a passing over to Judaism as the result, it would
seem, of genuine conviction. The first known example of this
kind appears in A.D. 839, in the case of a deacon Boso, who after
being circumcised received the name Eleazar, married a Jewess,
and settled in Saracen Spain, where he manifested extraordinary
zeal in making converts to his new religion. A second case of
this sort is met with in the times of the Emperor Henry II.,
in the perversion of a priest Wecelinus. The narrator of this
story gives expression to his horror in the words, _Totus
contremisco et horrentibus pilis capitis terrore concutior_.
Also the Judaising sects of the Pasagians in Lombardy during
the 11th century (§ 108, 3) and the Russian Jewish sects of the
15th century (§ 73, 5) were probably composed for the most part
of proselytes to Judaism.[273]

II.--The Hierarchy, the Clergy, and the Monks.

§ 96. THE PAPACY AND THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
IN THE GERMAN NATIONALITIES.[274]

The history of the papacy during this period represents it in its deepest shame and degradation. But after this state of matters was put an end to by the founding of the Holy Roman Empire of German nationalities, it sprang up again from its deep debasement, and reached the highest point of power and influence. With the German empire, to which it owed its salvation, it now carried on a life and death conflict; for it seemed that it was possible to escape enslavement under the temporal power of the emperor only by putting the emperor under its spiritual power. In the conflict with the Hohenstaufens the struggle reached its climax. The papacy won a complete victory, but soon found that it could as little dispense with as endure the presence of a powerful empire. For as the destruction of the Carolingian empire had left it at the mercy of the factions of Italian nobles at the time when this period opens, so its victory over the German empire brought the papacy under the still more degrading bondage of French politics, as is seen in the beginning of the next period. It had during this transition time its most powerful props and advisers in the orders of Clugny and Camaldoli (§ 98, 1). It had a standing army in the mendicant orders, and the crusaders, besides the enthusiasm, which greatly strengthened the papal institution, did the further service of occupying and engrossing the attention of the princes.

§ 96.1. =The Romish Pornocracy and the Emperor Otto I.,
† A.D. 973.=--Among the wild struggles of the Italian nobles
which broke out after the Emperor Arnulf’s departure (§ 82, 8),
the party of the Margrave Adalbert of Tuscany gained the
upperhand. His mistress Theodora, a well born and beautiful,
ambitious and voluptuous Roman, wife of a Roman senator, as
well as her like-minded daughters Marozia and Theodora, filled
for half a century the chair of St. Peter with their paramours,
sons and grandsons. These constituted the base and corrupt line
of popes known as the pornocracy. =Sergius III.=, A.D. 904-911,
Marozia’s paramour, starts this disgraceful series. After the
short pontificates of the two immediately following popes,
Theodora, because Ravenna was inconveniently distant for
the gratification of her lust, called John, the archbishop
of that place, to the papal chair under the title of =John X.=,
A.D. 914-928. By means of a successful crusade which he led in
person, he destroyed the remnant of Saracen robbers in Garigliano
(§ 81, 2), and crowned the Lombard king Bernard I., A.D. 916-924,
as emperor. But when he attempted to break off his disgraceful
relations with the woman who had advanced him, Marozia had him
cast into prison and smothered with a pillow. The two following
popes on whom she bestowed the tiara enjoyed it only a short time,
for in A.D. 931 she raised her own son to the papal throne in
the twentieth year of his age. His father was Pope Sergius, and
he assumed the name of =John XI.= But her other son Alberich,
who inherited the temporal kingdom from A.D. 932, restricted
this pope’s jurisdiction and that of his four successors to
the ecclesiastical domain. After Alberich’s death his son
Octavianus, an arch-profligate and blasphemer, though only in
his sixteenth year, united the papacy and the temporal power,
and called himself by the name of =John XII.= A.D. 955-963--the
first instance of a change of name on assuming the papal chair.
