chapter 9._

_H. C. Lea, Studies in Christian History, pp. 43-76._

_P. Schaff, History of the Christian Church, volume 4, chapter 4, section 60._

PAPACY: A. D. 887-1046. Demoralization of the Church. Degradation of the Holy See. Reforms of the Emperor, Henry III.

"No exaggeration is possible of the demoralized state into which the Christian world, and especially the Church of Rome, had fallen in the years that followed the extinction of the Carlovingian line (A. D. 887). The tenth century is even known among Protestants 'par excellence' as the sæculum obscurum, and Baronius expresses its portentous corruption in the vivid remark that Christ was as if asleep in the vessel of the Church. 'The infamies prevalent among the clergy of the time,' says Mr. Bowden [Life of Hildebrand], 'as denounced by Damiani and others, are to be alluded to, not detailed.' … When Hildebrand was appointed to the monastery of St. Paul at Rome, he found the offices of devotion systematically neglected, the house of prayer defiled by the sheep and cattle who found their way in and out through its broken doors, and the monks, contrary to all monastic rule, attended in their refectory by women. The excuse for these irregularities was the destitution to which the holy house was reduced by the predatory bands of Campagna; but when the monastic bodies were rich, as was the case in Germany, matters were worse instead of better. … At the close of the ninth century, Stephen VI. dragged the body of an obnoxious predecessor from the grave, and, after subjecting it to a mock trial, cut off its head and three fingers, and threw it into the Tiber. He himself was subsequently deposed, and strangled in prison. In the years that followed, the power of electing to the popedom fell into the hands of the intriguing and licentious Theodora, and her equally unprincipled daughters, Theodora and Marozia.

See ROME: A. D. 903-964].

