LJBHARY OF PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY BX 955 .B45 1921 Bell, Mary I. M. Ottley, A short history of the papacy ^HAS-B'^AURIATCoi A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY BY MARY I. M. BELL WITH TWO MAPS LIBRARY OF PRINCETON FEB 1 4 2(Xn THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1921 DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER EDWARD BICKERSTETH OTTLEY PREFACE AHISTOEY of the Papacy must claim to be, through many centuries, a history of the world. The author of a short history of the Papacy has therefore to choose between two al- ternatives, and either to construct a chronology of events or to concentrate on the moments of great importance, connecting them by a thin thread of nar- rative from which much that is relevant will be omitted for lack of space. I have tried to follow the second method in writing this book, and I must ask the indul- gence of those whose interest in the Papacy is chiefly concentrated in some special aspect or epoch or sphere of intluence if this is very slightly indicated or even entirely omitted. If we admit that religion has a claim to penetrate every department of life, we must concede to the Papacy, as a spiritual institution, the obligation to exert its influence in every sphere of human activity. We cannot, in a short book, follow the Popes in the whole wide sweep of their spiritual imperium. But I have tried here to give a continuous account of its evo- lution in history, and particularly to concentrate on the intellectual principles by which the Papacy has been supported or opposed. History is not theology, and I have tried to keep the narrative free from doctrinal controversy. But a viii A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY true interpretation of the historical Papacy must be one in which the emphasis is laid, negatively as well as positively, on the spiritual idea in which it was conceived. I wish to thank those who have helped me with advice and guidance, and in particular my friend and tutor, Mr. Edward Armstrong, to whom the conception of the book and much else is due. I also wish to thank my brother, Captain L. E. Ottley for making the index, which my absence from England obliged me to leave to him. I am indebted to my husband for preparing the maps. MARY I. M. BELL CONTENTS VPTKR PAGE PREFACE vii THE POPES xi PART I THE RISE OF SPIRITUAL POWER I. THE ORIGIN OF SPIRITUAL POWER 3 II. THE CONVERSION OF CONSTANTINE AND ITS EFFECTS, A.D. 312-403 9 III. THE FALL OF ROME TO THE COUNCIL OF EPHESUS, A.D. 403-431 16 IV. LEO THE GREAT: THE HUNS AND THE VANDALS, A.D. 431-460 22 V. GOTHIC RULE, a.d. 461-568 28 VI. MORAL SUPREMACY: THE EPOCH OF GREGORY THE GREAT, A.D. 568-604 37 PART II THE DARK AGES VII. THE BREACH BETWEEN EAST AND WEST— Part I. — The Opening of the Breach, a.d. 604-701 - - 51 Part II. — The Widening of the Gulf, a.d. 704-751 - - 55 VIII. THE APPEAL TO THE FRANKS, AND THE REVIVAL OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE, a.d. 741-800 - - : - 60 IX. DECAY OF THE CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE, a.d. 800-867 - 72 X. ARISTOCRATIC TYRANNY AND SUBJECT POPES, a.d. 867-954 82 XI. THE BEGINNINGS OF REFORM : THE POPES AND THE OTTOS, A.D. 955-1046 90 XII. THE PAPACY UNDER HILDEBRAND, a.d. 1046-1085— Part I. — Hildebrand 105 Part II.— Gregory VII. 114 ix A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY CHAPTER XIII. XIV. XV. XVI. XVII. XVIII. XIX. XX. XXI. PART III THE MIDDLE AGES PAGE THE INVESTITURE WAR, a.d. 1085-1122 - - - - 127 THE REPUBLICAN MOVEMENT, a.d. 1122-1179 - - - 142 CONSOLIDATION OF PAPAL MONARCHY : THE EPOCH OF INNOCENT IIL, a.d. 1179-1217 155 THE CONTEST WITH FREDERICK STUPOR MUNDI - - 167 THE LAST STRUGGLE WITH THE HOHENSTAUFEN AND THE COMING OF THE FRENCH, a.d. 1251-1276 - - 178 THE FALL OF THE MEDIAEVAL PAPACY : BONIFACE VIII., A.D. 1276-1303 190 THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY AND THE BEGINNINGS OF THE INTELLECTUAL REVIVAL, a.d. 1303-1334 - - 201 WHEN ISRAEL CAME OUT OP EGYPT, a.d. 1334-1370 - 215 THE SCHISM AND THE COUNCILS, a.d. 1370-1418 - 227 PART IV THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION XXII. THE RECOVERY: MARTIN V. AND EUGENIUS IV., a.d. 1418-1447 247 XXIII. THE RENAISSANCE POPES, a.d. 1447-1471 - - - - 262 XXIV. THE SECULAR PAPACY, 1471-1503 279 XXV. JULIUS II. AND LEO X.: THE PAPACY AMONG THE DYNASTIES, a.d. 1503-1521 299 XXVL THE REFORMATION, a.d. 1517-1550 311 XXVII. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 345 PART V THE PAPACY IN MODERN HISTORY XXVIII. THE COUNTER-REFORMATION, a.d. 1555-1605 - - - 329 XXIX. THE CENTURY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT, a.d. 1700-1846 360 XXX. CONCLUSION 378 INDEX - - 387 MAPS FACING PAGE I. ITALY IN THE MIDDLE AGES 142 II. CENTRAL EUROPE 329 THE POPES A.D. A.D. U2. S. Peter. 402. Innocent I. 167 Linus. 417. Zosimus. >68 Clement. 418. Boniface I. 178. Anacletua. 418. Eulalius (anti-pope). 191. Clement. 422. Celestine I. '100 Evarestus. 432. Sixtu3 III. >109. Alexander. 440. Leo I. (the Great). 119. Sixtus I. 461. Hilarius. 129. Telesphorus. 468. Simplicius. 139. Hyginus. 483. Felix III. 143. Pius I. 492. Gelasius I. 157. Anicetus. 496. Anastasius II. 168. Soter. 498. Symmachus. 177. Eleutherius. 498. Laurentius (anti-pope). 193. Victor (?) 514. Hormisdas. 202. Zephyrinua (?) 