He would sell anything for money. He made a boy of ten years
a bishop; he consecrated a deacon in a stable; in hunting and
dice playing he would invoke the favour of Jupiter and Venus;
in his orgies he would drink the devil’s health, etc. Meantime
things had reached a terrible pass in Germany. After the death of
Louis the Child, the last of the German Carolingians, in A.D. 911,
the Frankish duke =Conrad I.=, A.D. 911-918, was elected king
of the Germans. Although vigorously supported by the superior
clergy, the Synod of Hohenaltheim in A.D. 915 threatening the
rebels with all the pains of hell, the struggle with the other
dukes prevented the founding of a united German empire. His
successor, the Saxon =Henry I.=, A.D. 919-936, was the first
to free himself from the faction of the clergy, and to grant to
the dukes independent administration of internal affairs within
their own domains. His greater son, =Otto I.=, A.D. 936-973,
by limiting the power of the dukes, by fighting and converting
heathen Danes, Wends, Bohemians and Hungarians, by decided action
in the French troubles, by gathering around him a virtuous German
clergy, who proved true to him and the empire, secured after long
continued civil wars a power and reputation such as no ruler in
the West since Charlemagne had enjoyed. Called to the help of the
Lombard nobles and the pope John XII. against the oppression and
tyranny of Berengarius [Berengar] II., he conquered the kingdom
of Italy, and was at Candlemas A.D. 962 crowned emperor by
the pope in St. Peter’s, after having really held this rank
for thirty years. Thus was the =Holy Roman Empire of German
Nationalities= founded, which continued for centuries to be
the centre around which the history of the church and the world
revolved. The new emperor confirmed to the pope all donations
of previous emperors with the addition of certain cities, without
detriment, however, to the imperial suzerainty over the patrimony
of St. Peter, and without lessening in any degree the imperial
privileges maintained by Charlemagne. The _Privilegium Ottonis_,
still preserved in the papal archives, and claiming to be an
authentic document, was till quite recently kept secret from
all impartial and capable investigators, so that the suspicion
of its spuriousness had come to be regarded as almost a
certainty. Under Leo XIII., however, permission was given to
a capable Protestant scholar, Prof. Sickel of Vienna, to make
a photographic facsimile of the document, the result of which
was that he became convinced that the document was not the
original but a contemporary official duplicate, a literally
faithful transcript on purple parchment with letters of gold
for solemn deposition in the grave of St. Peter. Its first
part describes the donations of the emperor, the second the
obligations of the pope in accordance with the _Constitutio
Romana_, § 82, 4.--But scarcely had Otto left Rome than the
pope, breaking his oath, conspired with his enemies, endeavoured
to rouse the Byzantines and heathen Hungarians against him,
and opened the gates of Rome to Adalbert the son of Berengarius
[Berengar]. Otto hastened back, deposed the pope at the synod
of Rome in A.D. 963, on charges of incest, perjury, murder,
blasphemy, etc., and made the Romans swear by the bones of
Peter never again to elect and consecrate a pope, without
having the emperor’s permission and confirmation. Soon after the
emperor’s departure, however, the newly elected pope =Leo VIII.=,
A.D. 963-965, had to betake himself to flight. John XII. returned
again to Rome, excommunicated his rival pope, and took cruel
vengeance upon the partisans of the emperor. On his death soon
afterwards, in A.D. 964, the Romans elected Benedict V. as
his successor; but he, when the emperor conquered Rome after a
stubborn resistance, was obliged to submit to humiliating terms.
Leo VIII. had in =John XIII.=, A.D. 965-972, a virtuous and
worthy successor. A new revolt of the Romans led soon after
his election to his imprisonment; but he succeeded in making
his escape in A.D. 966. Otto now for the third time crossed
the Alps, passed relentlessly severe sentences upon the guilty,
and had his son, now thirteen years of age, crowned in Rome as
Otto II., A.D. 967.

§ 96.2. =The Times of Otto II., III., A.D. 973-1002.=--After the
death of Otto I., since Otto II., A.D. 973-983, was restrained
from a Roman campaign in consequence of Cisalpine troubles,
the nobles’ faction under Crescentius, son of Pope John X.
and the younger Theodora, again won the upperhand. This party
had in A.D. 974 overthrown Pope =Benedict VI.=, A.D. 972-974,
appointed by Otto I., and cast him into prison. But their own
anti-pope Boniface VII. could not maintain his position, and
fled with the treasures of St. Peter to Constantinople. By means
of a compromise of parties =Benedict VII.=, A.D. 974-983, was
now raised to the papal chair and held possession in spite of
manifold opposition, till the arrival of the young emperor in
Italy in A.D. 980 obtained for him greater security. Otto II.
