early convents were isolated and feeble, and much at the mercy of the laity, who invaded and debauched them. Abbots, like bishops, were often soldiers, who lived within the walls with their wives and children, their hawks, their hounds, and their men-at-arms; and it has been said that, in all France, Corbie and Fleury alone kept always something of their early discipline.
Only in the early years of the most lurid century of the Middle Ages, when decentralization culminated, and the imagination began to gain its fullest intensity, did the period of monastic consolidation open with the foundation of Cluny. In 910 William of Aquitaine drew a charter95 which, so far as possible, provided for the complete independence of his new corporation. There was no episcopal visitation, and no interference with the election of the abbot. The monks were put directly under the protection of the pope, who was made their sole superior. John XI. confirmed this charter by his bull of 932, and authorized the affiliation of all convents who wished to share in the reform.96
The growth of Cluny was marvellous; by the twelfth century two thousand houses obeyed its rule, and its wealth was so great, and its buildings so vast, that in 1245 Innocent IV., the Emperor Baldwin, and Saint Louis were all lodged together within its walls, and with them all the attendant trains of prelates and nobles with their servants.
In the eleventh century no other force of equal energy existed. The monks were the most opulent, the ablest, and the best organized society in Europe, and their effect upon mankind was proportioned to their strength. They intuitively sought autocratic power, and during the centuries when nature favoured them, they passed from triumph to triumph. They first seized upon the papacy and made it self-perpetuating; they then gave battle to the laity for the possession of the secular hierarchy, which had been under temporal control since the very foundation of the Church.
About the year 1000 Rome was in chaos. The Counts of Tusculum, who had often disposed of the tiara, on the death of John XIX., bought it for Benedict IX. Benedict was then a child of ten, but he grew worse as he grew older, and finally he fell so low that he was expelled by the people. He was succeeded by Sylvester; but, a few months after his coronation, Benedict re-entered the city, and crowned John XX. with his own hands. Shortly after, he assaulted the Vatican, and then three popes reigned together in Rome. In this crisis Gregory VI. tried to restore order by buying the papacy for himself; but the transaction only added a fourth pope to the three already consecrated, and two years later he was set aside by the Emperor Henry, who appointed his own chancellor in his place.
It was a last triumph for the laity, but a triumph easier to win than to sustain. When the soldier created the high priest of Christendom, he did indeed inspire such terror that no man in the great assembly dared protest; but in nine months Clement was dead, his successor lived only twenty-four days, poisoned, as it was rumoured, by the perfidious Italians; and when Henry sought a third pope among his prelates, he met with general timidity to accept the post. Then the opportunity of the monks came: they seized it, and with unerring instinct fixed themselves upon the throne from which they have never been expelled. According to the picturesque legend, Bruno, Bishop of Toul, seduced by the flattery of courtiers and the allurements of ambition, accepted the tiara from the emperor, and set out upon his journey to Italy with a splendid retinue, and with his robe and crown. On his way he turned aside at Cluny, where Hildebrand was prior. Hildebrand, filled with the spirit of God, reproached him with having seized upon the seat of the vicar of Christ by force, and accepted the holy office from the sacrilegious hand of a layman. He exhorted Bruno to cast away his pomp, and to cross the Alps humbly as a pilgrim, assuring him that the priests and people of Rome would recognize him as their bishop, and elect him according to canonical forms. Then he would taste the joys of a pure conscience, having entered the fold of Christ as a shepherd and not as a robber. Inspired by these words, Bruno dismissed his train, and left the convent gate as a pilgrim. He walked barefoot, and when after two months of pious meditations he stood before Saint Peter’s, he spoke to the people and told them it was their privilege to elect the pope, and since he had come unwillingly he would return again, were he not their choice.
He was answered with acclamations, and on February 2, 1049, he was enthroned as Leo IX. His first act was to make Hildebrand his minister.
The legend tells of the triumph of Cluny as no historical facts could do. Ten years later, in the reign of Nicholas II., the theocracy made itself self-perpetuating through the assumption of the election of the pope by the college of cardinals, and in 1073 Hildebrand, the incarnation of monasticism, was crowned under the name of Gregory VII.
With Hildebrand’s election, war began. The council of Rome, held in 1075, decreed that holy orders should not be recognized where investiture had been granted by a layman, and that princes guilty of conferring investiture should be excommunicated. The council of the next year, which excommunicated the emperor, also enunciated the famous propositions of Baronius – the full expression of the theocratic idea: —
“That the Roman pontiff alone can be called universal.
“That he alone can depose or reconcile bishops.
“That his legate, though of inferior rank, takes precedence of all bishops in council, and can pronounce sentence of deposition against them.
· · · · · · · · · ·
“That all princes should kiss the pope’s feet alone.
· · · · · · · · · ·
“That he may depose emperors.
· · · · · · · · · ·
“That his judgments can be overruled by none, and he alone can overrule the judgments of all.
“That he can be judged by no one.
“That the Roman Church never has, and never can err, as the Scriptures testify.
· · · · · · · · · ·
“That by his precept and permission it is lawful for subjects to accuse their princes.
· · · · · · · · · ·
“That he is able to absolve from their allegiance the subjects of the wicked.”97
The monks had won the papacy, but the emperor still held his secular clergy, and, at the diet of Worms, where he undertook to depose Hildebrand, he was sustained by his prelates. Without a moment of hesitation the enchanter cast his spell, and it is interesting to see, in the curse which he launched at the layman, how the head of monasticism had become identified with the spirit which he served. The priest had grown to be a god on earth.
“So strong in this confidence, for the honour and defence of your Church, on behalf of the omnipotent God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, by your power and authority, I forbid the government of the German and Italian kingdoms, to King Henry, the son of the Emperor Henry, who, with unheard-of arrogance, has rebelled against your Church. I absolve all Christians from the oaths they have made, or may make to him, and I forbid that any one should obey him as king.”98
Henry marched on Italy, but in all European history there has been no drama more tremendous than the expiation of his sacrilege. To his soldiers the world was a vast space, peopled by those fantastic beings which are still seen on Gothic towers. These demons obeyed the monk of Rome, and his army, melting from the emperor under a nameless horror, left him helpless.
Gregory lay like a magician in the fortress of Canossa; but he had no need of carnal weapons, for when the emperor reached the Alps he was almost alone. Then his imagination
Migne, cxlviii. 790.