523. John I. 219. Calixtus I. 526. Felix IV. 223. Urban I. 530. Boniface II. 230. Pontianus. 530. Dioscorus (anti-pope). 235. Anterius. 532. John II. 236. FabianuB. 535. Agapetus I. 251. Cornelius. 536. Silverius. 252. Lucius I. 537. Vigilius. 253. Stephen I. 555. Pelagius I. 257. Sixtus IT. 560. John III. 259. Dionysius. 574. Benedict I. 269. Felix. 678. Pelagius II. 275. Eutychianus. 590. Gregory I. (the Great). 283. Caius. 604. Sabinianus. 295. Marcellinus. 607. Boniface III. 304. Vacancy. 607. Boniface IV. 308. Marcellus I. 615. Deusdedit. 310. Kusebius. 618. Boniface V. 311. Melchiades. 625. Honorius I. 314. Sylvester I. 638. Severinus. 336. Marcus I. 640. John IV. 337. Julius I. 642. Theodorus I. 352. Liberius. 649. Martin I. 356. Felix (anti-pope). 654. Eugenius I. 366. Damasus I. 657. Vital ianus. 384. Siricius. 672. Adeodatus. 398. Anastasius I. 676. Donus I. 1 These dates cannot be taken a LS hist< jrically proven. They rest on evidence varying in its degree of authenticity. xu A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY A.D. 678. Agatho. 682. Leo II. 683. (?) Benedict II. 685. John V. 685. (?) Conon. 687. Sergius I. 687. Paschal (anti-pope). 687. Theodore „ 701. John VI. 705. John VII. 708. Sisinnius. 708. Constantine. 715. Gregory II. 731. Gregory III. 741. Zacharias. 752. Stephen (II.). 752. Stephen n. (or HI.). 757. Paul I. 767. Constantino (anti-pope). 768. Stephen in. (or IV.). 772. Hadrian I. 795. Leo m. 816. Stephen IV. 817. Paschal I. 824. Eugenius 11. 827. Valentinus. 827. Gregory IV. 844. Sergius 11. 847. Leo IV. 855. Benedict HI. 855. Anastasius (ant i- pope). 858. Nicholas I. 867. Hadrian H. 872. John VIII. 882. Martin II. 884. Hadrian III. 885. Stephen V. 891. Formosus. 896. Boniface VI. 896. Stephen VI. 897. Romanus. 897. Theodore H. 898. John IX. 900. Benedict IV. 903. Leo V. 903. Christopher. 904. Sergius m. 911. Anastasius IH. 913. Lando. 914. John X. 928. Leo VI. 929. Stephen VII. 931. John XI. 936. Leo VII. 939. Stephen VHI. 941. Martin HI. A.D. 946. Agapetus II. 955. John XII. 963. Leo VIII. 964. Benedict V. (anti-pope). 965. John XIII. 972. Benedict VL 974. Boniface VII. (anti-pope). 974. Domnus II. (?). 974. Benedict VII. 983. John XIV. 985. John XV. 996. Gregory V. 996. John XVI. (anti-pope). 999. Sylvester II. 1003. John XVII. 1003. John XVIII. 1009. Sergius IV. 1012. Benedict VIII. 1024. John XIX. 1033. Benedict IX. 1044. Sylvester (anti-pope). 1045. Gregory VI. 1046. Clement II. 1048. Damasus II. 1054. Victor II. 1057. Stephen IX. 1058. Benedict X. 1059. Nicholas II. 1061. Alexander II. 1073. Gregory VII. (Hildebrand). 1080. Clement (anti-pope). 1086. Victor III. 1087. Urban II. 1099. Paschal II. 1102. Albert (anti-pope). 1105. Sylvester ,, 1118. Gelasius. 1118. Gregory (anti-pope). 1119. Calixtus II. 1121. Celestine (anti-pope). 1124. Honorius II. 1130. Innocent H. 1130. Anacletus (anti-pope). 1138. Victor „ 1143. Celestine H. 1144. Lucius H. 1145. Eugenius HI. 1153. Anastasius TV. 1154. Hadiian IV. 1159. Alexander HI. 1159. Victor (anti-pope). 1164. Paschal „ 1168. Calixtus „ 1181. Lucius in. 1185. Urban IH. 1187. Gregory VIH. A.D. 1187. 1191. 1198. 121b. 1227. 1241. 1243. 1254. 1261. 1265. 1269. 1271. 1276. 1276. 1277. 1277. 1281. 1285. 1289. 1292. 1294. 1294. 1303. 1305. 1314. 1316. 1334. 1342. 1352. 1362. 1370. 1378. 1378. 1389. 1394. 1404. 1406. 1409. 1410. 1417. 1431. ^1439. ^"1447. 1455. 1468. 1464. 1471. THE POPES Clement HI. A.D. 1484. Innocent VIII. Celestine III. 1493. Alexander VI. Innocent III. 1503. Pius m. Honorius III. 1503. Julius II. Gregory IX. 1513. Leo X. Celestine FV. 1522. Hadrian VI. Innocent IV. 1523. Clement VH. Alexander IV. 1534. Paul HI. Urban IV. 1550. Julius HI. Clement IV. 1555. Marcellus II. Vacancy. 1555. Paul IV. Gregory X. 1559. Pius IV. Innocent V. 1566. Pius V. Hadrian V. 1572. Gregory XIII. John XX. (or XXI.) 1585. Sixtus V. Nicholas HI. 1590. Urban VH. Martin IV. 1590. Gregory XIV. Honoriu.s IV. 1591. Innocent IX. Nicholas IV. 1592. Clement VIH. Vacancy. 1604. Leo XI. Celestine V. 1604. Paul V. Boniface VIII. 1621. Gregory XV. Benedict XI. 1623. Urban VHI. Clement V. 1644. Innocent X. Vacancy. 1655. Alexander VII. John XXI. (or XXII.) 1667. Clement IX. Benedict XH. 1670. Clement X. Clement VI. 1676. Innocent XI. Innocent VI. 1689. Alexander VIII Urban V. 1691. Innocent XII. Gregory XI. 1700. Clement XI. Urban VI. 1720. Innocent XIII. Clement VII. (anti-pope). ■ 1724. Benedict XHI. Boniface IX. 1730. Clement XH. Benedict (anti-pope). - 1740. Benedict XIV. Innocent Vn. 1758. Clement XHT. Gregory XH. . . 1769. Clement XIV. Alexander V. ' '. << 1775. Pius VI. John XXn. (or XXIU.) 1800. Pius VH. Martin V. 1823. LeoXH. Eugenius IV. 1829. Pius VHI. Felix V. (anti-pope). . ._ 1831. Gregory XVI. Nicholas V. 1846. Pius IX. Calixtus IV. 1878. Leo XHI. PiusH. 