These women, members of a patrician family, by their arts and beauty, obtained an unbounded influence over the aristocratic tyrants of the city. One of the Theodoras advanced a lover, and Marozia a son, to the popedom. The grandson of the latter, Octavian, succeeding to her power, as well as to the civil government of the city, elevated himself, on the death of the then Pope, to the apostolic chair, at the age of eighteen, under the title of John XII. (A. D. 956). His career was in keeping with such a commencement. 'The Lateran Palace,' says Mr. Bowden, 'was disgraced by becoming a receptacle for courtezans: and decent females were terrified from pilgrimages to the threshold of the Apostles by the reports which were spread abroad of the lawless impurity and violence of their representative and successor.' … At length he was carried off by a rapid illness, or by the consequences of a blow received in the prosecution of his intrigues. Boniface VII. (A. D. 974), in the space of a few weeks after his elevation, plundered the treasury and basilica of St. Peter of all he could conveniently carry off, and fled to Constantinople. John XVIII. (A. D. 1003) expressed his readiness, for a sum of money from the Emperor Basil, to recognize the right of the Greek Patriarch to the title of ecumenical or universal bishop, and the consequent degradation of his own see; and was only prevented by the general indignation excited by the report of his intention. Benedict IX. (A. D. 1033) was consecrated Pope, according to some authorities, at the age of ten or twelve years, and became notorious for adulteries and murders. At length he resolved on marrying his first cousin; and, when her father would not assent except on the condition of his resigning the popedom, he sold it for a large sum, and consecrated the purchaser as his successor. Such are a few of the most prominent features of the ecclesiastical history of these dreadful times, when, in the words of St. Bruno, 'the world lay in wickedness, holiness had disappeared, justice had perished, and truth had been buried; Simon Magus lording it over the Church, whose bishops and priests were given to luxury and fornication.' Had we lived in such deplorable times as have been above described … we should have felt for certain, that if it was possible to retrieve the Church, it must be by some external power; she was helpless and resourceless; and the civil power must interfere, or there was no hope. So thought the young and zealous emperor, Henry III. (A. D. 1039), who, though unhappily far from a perfect character, yet deeply felt the shame to which the Immaculate Bride was exposed, and determined with his own right hand to work her deliverance. … This well-meaning prince did begin that reformation which ended in the purification and monarchical estate of the Church. He held a Council of his Bishops in 1047; in it he passed a decree that 'Whosoever should make any office or station in the Church a subject of purchase or sale, should suffer deprivation and be visited with excommunication;' at the same time, with regard to his own future conduct, he solemnly pledged himself as follows:—'As God has freely of His mere mercy bestowed upon me the crown of the empire, so will I give freely and without price all things that pertain unto His religion.' This was his first act; but he was aware that the work of reform, to be thoroughly executed, must proceed from Rome, as the centre of the ecclesiastical commonwealth, and he determined, upon those imperial precedents and feudal principles which Charlemagne had introduced, himself to appoint a Pope, who should be the instrument of his general reformation. {2427} The reigning Pope at this time was Gregory VI., and he introduces us to so curious a history that we shall devote some sentences to it. Gregory was the identical personage who had bought the papal office of the profligate Benedict IX. for a large sum, and was consecrated by him, and yet he was far from a bad sort of man after all. … He had been known in the world as John Gratianus; and at the time of his promotion was arch-priest of Rome. 'He was considered,' says Mr. Bowden, 'in those bad times more than ordinarily religious; he had lived free from the gross vices by which the clergy were too generally disgraced.' … He could not be quite said to have come into actual possession of his purchase; for Benedict, his predecessor, who sold it to him, being disappointed in his intended bride, returned to Rome after an absence of three months, and resumed his pontifical station, while the party of his intended father-in-law had had sufficient influence to create a Pope of their own, John, Bishop of Sabina, who paid a high price for his elevation, and took the title of Sylvester III. And thus there were three self-styled Popes at once in the Holy City, Benedict performing his sacred functions at the Lateran, Gregory at St. Peter's, and Sylvester at Santa Maria Maggiore. Gregory, however, after a time, seemed to preponderate over his antagonists; he maintained a body of troops, and with these he suppressed the suburban robbers who molested the pilgrims. Expelling them from the sacred limits of St. Peter's, he carried his arms further, till he had cleared the neighbouring towns and roads of these marauders. … This was the point of time at which the Imperial Reformer made his visitation of the Church and See of the Apostles. He came into Italy in the autumn of 1046, and held a Council at Sutri, a town about thirty miles to the north of Rome. Gregory was allowed to preside; and, when under his auspices the abdication of Benedict had been recorded, and Sylvester had been stripped of his sacerdotal rank and shut up in a monastery for life, Gregory's own turn came" and he was persuaded to pronounce a sentence of condemnation upon himself and to vacate the pontifical chair. "The new Pope whom the Emperor gave to the Church instead of Gregory VI., Clement II., a man of excellent character, died within the year. Damasus II. also, who was his second nomination, died in three or four weeks after his formal assumption of his pontifical duties. Bruno, Bishop of Toul, was his third choice. … And now we are arrived at the moment when the State reformer struck his foot against the hidden rock. … He had chosen a Pope, but 'quis custodiat ipsos custodes'? What was to keep fast that Pope in that very view of the relation of the State to the Church, that plausible Erastianism, as it has since been called, which he adopted himself? What is to secure the Pope from the influences of some Hildebrand at his elbow, who, a young man himself, shall rehearse, in the person of his superior, that part which he is one day to play in his own, as Gregory VII.? Such was the very fact; Hildebrand was with Leo, and thus commences the ecclesiastical career of that wonderful man."

_J. H. Newman, Essays Critical and Historical, volume 2, pages 255-265._

See, also, ROME: A. D. 962-1057; and GERMANY: A. D. 973-1122.

PAPACY: A. D. 1053. Naples and Sicily granted as fiefs of the Church to the sons of Tancred—the Normans.

See ITALY (SOUTHERN): A. D. 1000-1090.

PAPACY: A. D. 1054. The Filioque Controversy. Separation of the Orthodox (Greek) Church.

See FILIOQUE CONTROVERSY; also, CHRISTIANITY: A. D. 330-1054.

PAPACY: A. D. 1056-1122. Hildebrand and Henry IV. The imperious pontifical reign of Gregory VII. Empire and Papacy in conflict. The War of Investitures.