again restored the imperial prestige in Rome in A.D. 981, but
in A.D. 982 he suffered a complete defeat at the hand of the
Saracens. He died in the following year at Rome, after he had
in =John XIV.=, A.D. 983-984, secured the appointment of a pope
faithful to the empire. His son Otto III., three years old,
was at the council of state, held at Verona, by the princes
of Germany and Italy, there gathered together, elected king of
both kingdoms. During the German civil wars under the regency
of the Queen-mother Theophania, a Byzantine princess, and the
able Archbishop Willigis, of Mainz, who, through his firmness
and penetration saved the crown for the royal child Otto III.,
A.D. 983-1002, and maintained the existence and integrity of
the German empire, Rome and the papacy fell again under the
domination of the nobles, at whose head now stood the younger
Crescentius, a son of the above mentioned chief of the same
name. In A.D. 984 the anti-pope =Boniface VII.=, who had fled
to Constantinople, made his appearance in Rome, won a following
by Greek gold, got possession of John XIV. and had him cast
into prison, but was himself soon afterwards murdered. The new
pope =John XV.=, A.D. 985-996, who was thoroughly venal, was an
obedient tool of the tyranny of Crescentius, which, however, soon
became so intolerable to him, that he yearned for the restoration
of imperial rule under Otto III. At this same time great danger
threatened the imperial authority from France. Hugh Capet had,
after the death of the last Carolingian, Louis V., in A.D. 987,
taken possession for himself of the French crown. He insisted
upon John XV. deposing the archbishop Arnulf of Rheims, who had
opened the gates of Rheims to his uncle Charles of Lorraine, the
brother of Louis V.’s father. The pope, who was then dependent
upon German power, hesitated. Hugh then had Arnulf deposed at
a synod at Rheims in A.D. 921, and put in his place Gerbert,
the greatest scholar (§ 100, 2) and statesman of that age. The
council quite openly declared the whole French church to be free
from Rome, whose bishops for a hundred years had been steeped
in the most profound moral corruption, and had fallen into the
most disgraceful servitude, and Gerbert issued a confession of
faith in which celibacy and fasting were repudiated, and only
the first four œcumenical councils were acknowledged. But the
plan was shattered, not so much through the apparently fruitless
opposition of the pope as through the reaction of the high church
party of Clugny and the popular esteem in which that party was
held. Gerbert could not maintain his position, and was heartily
glad when he could shake the dust of Rheims off his feet by
accepting an honourable call of the young emperor, Otto III.,
who in A.D. 997 opened new paths for his ambition by inviting
the celebrated scholar to be with him as his classical tutor.
Hugh’s successor Robert reinstated Arnulf in the see of Rheims.
John XV. called in Otto III. to his help against the intolerable
oppression of the younger Crescentius, but died before his
arrival in A.D. 996. Otto directed the choice of his cousin
Bruno, twenty-four years of age, the first German pope, who
assumed the name of =Gregory V.=, A.D. 996-999, and by him he
was crowned emperor in Rome. Gregory was a man of an energetic,
almost obstinate character, thoroughly in sympathy with the views
of the monks of Clugny. The emperor having soon returned home,
Crescentius violated his oath and made himself again master of
Rome. Gregory fled to Pavia, where he held a synod in A.D. 997,
which thundered an anathema against the disturber of the Roman
church. Meanwhile Crescentius raised to the papal throne the
archbishop John of Piacenza, formerly Greek tutor to Otto III.,
under the title of John XVI. It was not till late in autumn
of that year that the emperor could hasten to the help of his
injured cousin. He then executed a fearfully severe sentence
upon the tyrant and his pope. The former was beheaded, and
his corpse dragged by the feet through the streets and then
hung upon a gallows; the latter, whom the soldiers had cruelly
deprived of his ears, tongue, and nose, was led through the
streets seated backward on an ass, with the tail tied in his
hands for reins.--From Pavia Gregory had issued a command to
Robert, the French king, to put away his queen Bertha, who was
related to him in the fourth degree, on pain of excommunication.
But he died a suspiciously sudden death before he could bring
down the pride of this king, which, however, his successor
accomplished.

§ 96.3. =Otto III.= now raised to the papal chair his teacher
Gerbert, whom he had previously made Archbishop of Ravenna, under
the title of =Sylvester II.=, A.D. 999-1003. Already in Ravenna
had Gerbert’s ecclesiastical policy been changed for the high
church views of his former opponents, and as pope he developed
an activity which marks him out as the worthy follower of his
predecessor and the precursor of a yet greater Gregory (VII.).