1903. Pius X. Paul n. 1914. Benedict XV. Sixtua IV. XllI PART I THE RISE OF SPIRITUAL POWER CHAPTER 1 THE ORIGIN OF SPIRITUAL POWER " "W" IKE almost all the great works of nature and of human I power, the Papacy grew up in silence and obscurity." ■^ — ^ But the silence is as eloquent as the obscurity is em- blematic of the great future ; for both served as hidden sources whence the makers of the Papacy were to draw their warrants in later generations, for temporal accretion as well as spiritual ex- pansion. The history of the Papacy has no definite beginning. We may accept the assertion that Leo I., or possibly his forerunner Innocent, was in fact the first Pope — the first Bishop of Rome, that is, who claimed a distinct spiritual overlordship. But the fifth century cannot be isolated from the ages which preceded it, for an epoch can only stand out in relation to the period which leads up to it. To St. Peter and the legends of St. Peter the historian must look for the birth of the Papacy, if for no other reason than because it was to the age of St. Peter that the architects of papal power turned in their efi'orts to construct a historical basis for their magnificent conception. But it is in this that the modern historian of the Papacy difi'ers most widely from his early predecessors, for he has to cope with the acts of St. Peter, not as historical landmarks to be proved or disproved, but as ideas of the greatest importance, in so far as they become articles of faith to the supporters of papal power or canons of unbelief to its opponents. Whether St. Peter actually founded the Papacy, or whether the Popes evolved the legend that he did so, is irrelevant to the story of the Papacy, and we can fortunately leave it to theologians to decide as to the degree of probability which the facts warrant, and their validity as arguments for or against the great cause in which they were afterwards pleaded. Of St. Peter's own Bishopric of Rome nothing is known, and even tradition is comparatively silent. His death in the year 64 is, however, so well attested by the earliest traditions, and so consistently dwelt upon, that there seems no reason for doubting 4 A SHORT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY its occurrence at that date. By the year 200 the tomb of the two Apostles is shown by Caius. Moreover, the traditional date of St. Peter's martyrdom coincides with the date of the burning of Rome and the Neronian persecution which followed. From the earliest beginnings, the See of Rome is associated with the name of St. Peter, and by the middle of the second century it is mentioned by Irenseus, Clement, Origen, and Tertullian. In the third century it is already used by the Popes as a claim to supremacy, and it is remarkable that the legend, though resting on no definite authority, is at least sufi'ered to pass unchallenged. It is clear that the first Bishops of Rome were in no sense of the word spiritual lords of Christendom. They were obscure and for the most part insignificant persons, who walked their unassuming way unchallenged by the State and unnoticed save by the little Greek colony of believers who looked on them as shepherds. We know practically nothing of these precursors of papal history save where their shadowy forms are occasionally brought to light in the glare of persecution. Their names alone come down to us, attached by the loving piety of later ages to the fictitious title of martyr. This much is embodied in the various lists of the first four centuries, which have a value above and beyond their intrinsic worth, as showing that the succession to the Roman bishopric was a matter of interest, even of con- troversy, among- distant ecclesiastics. The earliest of these which is still extant is that of St, Irenseus (c. 160) and the widest known is the "Catalogus Liberianus " from which was taken the earliest edition of the " Liber Pontificalis ". Of the informa- tion which can be gleaned from other sources, there is a general absence of any mention of the bishops themselves, and still less can we gather anything like a conception of the relations in which they stood either towards their own immediate flock or towards that wider dominion which they were afterwards to claim. The first to lift the veil which hides the nascent Papacy completely from view was St. Clement, the third successor of the Apostles. His letter to the Church at Corinth is one of the most remarkable documents with which the historian of the early Church has to deal, and it is tempting to regard it as typical of the moment in papal history to which it belongs. In that case, the Roman Church is still in this early period very Jewish in character. The fall of Jerusalem in the year 70 had brought a fresh influx of Jews to Rome and an edict of Tolerance following on the proscriptions of Nero further strengthened the Semitic element which had from the first been predominant. But at the samo tirne, there had been converts in high places ; members THE OKIGIN OF SPIKITUAL POWER 6 of great families, such as the Pomponii, the Acilii, and the Flavii were counted among the Nazarites, and in the years 91 and 95 there were two Christian consuls, one of whom suffered martyrdom. St. Clement is however a Roman of Romans : he gives expression to the patriotism and self-esteem becoming in a citizen of the world capital, and his letter to the distracted Church seems to show that the Roman genius for organisation is already crystallising into conceptions of hierarchy. Even more interesting is the book of the peasant or " Yeoman " Hermas, which was finished about a.d. 140. The " Shepherd of Hermas " has been called " The great examination of the conscience of the Roman Church," and the title is the more significant when we remember the simple piety of the author and the sincerity with which he makes his enquiry. The fcheme of the book is penitence, but the main interest rests in the detail in which the conditions of sinners enlighten us as to the early Christian community. The chief