Part 61

The position of metropolitan was not regarded with equal favour in the German church and in the German state. Amid the variety of races the metropolitans represented the unity of the national church, as the pope did that of the universal church, while at the same time as an estate of the empire they exercised great influence on civil administration and foreign policy. The reigning princes recognised in the unity of the ecclesiastical administration of the country a support and security for the political unity and therefore opposed the partition of the national church into several metropolitanates, or, where the larger extension of the empire required several archbishoprics, wished rather to give the ablest of these the rank and authority of a primate. The popes on the other hand endeavoured to give each of the larger countries at least two or three metropolitans, and to prevent as far as possible the appointment of a national church primate; for in the unity of the national church they perceived the danger of such a prelate sooner or later giving way to the desire to emancipate himself from Rome and secure for himself the position of an independent patriarch.

§ 83.1. =The Position of Metropolitans in General.=--As representing the unity of the national churches the interests of the metropolitans were bound up with those of the ruling princes. They were the most vigorous supporters of their policy, and generally got in return the prince’s hearty support. This coalition of the metropolitans and the civil power, however, threatened the subordinate clergy with abject servitude, and drove them to champion the interests of the pope. Through pressure of circumstances, a widespread conspiracy of bishops and abbots was formed during the last years of Louis the Pious to emancipate the clergy and especially the episcopate from the dominion of the state and the metropolitans and to place them immediately under the papal jurisdiction. They founded upon the Isidorian decretals as showing their rights in the earliest times (§ 87, 2). Their endeavour met indeed powerful opposition, but the statements of the Pseudo-Isidore had now obtained the validity of canon law.

§ 83.2. =Hincmar of Rheims.=--Among the =French= prelates after the restoration of the order of metropolitans by Boniface the first place was held by the occupant of the see of Rheims. It reached the summit of its glory under Hincmar of Rheims, A.D. 845-882, the ablest of all the ecclesiastical leaders of France. His life consists of an uninterrupted series of battles of the most varied kind. The first fight in which he engaged was the predestination controversy of Gottschalk (§ 91, 5). But his strength did not lie in dogmatics but in church government. And here, every inch a metropolitan, he has fought the most glorious battles of his life and affirmed, against the assumptions of popes and emancipation efforts of bishops, the autonomy of reigning princes, the freedom and independence of national churches, and the jurisdiction of metropolitans. Of this sort was his contest with bishop Rothad of Soissons. Hincmar had deposed him in A.D. 861 for insubordination. Rothad appealed to pope Nicholas I. on the ground of the Sardican Canon (§ 46, 3), which, however, had never been accepted in the Frankish Empire. He had at the same time referred the pope to the Isidorian decretals. Thus supported, Nicholas after a hard struggle had Rothad reinstated in A.D. 865. The insolent defiance of his own nephew, Hincmar, bishop of Laon, led the archbishop into another obstinate fight. Here too the Isidorian decretals played a prominent part. Hadrian II. in A.D. 869 took the side of the nephew, but the metropolitan gained the victory, and the nephew, who defied the king as well as the metropolitan and moreover had entered into treasonable communication with the German court, ended his course by being deprived of his eyes by the king. Down to A.D. 875 Hincmar was inflexibly true to the king as a pillar of his policy and his throne. But when Charles the Bald in that year paid down as purchase price for the imperial throne, not only the autonomy of the empire but also the freedom of the French church and the rights of the metropolitans, he was obliged now to turn his weapons against him. Hincmar died in A.D. 882 in flight before the Normans. With him the glory of the French archbishopric sank into its grave. The pseudo-Isidorian party had triumphed, the bishops were emancipated from the government of the princes of their country, but instead of this were often surrendered to the rude caprice of secular nobles.