He energetically contended against simony, that special
canker of the church, and by sending the ring and staff to
his former opponent, Arnulf, made the first effort to assert
the papal claim to the exclusive investiture of bishops. But
he had previously, as tutor of Otto, by flattering his vanity,
inspired the imaginative, high-spirited youth with the ideal
of a restoration of the ancient glory of Rome and its emperors
exercising universal sway. And just with this view had Otto
raised him to the papal chair in order that he might have his
help. The pope did not venture openly to withdraw from this
understanding, for in the condition of Italy at that time in
a struggle with the emperor, the victory would be his in the
first instance, and that would be the destruction of the papal
chair. So there was nothing for it but by clever tacking in
spite of contrary winds of imperial policy, to make the ship of
the church hold on as far as possible in the high church course
and surround the emperor by a network of craft. The phantom
of a _Renovatio imperii Romani_ with the mummified form of the
Byzantine court ceremonial and the vain parade of a title was
called into being. On a pilgrimage to the grave of his saintly
friend Adalbert in Gnesen (§ 93, 13) the emperor emancipated
the Polish church from the German metropolitanate by raising
its see into an archbishopric. He also, in A.D. 1000, released
the Polish duke Boleslaw Chrobry (§ 93, 7), the most dangerous
enemy of Germany, who schemed the formation of a great Slavic
empire, from his fealty as a vassal of the German empire,
enlisting him instead as a “friend and confederate of the Roman
people” in his new fantastic universal empire. In the same
year, however, Sylvester, in the exercise of papal sovereignty,
conferred the royal crown on Stephen the saint of Hungary
(§ 93, 8), appointed the payment by him of a yearly tribute to
the papal vicar with ecclesiastical authority over his country,
and made that land ecclesiastically independent of Passau
and Salzburg by founding a separate metropolitanate at Gran.
Though Otto let himself be led in the hierarchical leading
strings by his papal friend, he yet made it abundantly evident
by bestowing upon his favourite pope eight counties of the States
of the Church, that he regarded these as merely a free gift of
imperial favour. He also lashed violently the extravagances as
well as the greed of the popes, and declared that the donation
of Constantine was a pure fabrication (§ 87, 4). The emperor,
however, had meanwhile thoroughly estranged his German subjects
and the German clergy by his un-German temperament. The German
princes denounced him as a traitor to the German empire. Soon
all Italy, even the much fondled Rome, rose in open revolt. Only
an early death A.D. 1002 saved the unhappy youth of twenty-two
years of age from the most terrible humiliation. With him, too,
the star of the pope’s fortunes went down. He died not long after
in A.D. 1003, and left in the popular mind the reputation of a
dealer in the black art, who owed his learning and the success
of his hierarchical career to a compact with the devil.

§ 96.4. =From Henry II. to the Synod at Sutri,
A.D. 1002-1046.=--After the death of Otto III., =Henry II.=,
A.D. 1002-1024, previously duke of Bavaria, a great-grandson of
Henry I. and as such the last scion of the Saxon line, obtained
the German crown--a ruler who proved one of the ablest that ever
occupied that throne. A bigoted pietist and under the power of
the priests, although pious-hearted according to the spirit of
the times and strongly attached to the church, and seeking in
the bishops supports of the empire against the relaxing influence
of the temporal princes, yet no other German emperor ruled over
the church to the same extent that he did, and no one ventured
so far as he did to impress strongly upon the church, by the most
extensive appropriation of ecclesiastical property, especially
of rich monasteries, that this was the shortest and surest way
of bringing about a much needed reformation. Meanwhile in Rome,
after the death of Otto III., Joannes Crescentius, the son of
Crescentius II., who was beheaded by order of Otto, assumed the
government, and set upon the chair of Peter creatures of his
own, John XVII., XVIII., and Sergius IV. But as he and his last
elected pope died soon after one another in A.D. 1012, the long
subjected faction of the Tusculan counts, successors of Alberich,
came to the front again, and chose as pope a scion of one
of their own families, =Benedict VIII.=, A.D. 1012-1024. The
anti-pope Gregory, chosen by the Crescentians, was obliged to
retire from the field. He sought protection from Henry II. But
this monarch came to an understanding with the incomparably
nobler and abler Benedict, received from him for himself and
his Queen Cunigunda, subsequently canonized by Innocent III.,
the imperial crown, in A.D. 1014, and continued ever after to
maintain excellent relations with him. These two, the emperor
and the pope, were on friendly terms with the monks of Clugny.