defect arraigned is the frequency of apostasy, which is hardly surprising when one reflects how rapidly converts were swept in, and how fiercely the storms of persecution beat against their untried faith. The Shepherd of Hermas is an admonition rather than an apology, and yet the picture it gives of the community of Christian Rome is on the whole surprisingly felicitous. We feel that it is a society which is defective but very sincere, that the very severity with which its shortcomings are denounced testifies to the purity of its ideal. The quarrels among the clergy were deplored just because they were true Shepherds ; apostasy was common, but Christian heroism was the rule. The admonitions of Hermas were well-timed, for a stronger enemy was at hand. In the middle of the second century, heresy first made its appearance in Rome in the form of Marcionism, against which Justin Martyr spent his energy in waging war. Thus already by the third century Rome is regarded as the gravitating-point for aggressive heresiarchs : she alone must arbitrate even as she alone can define the truth. The spiritual prestige of the Eternal City grew apace throughout the second century. St. Ignatius refers to her as "she who hath presidency in the place of the region of the Romans," and the context, while omitting all mention of the Episcopal office, ascribes the ascendancy to a kind of social and municipal priority which the Roman Church naturally borrowed from the political autocracy of the city. The so-called Clementina erected for her the fictionary tradition of orthodox championship through the legend of St. Peter and Simon Magus, 6 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY and henceforth vague petrarchal legends are interwoven with well-defined tradition as instruments of aggressive warfare against the spiritual foes of the Roman Bishop. The story of Christianity in the third century has two main characteristics, and each of these has its bearing on the develop- ment of the Papacy. We are confronted, on the one hand, with the phenomenon of heresy, which grew apace in the uncertain soil of the primitive Church ; and, on the other hand, we stand face to face with the splendid drama of Christian heroism which the age of persecu- tion presents. The first of these two forces, the growth of heresy, has indeed a negative importance which outweighs its positive influence on the Roman Church. It was mainly because Rome was 80 little affected by the various waves of fantastic specula- tion which swept the whole of Christendom during this period that the Apostolic See was enabled to lay its foundations so steadily and unobtrusively in the formative age of ecclesiastical history. The contrast between East and West in this connection has often been dwelt upon, and indeed, it is said, with perhaps undue emphasis. But it would be hard to deny the truth, or to exaggerate the importance of the distinction which eternally separates the practical genius of the methodical West from the mystical dreaminess of the Oriental mind. At the same time, it was not in vain that heresiarchs flocked to Rome for a hearing, and as early as a.d. 130 the Marcionite sect had planted the first alien seed in the virgin soil of the Roman Church. But the attitude of the sainted Polycarp, when, as a visitor in Rome, he was confronted with Marcion, is typical of the stainless orthodoxy which always characterised the majority of Roman Christians. "Knowest thou me?" asked the heretic. "Yea, I recognise the first-born of Satan," answered the martyr, and St. Justin instantly took up the cudgels for the Church, which never lacked a champion when her truths were menaced by the onset of fanaticism. Marcionism was but the first of a long series of weary internal struggles which left their influence on the Roman Church, although none were indigenous in their growth. Still more influential was the hold which Montanism gained over the Roman people, attracting converts, as is so often the case, by the very repulsiveness of its severity and gloom. The chief Roman opponent of Montanism was Hippolytus, the prototype of Luther and the patron saint of heretics, who is in some ways the most remarkable figure of the period. He is chiefly THE ORIGIN OF SPIRITUAL POWER 7 aesociated with the greater struggle to which Montanism gave place — that of Monarchianism, or Patripassionism. This con- test, which lasted through three pontificates, originated in the attempt of one Praxeas to harmonise Christianity with the spirit of Hellenism. But the subtleties involved in the delicate conception of the Logos were altogether too much for the Roman mind, untrained as it was in metaphysical abstractions. Three successive Popes were bewildered and harassed by the conten- tion ; each took refuge in a different line of policy, and all were equally unsuccessful in effecting a conclusion. Pope Victor contented himself with condemning Sabellius, who had unwisely ventured to mediate, and thus made himself the scapegoat of both the opposing parties. Zephyrinus, Victor's successor, is the first Pope of whose personality we have any real hint in the somewhat colourless annals of the time. He seems to have been a vacillating person of inferior intellect, dominated by the stronger mental capacities of his major-domo and successor, Callixtus. Zephyrinus reigned for nineteen years without making up his mind in any