§ 83.3. =Metropolitans in other lands.=--The =English= princes in the interests of the political unity of the Heptarchy for a long time withstood the endeavours of the popes to place a rival alongside of the archbishop of Canterbury. The action and reaction of these opposing interests were particularly strong in the time of Wilfrid (§ 78, 3), whom the Roman party had appointed archbishop of York. Wilfrid was driven away and died in A.D. 709 after an eventful life, without succeeding in taking possession of the place to which he had been appointed. At last, however, the pope reached his end. In A.D. 735 a Northumbrian prince obtained a pallium, and after that the see of York got an undisputed place alongside that of Canterbury.--In =Northern Italy= there were metropolitan sees at Ravenna, Milan and Aquileia which still made their old claims to self-government (§ 46, 1). Sergius, the prelate of Ravenna, about A.D. 760, thought it would be well out of the ruins of the exarchate to found an ecclesiastical state after the model of that of Rome. There was often opposition there to the Roman supremacy. On this account the violent archbishop John of Ravenna, who was also a defrauder of the church, suffered the most complete humiliation from Nicholas I. in A.D. 861, in spite of the emperor’s protection. The force of public opinion compelled the emperor to abandon his protégé when excommunicated by the pope. But during the pontificate of John VIII., Ausbert, prelate of Milan (died A.D. 882), who kept true to the German party, could defy papal anathema and deposition. His successor, however, again acknowledged the papal supremacy.--In =Germany=, since the time of Charlemagne, new metropolitan sees had been created at Salzburg, Cologne, Treves and Hamburg-Bremen. Mainz, however, still claimed the primacy and represented the unity of the German church. The Isidorian forgery availed not here as in the land of its birth to stop the contention of the archbishop. The German metropolitanate to the advantage of the empire maintained its rights untouched for centuries. Among the primates of Mainz the most important by far was =Hatto I.=, A.D. 891-913. Even under Arnulf (died A.D. 899), whose most trusted adviser he was, he exercised a wide as well as wholesome influence on the administration of the empire. It was still greater under Louis the Child (died A.D. 911) whom he raised to the throne and for whom he acted as regent. Conrad I. (§ 96, 1) also owed to him his election as king of the Germans. In the internal affairs of the German church, he directed and adjusted, organized and ruled in this time of general upheaval with wonderful insight, wisdom and energy, most conspicuously, and that too against papal assumptions, at the great national synod of Tribur in A.D. 895. The primate regarded it as a political axiom, that, in order to conserve and advance the unity of the empire, the

## particularism of the several races and the struggles of their

chiefs and princes for independence should be crushed. Owing to the consistency and energy with which he carried out his idea, he did indeed make many enemies. The stories of insidious perfidy and bloody violence which have attached themselves to his memory are to all appearance due to their calumnious hatred. His sudden death probably gave rise to the legend that the devil fetched him away and cast him into the mouth of Etna. To him, and not to the much less important Hatto II., who died in A.D. 970, is the other equally baseless legend of the Mäusethurm near Bingen to be referred.--Continuation, § 97, 2.

§ 84. THE CLERGY IN GENERAL.[233]

The bishops subject to the archbishop were called diocesan bishops, or, as voting members of the Provincial Synod, suffragan bishops. The canonical election of bishops by the people and clergy was completely done away with in the German national church. Kings without opposition filled vacant bishoprics according to their own choice. Louis the Pious at the Synod of Aachen, in A.D. 817, restored canonical election by people and clergy, subject to the emperor’s confirmation, but his successors paid no attention to the law. Deposition was usually carried out by the Provincial and National Synods. The investiture of bishops with pastoral staff and marriage ring by the reigning prince is occasionally met with even in the Merovingian age and became general after the development of the benefice system in the 9th century. Out of the institution of bishops without dioceses, _Episcopi regionarii_, originally intended for missionary service, arose in all probability the institution of _Chorepiscopi_ which flourished especially in France during the 8th and 9th centuries. With the old _Chorepiscopi_ (§ 34, 2; § 45) they have nothing in common beyond the name. They were subordinate assistants of the diocesan bishops, whose convenience, unspirituality and often absence on state affairs demanded such substitutes. But by their arbitrary conduct and refractoriness they often gave great trouble to those bishops who had any care for their flock. A Synod at Paris, therefore, in A.D. 849, withdrew all authority from them. From that time they gradually sank out of view. The inferior clergy, taken generally from the serfs, stood mostly in slavish dependence on the bishop and often had not the barest necessaries of culture. Their appointment lay with the bishop, yet the founder of a church and his successors frequently retained the right of patronage in choosing their own officiating clergymen.[234] Especially in the later Merovingian and earlier Carolingian periods, the Frankish clergy, superior and inferior, had become terribly corrupt. Boniface was the first to reintroduce some sort of discipline (§ 78, 5) and Charlemagne’s powerful government contributed in an extraordinary measure to the ennobling of the clergy. Yet the corruption was too general and too great to be altogether eradicated. Louis the Pious, therefore, in A.D. 816, extended to the whole kingdom a reformation which Chrodegang of Metz had introduced fifty years previously among his own clergy, by which means discipline and order were again improved for some decades. But in the troublous times of the last Carolingians everything went again into confusion and decay. Exemption from civil jurisdiction was accorded the clergy during this period only to this extent, that the secular courts could not proceed against a clergyman without the advice of the bishop, and the bishop himself was subject only to the jurisdiction of the king and the Provincial Synod.