They both acknowledged the need of a thorough reformation of
the church, and both carried it out so far as this could be
done by the influence and example of their own personal conduct,
disposition, and character. But the pope had so much to do
fighting the Crescentians, then the Greeks and Saracens in
Italy, and the emperor in quelling internal troubles in his
empire and repelling foreign invasions, that it was only toward
the close of their lives that they could take any very decided
action. The pope made the first move, for at the Synod of Pavia
in A.D. 1018, he excommunicated all married priests and those
living in concubinage, and sentenced their children to slavery.
The emperor entertained a yet more ambitious scheme. He wished
to summon a Western œcumenical council at Pavia, and there to
engage upon the reformation of the whole church of the West.
But the death of the pope in A.D. 1024, which was followed in
a few months by the death of the emperor, prevented the carrying
out of this plan. After the death of the childless Henry II.,
=Conrad II.=, A.D. 1024-1039, the founder of the Franconian or
Salic dynasty, ascended the German throne. To him the empire
was indebted for great internal reforms and a great extension
of power, but he gave no attention to the carrying out of his
predecessor’s plans of ecclesiastical reformation. Still less,
however, was anything of the kind to be looked for from the
popes of that period. Benedict VIII. was succeeded by his brother
Romanus, under the name of =John XIX.=, A.D. 1024-1033, as void
of character and noble sentiments (§ 67, 2) as his predecessor
had been distinguished. When he died, Count Alberich of Tusculum
was able by means of presents and promises to get the Romans to
elect his son Theophylact, who, though only twelve years old,
was already practised in the basest vice. He took the name of
=Benedict IX.=, A.D. 1033-1048, and disgraced the papal chair
with the most shameless profligacy. The state of matters became
better under Conrad’s son, =Henry III.=, A.D. 1039-1056, who
strove after the founding of a universal monarchy in the sense
of Charlemagne, and by a powerful and able government he came
nearer reaching this end than any of the German emperors. He
was at the same time inspired with a zeal for the reformation
of the church such as none of his predecessors or successors,
with the exception of Henry II., ever showed. Benedict IX. was,
in A.D. 1044, for the second time driven out by the Romans. They
now sold the tiara to Sylvester III., who three months after
was driven out by Benedict. This pope now fell in love with his
beautiful cousin, daughter of a Tusculan count, and formed the
bold resolve to marry her. But the father of the lady refused
his consent so long as he was pope. Benedict now sold the papal
chair for a thousand pounds of silver to the archdeacon Joannes
Gratian. This man, a pious simple individual, in order to save
the chair of St. Peter from utter overthrow, took upon himself
the disgrace of simony at the bidding of his friends of Clugny,
among whom a young Roman monk called Hildebrand, son of poor
parents of Soana, in Tuscany, was already most conspicuous. The
new pope assumed the name of =Gregory VI.=, A.D. 1044-1046. He
wanted the talents necessary for the hard task he had undertaken.
Benedict having failed in carrying out his matrimonial plans,
again claimed to be pope, as did also Sylvester. Thus Rome
had at one and the same time, three popes, and all three were
publicly known to be simonists. The Clugny party cast off their
protégé Gregory, and called in the German emperor as saviour of
the church. Henry came and had all the the three popes deposed
at the =Synod at Sutri=, A.D. 1046. The Romans gave to him the
right of making a new appointment. It fell upon Suidger, bishop
of Bamberg, who took the name of =Clement II.=, and crowned
the king emperor on Christmas, A.D. 1046. The Romans were so
delighted at having order restored in the city, that they gave
over to the emperor with the rank of patrician the government
of Rome and the right of papal election for all time, and swore
never to consecrate a pope without the emperor’s concurrence.
Henry took the ex-pope Gregory along with him, back to Germany,
where he died in exile, at Cologne. Hildebrand, his chaplain,
had accompanied him thither, and after his death retired into
the monastery of Clugny.