one consistent direction on the great doctrinal controversy. At one moment he identifies himself with the " Patripassions " ; at another he publicly retracts his self-committal. Throughout he was consistently opposed by the relentless logic of Hippolytus — the one man who had the courage to face the problem whose intricacies paralysed the whole of Western Christendom. Branded by the title of Ditheist, and goaded into schism by the inconsistencies of the Pope, Hippolytus cut himself off from the orthodox Church just at the moment when Callixtus was elected to succeed his patron as Bishop of Rome. If the attack of Hippolytus on Zephyrinus reveals the contempt of the zealot for the nonentity — of intel- lectual vigour for mental lethargy — in his indictment of Callixtus a deeper personal rancour can be traced, in which the indigna- tion of the intrepid heretic is stirred against the dishonest subterfuges of the unworthy champion of orthodoxy. Not content with exposing the inconsistency of the impossible doctrinal compromise put forward by Callixtus, he writes a polemic against his not invulnerable career, ending in a vigorous attack on his indulgence towards offending brethren. It is remarkable that the first great antipope should also be in a sense the father of papal history. His chronicle, written apparently in the year 235, became the skeleton of the famous "Liber Poniificalis," whose many editions form the chief sources of early papal chronology. The great Monarchian controversy was brought to an abrupt 8 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY conclusion by the persecution of Maximinian. By the third century, it is important to notice that a definite policy towards Christianity was a necessary part of the political programme of the Emperors. The tempered hostility of Marcus Aurelius, based on the antithesis between stoicism and enthusiasm, paled before the dissolute ardour of his successors. But the persecu- tions of the third century were produced rather by sudden flashes of imperial caprice and intolerance than by a settled resentment and suspicion, such as underlay the earlier outbursts of hostility. Not only was the time past when Christianity could be ignored, but the moment had come when resistance to its gathering tide had broken down. Persecution had given it a history, and the failure of the State to extinguish it had but vindicated its claim to exist as an integral part of the Roman system. Rome dared no longer to oppose a force which she could not control, and by a sudden change of front she adopted into her favour the society which she had failed to extinguish. Hereafter she was to renew her own youth in the young life of a community deriving its vitality from the power of a doctrine in which strange and familiar ideas seemed to be startlingly blended. CHAPTER II THE CONVERSION OF CONSTANTINE AND ITS EFFECTS, A.D. 312-403 IN the year 312, the religion of the Pope became the reUgion of the Emperor. The scene on the Campagna, which has been variously regarded as the cause, the symbol, or the pretext of the conversion of Constantino, was not merely a dramatic finale to the era of persecution. It marks in a real sense the first great political revolution of papal history. The vision of the flaming Cross which gave to Constantino his empire, gave also to the Papacy the standard of mediaeval Christendom. The third century had not after all done more than make it possible for a strong Bishop to assert his own individuality, and impart something of his personal prestige to the dignity of his ofiBce. But the Bishop of Rome as the High Priest of the State religion, the " accredited functionary " of imperial ceremonies, is a totally difi'erent person from the uninfluential leader of an obscure sect which is persecuted or tolerated according to the deviating policy of the Emperor of the moment. It may be true that Constantino was " great " in his achieve- ments rather than his character, and certainly it is hard to reconcile what we know of his personal life with anything approaching to the Christian ideal. But the edict of Milan, which constitutes the charter of endowment of Western Christ- ianity, is the work of a strong man who does not shrink from giving the boldest expression to his convictions — whether political or religious, or both — in terms of uncompromising definition. Nothing better illustrates the importance which was attached to Constantino's relationship to the Papacy than the legend of his baptism by Pope Silvester, and the myth of the Donation which was built up on it, and embodied in the celebrated forgery of the eighth century. The legend exaggerates his zeal for the faith of his adoption while it depreciates his statesmanship, and gives rise to the poet's invective — 9 10 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY Of how much ill was cause Not thy conversion, but those rich domains That the first wealthy Pope received of thee. The fictionary grant was founded on the authentic edict by which Constantine endowed the Roman See with the .right of holding property and receiving it by bequest, and thus laid the foundations of temporal power. So far the work of Constantine in augmenting the papal power was but the consequence of his partial, or at least formal conversion, but his career has a still wider significance in the early development of the Papacy. When the Emperor