§ 84.1. =The Superior Clergy.=--In the German states from the earliest times the superior clergy constituted a spiritual aristocracy which by means of their higher culture won a more influential position in civil life than the secular nobles. In all important affairs of state the bishops were the advisers of the king; they were almost exclusively employed on embassies; on all commissions there were clerical members and always one half of the _Missi dominici_ were clerics. This nearness to the person of the king and their importance in civil life made them rank as one of the estates of the realm. The Frankish idea of immunity, in consequence of which by royal gift along with the rights of territorial lords there were handed over to the new proprietors also the princely right of levying taxes and administering justice, brought to them secular as well as spiritual jurisdiction over a great part of the land. As the court of the Frankish king was moved from place to place, he required a special court, chapel, with a numerous court-clergy, at the head of which was an Arch-chaplain, usually the most distinguished prelate in the land. The names _Capella_ and _Capellani_ were originally applied only to court chapels and court chaplains, and were derived from the fact that in the chapel was kept the _Cappa_ or coat of Martin of Tours as a precious relic and the national palladium of France. The court clergy formed the nursery for future bishops of the realm. In addition to the ring and staff as episcopal insignia we find in the Carolingian age the bishop’s cap, consisting of two long sheets of tin or pasteboard running up to a peak, covered with silk of the same colour as the dress used in celebrating mass, generally richly ornamented with gold and precious stones, called by the old pagan name _Infula_ or _Mitra_.[235]

§ 84.2. =The Inferior Clergy.=--The enormous expansion of episcopal dioceses rendered a new arrangement of the =inferior clergy= indispensable. The extension churches in towns and the country churches which previously had been served by the clergy of the cathedral church, obtained a regular clergy of their own. As these churches were always dedicated to a saint they were called _Tituli_, and the clergy appointed to officiate in them, _Intitulati_, _Incardinati_, _Cardinales_. Thus originated the idea of _Parochia_, παροικία and of _Parochus_ or parish priest,[236] who, because the _cura animarum_ was committed to him was also called Curate, as in the French curé. Over about ten parishes was placed an _Archipresbyter ruralis_ who was called _Decanus_, Dean. As the right of administering baptism belonged originally to him exclusively, his church was called _Ecclesia baptisimalis_; his diocese, _Christianitas_ or _Plebs_; he himself also, _Plebanus_. A further arrangement was first introduced in the 8th century by Heddo of Strasburg [Strassburg], who gave to each of the deans in his diocese seven archdeacons, _præpositi_, provosts. Besides the parish churches there were many chapels or oratories where divine service was conducted only at certain times by the neighbouring parish clergy or chaplains appointed for that purpose. To this class also belong the domestic chapels in episcopal residences or on the estates of noblemen which were served by special domestic or castle chaplains. The latter indeed had in addition the duty of feeding the dogs, waiting at table and taking charge of the lady’s pony. Notwithstanding repeated reinforcement of the old law: _Ne quis vage ordinetur_, there was still a great number of so-called _Clericis vagis_, mostly vagabonds and idlers, who, ordained by unprincipled bishops for a reward, roamed over the country like clerical pedlars.