"Son of a Tuscan carpenter, but, as his name shows, of German origin, Hildebrand had been from childhood a monk in the monastery of Sta Maria, on Mount Aventine, at Rome, where his uncle was abbot, and where he became the pupil of a learned Benedictine archbishop, the famous Laurentius of Amalfi, and formed a tender friendship with St. Odilon of Cluny [or Clugny]. Having early attached himself to the virtuous Pope Gregory VI., it was with indignation that he saw him confounded with two unworthy competitors, and deposed together with them by the arbitrary influence of the emperor at Sutri. He followed the exiled pontiff to France, and, after his death, went to enrol himself among the monks of Cluny, where he had previously resided, and where, according to several writers, he held the office of prior. During a part of his youth, however, he must have lived at the German Court, where he made a great impression on the Emperor Henry III., and on the best bishops of the country, by the eloquence of his preaching. … It was at Cluny that Hildebrand met, in 1049, the new Pope, Bruno, Bishop of Toul. … Bruno himself had been a monk: his cousin, the Emperor Henry III., had, by his own authority, caused him to be elected at Worms, December 1048, and proclaimed under the name of Leo IX. Hildebrand, seeing him already clothed with the pontifical purple, reproached him for having accepted the government of the Church, and advised him to guard ecclesiastical liberty by being canonically elected at Rome. Bruno yielded to this salutary remonstrance; laying aside the purple and the pontifical ornaments, he caused Hildebrand to accompany him to Rome, where his election was solemnly renewed by the Roman clergy and people. This was the first blow given to the usurped authority of the emperor. From that moment Hildebrand was withdrawn from Cluny by the Pope, in spite of the strong resistance of the Abbot St. Hugh. Created Cardinal Subdeacon of the Roman Church, and Abbot of San Paolo fuori le Mura, he went on steadily towards the end he had in view. Guided by his advice, Leo IX., after having renewed his courage at Monte Cassino, prepared several decrees of formal condemnation against the sale of benefices and against the marriage of priests; and these decrees were fulminated in a series of councils on both sides the Alps, at Rome, Verceil, Mayence, and Reims. The enemy, till then calm in the midst of his usurped rule, felt himself sharply wounded. Nevertheless, the simoniacal bishops, accomplices or authors of all the evils the Pope wished to cure, pretended as well as they could not to understand the nature and drift of the pontiff's act. They hoped time would be their friend; but they were soon undeceived. {2428} Among the many assemblies convoked and presided over by Pope Leo IX., the Council of Reims, held in 1094, was the most important. … Henry I., King of France, opposed the holding of this Council with all his might. … The Pope stood his ground: he was only able to gather round him twenty bishops; but, on the other hand, there came fifty Benedictine abbots. Thanks to their support, energetic canons were promulgated against the two great scandals of the time, and several guilty prelates were deposed. They went still further: a decree pronounced by this Council vindicated, for the first time in many years, the freedom of ecclesiastical elections, by declaring that no promotion to the episcopate should be valid without the choice of the clergy and people. This was the first signal of the struggle for the enfranchisement of the Church, and the first token of the preponderating influence of Hildebrand. From that time all was changed. A new spirit breathed on the Church —a new life thrilled the heart of the papacy. … Vanquished and made prisoner by the Normans—not yet, as under St. Gregory VII., transformed into devoted champions of the Church —Leo IX. vanquished them, in turn, by force of courage and holiness, and wrested from them their first oath of fidelity to the Holy See while granting to them a first investiture of their conquests. Death claimed the pontiff when he had reigned five years. … At the moment when the struggle between the papacy and the Western empire became open and terrible, the East, by a mysterious decree of Providence, finally separated itself from Catholic unity. … The schism was completed by Michael Cerularius, whom the Emperor Constantine Monomachius had placed, in 1043, on the patriarchal throne. The separation took place under the vain pretext of Greek and Latin observances on the subject of unleavened bread, of strangled meats, and of the singing of the Alleluia. … Leo IX. being dead, the Romans wished to elect Hildebrand, and only renounced their project at his most earnest entreaties. He then hastened to cross the Alps, and directed his steps to Germany [1054], provided with full authority from the Roman clergy and people to choose, under the eyes of the Emperor Henry III., whoever, among the prelates of the empire, that prince should judge most worthy of the tiara. … Hildebrand selected Gebhard, Bishop of Eichstadt; and in spite of the emperor, who desired to keep near him a bishop who enjoyed his entire confidence—in spite even of Gebhard himself—he carried him off to Rome, where, according to the ancient custom, the clergy proceeded to his election under the name of Victor II. The new Pope, at the risk of his life, adhered to the counsels of Hildebrand, and continued the war made by his predecessor on simoniacal bishops and married priests. … At this crisis [October, 1056] the Emperor Henry III. died in the flower of his age, leaving the throne of Germany to his only son, a child of six years old, but already elected and crowned—the regent being his mother, the Empress Agnes. … Victor II. had scarcely followed the emperor to the tomb [July, 1057] when the Roman clergy hastened, for the first time, to elect a Pope without any imperial intervention. In the absence of Hildebrand, the unanimous choice of the electors fixed on the former chancellor and legate at Constantinople of Leo IX., on Frederic, monk and abbot of Monte Cassino," raised to the throne by the name of Stephen, sometimes numbered as the ninth, but generally