adopted the religion of the Pope and raised him to pre-eminence in the imperial city, no one dreamed that Constantine was adopting Silvester as heir to his prerogative in the world's capital. And yet for posterity it has this meaning. The foundation of new Rome in 330 was a heavy blow to the prestige of the Mother City, and the domination which the Bishop instantly assumed was a remarkable concurrence of the expedient and the inevitable. Bereft of the sacred presence of a Csesar who had lost interest in its welfare, the capital of the empire must have fallen a prey to invasion from without, or sedition from within, while such Byzantine influences as would have penetrated its walls from the nominal seat of government, would sap its vigour and saturate it with Oriental apathy. That such a state of things was avoided was due solely and entirely to the rise of the Papacy. It was to her Bishop that the city turned in her bereavement for con- solation ; to him she looked for a new insignia and a new raison d'itre, and in his religion she sought another tradition to replace the majesty of imperial presence which had been rudely wrested from her crown. That the Popes were ready, and more than ready, to accept the burden of sovereignty, and to take up the sceptre which lay at their feet, must be accepted as a sign of their political energy rather than regretted as a stigma of worldliness. Everything pointed to the legitimacy of such authority, and there was as yet no hint of that dualism between Church and State which seems to us in the light of subsequent history so inevitable. After all, the High Priest of the Hebraic tradition and the Pontifex Maximus of the Romans themselves had never been called upon to apologise for their plenipotentiary powers, and it would be unreasonable to expect political thought of the fourth century to grasp a distinction which the last epoch of the Middle Ages was unable to formulate. The actual history of the Papacy in the fourth century is soon told, for the atmosphere is still very obscure, and what we THE CONVERSION OF CONSTANTINE 11 know about the Popes themselves bears a very slight proportion to the extent of their importance. The first characteristic which marks the papal policy is the completeness of the separation between East and West. This is illustrated in a remarkable degree by the attitude of the Popes towards the great Trinitarian controversy which monopolised the energy of Eastern Christendom throughout the first half of the fourth century. In the early period of the strife, the attitude of Rome is distinctly lukewarm ; Silvester stands aloof from the conflict, and his counsels are all for peace. He is represented at Nicsea by two presbyters, who take very little part in the proceedings, while he himself rigidly maintains an attitude of dignified aloofness which probably proceeded as much from lack of interest as from the instinct of caution. It seemed to the West- ern mind, as it at first appeared to Constantino himself, vague, unreal, and wordy — the argument turned on a metaphysical distinction expressed in terms of Oriental abstraction. But just as Constantino himself became convinced when deeper issues showed themselves, so the Pope found his defences giving way when the second phase of the struggle brought him face to face with the practical consequences of the schism. In 340, the great champion of orthodoxy was for a second time banished from his See by Constantius, the most dissolute of Constantino's unworthy successors. Athanasius, understanding that the next move in the Arian programme was to win over the Pope, instantly withdrew to Rome. The extraordinary fascination of the "puny little man " with the great soul, whose sweetness of character blended so felicitously with the strength of his convictions, no doubt gave him a natural power of success as an evangelist, and for two years he taught the Romans what was really involved in the great central doctrine of Christianity, till all vestiges of suspicion of " Orientalism " was dispelled from their minds and from that of Pope Julius himself. But probably more efi"ective than any dialectic victory with the people of Rome was the argument of experience which the Eastern situation afi'orded. Athanasius might plead for the purity of Christian doctrine with the eloquence born of unswerving faith, he might appeal to the orthodox tradition which the past had already associated with Christian Rome ; but he had only to turn the eyes of his hearers over the sea to Alexandria and Anfcioch, where pagans and Arians were united in persecution and sacrilege, and the practical mind of Rome would not be slow to recognise the significance of such an alliance. In 342, Julius declared Athanasius to be innocent and his doctrine orthodox, 12 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY and a little later, he summoned a Council at Sardica to give universal expression to the same verdict. But the Arian Bishops were not prepared for an oecumenical settlement of this kind, and at the last moment they withdrew under a pretext of recall, setting up a hostile assembly at Philippopolis. At a confirmatory Council at Milan, the Western Church, under the auspices of Pope and Emperor, formally registered its orthodoxy, and thus ratified the breach between East and West which Sardica had disclosed. The first phase of Roman intervention closes here, and