§ 84.3. =Compulsory Celibacy= was stoutly resisted by the German clergy. The inferior clergy were mostly married. At ordination they were ordered indeed to separate from their wives and to abstain from marital intercourse, but the promise was rarely fulfilled. Among the unmarried clergy, fornication, adultery and unnatural lust were prevalent. A bishop, Ulrich of Augsburg, addressed to Nicholas I. a philippic against the law of celibacy with fearless exposures of its evil consequences. The =moral condition= of the clergy was generally speaking shockingly low. Legacy hunting, forging of documents, simony and chaffering for benefices were carried on in a shameless way. The lordly habits of the bishops consisted in hunting, going about with dogs and falcons, and in wild drunken revels. In the 7th century it was the peculiar pleasure of the Frankish bishops in wild scenes of blood that induced them to take part in the wars, and led to their being afterwards obliged to fit out contingents for the field at the cost of their ecclesiastical revenues. Pepin, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious passed stringent laws against these warlike habits of churchmen; but the later Carolingians not only tolerated but actually encouraged them.

§ 84.4. =Canonical life.=--Augustine’s institution of a _monasterii Clericorum_ (§ 45, 1) was often imitated in later times. But bishop =Chrodegang of Metz=, who died in A.D. 766, gave it for the first time, about A.D. 760, a fixed and permanent form. His rule or _Canon_ is closely connected with the monastic rule of St. Benedict (§ 85), with the omission of the vow of poverty. He built a commodious residence Domus, _monasterium_ (comp. Germ. words Dom and Münster), in which all the clergy of his cathedral church were obliged to live, pray, work, eat and sleep under the constant and strict supervision of the bishop or his archdeacon. This was the _Vita canonica_. After morning devotions all the members of the establishment gathered together in the hall where the bishop or provost read to them a chapter from the Bible, most frequently from Leviticus, from the rule or from the fathers, and added thereto the necessary explanations and exhortations. The hall was therefore called the Chapter House; then the name =Chapter=[237] was given to the whole body gathered together there. The =Colleges=[238] were a subsequent development of the chapter in non-episcopal city churches, with a provost or deacon at their head. Louis the Pious allowed Chrodegang’s rule to be revived and generalized by the deacon Amalarius of Metz, and at the National Assembly at Aachen in A.D. 817 enforced it for the whole kingdom. It is known as _Regula Aquisgranensis_. But soon after the Canons endeavoured to emancipate themselves more and more from the burdensome yoke of episcopal control. Gunther of Cologne (§ 82, 7) who, though deposed by the pope, retained his official position, was obliged to purchase the support of his chapter by a bargain in accordance with which a great part of the ecclesiastical revenues of the chapter were placed at their own full disposal as Prebends or Benefices. And what this one chapter gained for itself was afterwards contended for by others.[239]--Continuation, § 97, 3.

§ 85. MONASTICISM.[240]

While from the 5th century one rush of migrating peoples was rapidly followed by another, the monkish orders fell into decay, barbarism and corruption. They would scarcely have survived this period of commotion, at least would not have proved the great blessing that they have been to the German west, had not the spirit of ancient Rome with its practical turn, its appreciation of law and order and its organizing talent, given them at the right time, what they hitherto wanted, a rule answering to the requirements and circumstances of the age, and by means of it firm footing, unity, order and legal form. This task was accomplished by =Benedict of Nursia= (d. A.D. 543), the patriarch of Western Monasticism. The rule, which he prescribed in A.D. 529 to the monks of the monastery of Monte Cassino in Campania founded by him, was not unduly ascetic, combined strict discipline with a certain degree of mildness and indulgence, estimated the needs of human nature as well as the circumstances of the times, and was, in short, adaptable and practical. From the rule of Cassiodorus (§ 47, 23) Benedict’s disciples borrowed that zeal for scholarly studies about which their master had given no directions, and Gregory the Great inspired the order with enthusiasm for missionary labours. Thus the Benedictine order obtained its full consecration to its calling of worldwide significance. Soon spreading over all the West, being introduced into France by Maurus in A.D. 543, it nobly fulfilled its vocation by cultivating the soil and the mind, by clearing the forests, bringing in waste lands, zealously preaching the gospel, rooting out superstition and paganism, educating the young, fostering and restoring literature, science and art. The barbarous age, however, which saw the overthrow of the Merovingians and the rise of the Carolingians, exerted a deteriorating influence also on the Benedictines. But Charlemagne restored strict discipline, and assigned to the monasteries the task of erecting schools and prosecuting scholarly studies. By authority of Louis the Pious and by order of the National Assembly at Aachen in A.D. 817, =Benedict of Aniane= undertook a reformation and re-organization of all the monkish systems throughout the empire. At the head of a commission appointed for that purpose he visited all the Frankish monasteries, and compelled them to organize themselves after his improved Benedictine Rule.