§ 96.5. =Henry III. and his German Popes, A.D. 1046-1057.=--With
=Clement III.=, 1046-1047, begins a whole series of able German
popes, who, elected by Henry III., wrought under his protection
powerfully and successfully for the reform of the church. All
interested in the reformation, the brethren of Clugny, as well
as the disciples of Romuald and the settlers in Vallombrosa
(§ 98, 1), agreed that at the root of all the corruption of the
church of that age were _simony_, or obtaining spiritual offices
by purchase or bribery (Acts viii. 19), and _Nicolaitanism_
(§ 27, 8), under which name were included all fleshly lusts
of the clergy, marriage as well as concubinage and unnatural
vices. These two were, especially in Italy, so widely spread,
that scarcely a priest was to be found who had not been guilty
of both. Clement II., in the emperor’s presence, at a synod
in Rome in A.D. 1047, began the battle against simony. But
he died before the end of the year, probably by poison. While
Roman envoys presented themselves at the German court about
the election of a new pope, Benedict IX., supported by the
Tusculan party, again laid claim to the papal chair, and the
emperor had to utter the severest threats before the man of
his choice, Poppo, bishop of Brixen, was allowed to occupy
the papal chair as =Damasus II.= Twenty-three days afterwards,
however, he was a corpse. This cooled the ardour of German
bishops for election to so dangerous a position, and only after
long persuasion Bishop Bruno of Toul, the emperor’s cousin
and a zealous friend of Clugny, accepted the appointment, on
the condition that it should have the approval of the people
and clergy of Rome, which, as was to be expected, was given
with acclamation. He ascended the papal throne as Leo IX.,
A.D. 1049-1054. According to a later story conceived in the
interests of Hildebrandism, Bruno is said not only to have made
his definite acceptance of the imperial call dependent upon the
supplementary free election of people and clergy of Rome, but
also to have been prevailed upon by Hildebrand, who by his own
request accompanied him, to lay aside his papal ornaments, to
continue his journey in pilgrim garb, and to make his entrance
into the eternal city barefoot, so that the necessary sanction
of a formal canonical election might be given to the imperial
nomination. Leo found the papal treasures emptied to the last
coin and robbed of all its territorial revenues by the nobles.
But Hildebrand was his minister of finance, and soon improved
the condition of his exchequer. Leo now displayed an unexampled
activity in church reform and the purifying of the papacy. No
pope travelled about so much as he, none held as many synods
in the most distant places and various lands. The uprooting of
simony was in all cases the main point in their decrees. By bonds
of gratitude and relationship, but above all of common interests,
he was attached to the German emperor. He could not therefore
think of emancipating the papacy from the imperial suzerainty.
Practically Leo succeeded in clearing the Augean stable of the
Roman clergy, and filled vacancies with virtuous men brought
from far and near. In order to chastise the Normans, put by him
under ban because of their rapacity, he himself took the field
in A.D. 1053, when the emperor refused to do so, but was taken
prisoner after his army had been annihilated, and only succeeded,
after he had removed the excommunication, in getting them to kiss
his feet with the most profound devotion. He demanded from the
Greek emperor full restitution of the donation of Constantine,
so far as this was still in the possession of the Byzantines,
and his envoys at Constantinople rendered the split between the
Eastern and Western churches irreparable (§ 67, 3). Leo died in
A.D. 1054, the only pope for centuries whom the church honours as
a saint. A Roman embassy called upon the emperor to nominate a
new pope. He fixed upon Gebhardt, bishop of Eichstädt [Eichstadt],
who now ascended the papal throne as =Victor II.=, A.D. 1055-1057.
Here again monkish tales have transformed a single matter of fact
into a romance in the interests of their own party. The Romans
wished Hildebrand himself for their pope, but he was unwilling
yet to assume such a responsibility. He put himself, however,
at the head of an embassy which convinced the emperor of the
sinfulness of his former interferences in the papal elections,
and persuaded him to set aside the tyrannical power of his
patrician’s rank and to resign to the clergy and people their
old electoral rights. As candidate for this election, Hildebrand
himself chose bishop Gebhardt, the most trusted counsellor of
the emperor. After long opposition Henry’s consent was won to
this candidature, he even urged the bishop to accept it, who at
last submitted with the words: “Now so do I surrender myself to
St. Peter, soul and body, but only on the condition that you also
yield to him what belongs to him.” The latter, however, seems
not mere beating of the air, for the emperor restored to the
newly elected pope the patrimony of Peter in the widest extent,
and bestowed on him besides the governorship of all Italy.--Henry
died in A.D. 1056, after he had appointed his queen Agnes to the
regency, and had recommended her to the counsel and good offices
of the pope. But the pope’s days were already numbered. He died
in A.D. 1057. Hildebrand could not boast of having dominated him,
but the position of the powerful monk of Clugny under him had
become one of great importance.