the second is less creditable to the Holy See. In 352, Julius was succeeded by Liberius, who inherited from his predecessor his zealous championship of Athanasius and his cause. But conditions became more complicated owing to the death of the orthodox Constans, leaving Constantius in 353 sole Emperor of new and old Rome. In 355, a Council was sum- moned to Milan by the Emperor to lodge fresh charges against Athanasius and secure his condemnation in the West. But the Church of the West justified its independence, and Constantius, behind the arras, heard himself denounced in terms which dumbiounded his Eastern followers. An imperial fulmination followed, against which the Church had as yet no valid weapons to employ. So three Bishops were immediately driven into banishment, and after an interval in which to reconsider his position, Liberius followed them, full of venerable courage and noble intention. .But two years of the misery of exile broke the old man's spirit, which had at first soared high among the ideals of Athanasius and led him to refuse gifts sent by his imperial antagonist in words of haughty disdain. " You have desolated the Churches of Christendom," he said to the eunuch who brought him the gold of Constantius, "and then you offer me alms as a convict. Go, first learn to be a Christian." The persecution of Liberius is a striking instance of the hold which the papal idea had already won among the Romans. Liberius might acquiesce in the imperial decree of banishment, and might choose, if he pleased, to try the road of martyrdom, but the sheep of his flock were unprepared to follow his docility. Hence, an attempt of Constantius to create schism by the election of an anti-pope in 356 was foredoomed to disaster. The imperial nommee, elected, it is said, by three eunuchs, was of course an Arian, but the opposition of Rome was less a matter of orthodoxy than of personal loyalty to the legitimate Bishop. A deputation of patrician women undertook the task which their husbands had been reluctant to attempt, and success- fully carried it through, winning the provisional consent of THE CONVEESION OF CONSTANTINE 13 Constantius to the return of Liberius. Unfortunately for his historical reputation, Liberius proved all too compliant, and as the condition of his return consented to sign the semi-Arian creed of Sirmium. His entry into Rome was a triumphal page- ant, which too soon developed into a faction fight. A riot in the amphitheatre, accompanied by the cry of the populace for " One God, one Pope ! " led to the expulsion of the anti-Pope Felix and the termination of the first schism of papal history. The seeds of schism, once sown, were however never far from the surface of the soil, and the rivalry between Liberius and Felix broke out again in 358, on the death of the Apostate Bishop, in a disputed election. The two candidates, Damasus and Ursicinus, seem to have represented in some measure the rival principles of Arianism and orthodoxy, but the heresy in this phase was rather a pretext for schism than a genuine cause of disunion. At any rate, the rival candidates are both arraigned with equal severity by the impartial judgment of their contemporary, Ammianus, who anathematises them as authors of tumult and their followers as disturbers of the peace. The same writer gives a depressing account of the luxury and licence which accompanied the growth of papal power at this time, and his words are more than confirmed by the witness of his greater contemporary, St. Jerome, whose denunciations have all the added force which internal evidence can supply. It is needless to recapitulate the indictment of the great ascetic, or to para- phrase his rhetoric : his writings are classics of Christianity, and the charges which he brings against Christian Rome are just what we should expect. Ancient Rome was dying fast — its institutions, its morals, and its social conditions were moribund, and it is not surprising that the great instrument of its regeneration should be itself infected by the symptoms of decay. But the vicious tendencies which inevitably crept into the body politic of the Church were not without their antidote, and the success of Damasus in defeating his rival Ursicinus, however incomplete in itself, was a distinct triumph for the reform party. What history knows of Damasus does not reveal an attractive personality, but he is to a great extent overshadowed by the more striking figure of his secretary, whose principles he seems to have shared. The force upon which Jerome relied to counteract the spirit of decadence was that of monasticism, which had already been communicated to the West by the preaching of Athanasius. The primitive monastic ideal of Jerome had little in common with the attractive simplicity of the rule of St. Benedict and St. Bernard. It was rugged, crude. 