§ 85.1. The one source of information regarding the life of =Benedict of Nursia= is the miracle-laden record of the miracle-loving pope Gregory the Great in the second book of his Dialogues. Benedict’s =Rule= comprises 73 chapters. The first principle of the monastic life is obedience to the Abbot, as representative of Christ. The choice of abbot lies with the brothers. Of serving brothers the rule knows nothing. The chief occupation is agriculture. Idleness is strictly forbidden. Charge of the kitchen and reading at table are duties performed by all the monks in turn week about. Divine service begins at 3 a.m. and is rendered regularly through all the seven hours (§ 56, 2). Two meals a day are partaken of and each monk has daily half a bottle of wine. Flesh meat is given only to the sick and weak. At table and after the _Completorium_ or last hour of prayer, no word was allowed to be spoken. All the brothers slept in a common dormitory, each in a separate bed, but completely dressed and girded, so as to be ready at call for matins. The discipline was strict and reasonable; first private, then public rebuke, then penal fasting, corporal punishment, and finally excommunication. Hospitality and attention to the poor were enjoined on all monasteries. Reception was preceded by a year’s novitiate. The vow included _Stabilitas loci_, _Conversio morum_ (poverty and chastity) and _Obedientia_. The _Oblati_ were a special kind of novices, _i.e._ children who in their early youth were placed in the monastery by their parents. They were educated in the monastic schools and were not allowed to go back to the world.

§ 85.2. =Benedict of Aniane= (A.D. 821) was originally called Witiza and was the son of a Visigoth count. He had served as a soldier under Charlemagne. In attempting to save his brother he was himself almost drowned. His ambition was now directed to an ascetic life, in which his personal performances were most remarkable. On the river Anianus in Languedoc he founded in A.D. 779 the monastery of Aniane. He was the indispensable and all-powerful counsellor of Louis the Pious. In order to have him always near him, Louis founded for him the monastery of Inda or the Cornelius-Münster near Aachen. In the interests of his cloister reform he published in A.D. 817 a _Codex regulorum_ in which he collected all the monastic rules previously known.

§ 85.3. The rule of the elder Benedict made no reference to =Nunneries=; but his sister Scholastica is regarded as the founder of the order of female Benedictines. Another form of female asceticism was developed after the model of the canonical life of the secular clergy in the institution of canonesses. The rule, which Louis the Pious at Aachen in A.D. 816 allowed them to draw up for themselves, is distinctly milder than that of the nuns. The ladies’ orders gradually became places of resort for the unmarried daughters of the nobles. The canonical age for taking the nun’s vows was twenty-five. The novitiate lasted three years. Besides the _propria professio_ the _paterna devotio_ was also regarded as binding. In regard to dress the adoption of the veil was the main thing; but in addition they wore the wreath as a symbol of virginity and the ring as token of spiritual marriage. At this time the cutting of the hair was only a punishment for unchaste nuns. The honourable position of the wife among the Germans secured special respect for the abbess, and obtained for the most famous nunneries exemption, civil prerogatives and proprietary, even princely rights. The frequent appearance of =Double-Cloisters= where monks and nuns, naturally in separate dwellings, under a common rule either of an abbess as often in England, or of an abbot, was also peculiarly German.