14 A SHOBT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY and exotic — often perverted by fanatics of the type of Simon of the pillar, and seldom entirely free from excessive exaggeration. And yet none but the most unimaginative can fail to recognise the inspiration which underlay the austerity of Jerome and his followers, or to detect the hidden beauty of the truth, trans- cending the repulsive forms which embody it. The spirit of the movement was reactionary, and reaction is seldom untainted with hysteria : its form was premature, and consequently mis- understood. These two characteristics account for the failure of Jerome to attain what was evidently his object — the succession to the Papacy. A young patrician girl had killed herself by excessive asceticism under his spiritual supervision, and a storm of indignation broke out against him. He had declared the " inner world of moral freedom " to be the only refuge from the powers of decadence, and his adherents parodied his words by excesses of fanaticism, while his opponents saw that the perversion of his teaching was sapping the strength of the State life. It is, therefore, less surprising that Jerome was not elected to the Papacy in 384 than that he should have regarded his own prospects as favourable. Had he attained to this, his avowed ambition, it is probable that his reputation in the mind of Christendom would have suffered. It is doubtful whether the great Father had in him the makings of a great Pope, and it is certain that the honour which he might have reaped as Pope could not have surpassed the homage which the Church has always yielded to- the author of the " Vulgate ". So, probably, it was a good thing, both for Rome and for Christendom, that the exaggerated ardour of Jerome should be defeated by the mediocrity of Siricius. This pontificate is, how- ever, important in one respect, for Siricius inaugurated the legal supremacy of the Papacy by the issue of the first Decretal. There is nothing tentative in the tone in which the Bishop of Rome addresses the Bishop of Tarragona in this document. He defines and lays down the law with a certainty of precision which leaves no room for doubt that what is received at Rome will be acceptable to the uttermost parts of the earth. Thus the first papal edict declared the Church's mind on subjects of the most vital importance, and no one saw what was implied in the passive acquiescence which greeted it. No Hilary of Aries raised his voice in protest, and no Luther was at hand to save the situation in its initial stages, before long centuries of petty strife had made the Reformation crisis inevitable. By the close of the fourth century the early Papacy had begun that quiet ascendant course which was to reach its zenith THE CONVEKSION OF CONSTANTINE 15 in Hildebrand. Founded on the petrarchal tradition, and supported by the ''magic of the name of Rome," the upward course was clear. All that was needed was a series of great men capable of piloting it aright, and of these the dawn of the fifth century saw the forerunner in the first Innocent. CHAPTER III THE FALL OF ROME TO THE COUNCIL OF EPHESUS, A.D. 403-431 THE fall of Rome and the events leading up to it naay seem to have little to do with the growth of the early Papacy, which is in its essence organic, and more or less independent of external conditions. At the same time, the identity between the Eternal and the Holy See was by this time closely established, and it would be hardly credible to suppose that the political crisis, at which the whole world stood aghast, should leave unmoved the spiritual institution which it most nearly affected. It was the ghost of Rome which Alaric went forth to attack — the phantom which haunted the Forum and the Palatine Hill, which held the world in awe, and survived both the ravages of the invader and the undermining of internal decay. The genius and the good fortune of the pioneers of papal power had established its alliance with the invincible wraith, and assured the road to success. The reaction of the idea of Rome on the idea of Catholic supremacy had already begun to work, and it remained for the fifth century to supply a succession of able Popes qualified to pilot the papal fortunes through the laby- rinths of political confusion which afi'orded alike their danger and their opportunity. According to Jerome, Innocent was the son of his pre- decessor AnastasiuB, and the origin seems a likely one, for he mounted the papal throne with no uncertain step. We find in him the first vestiges of a definite conception of spiritual supremacy, and in his dealings with the rest of Christendom we seem to trace the workings of a fully-developed theory of papal autocracy. Such a theory had been made possible by the achievements of the fourth century Popes, and above all by the supposed origin of appeals at the Council of Sardica. It seems likely that the appeal of the Bishop of Illyricum to Pope Julius on that occasion was nothing more than a request for arbitration, 16 FALL OF KOME TO THE COUNCIL OF EPHESUS 17 but the decree of the Emperor Valentinian II. in 381 put it to the dangerous use of a precedent, and established by law the claim which as yet the Popes had hardly ventured to formulate. At a time when the Empire itself was stricken with the paralysis of fear and the apathy of decay, an imperial edict was still a weapon to conjure with, and from the first Innocent grasped it with all the skill of an ambitious adventurer. At one moment he generalises with convenient vagueness, and at another he asserts and defines with intrepid precision. He brandishes it in the face of the Bishops of Rouen and Toulouse, while he hides it under a cloak of compromise in dealing with the more independent Churches of Macedonia and Africa. By a happy coincidence of spiritual discernment and worldly discretion, he was able to espouse the cause of Christendom, the "Golden Mouth" against Theophilus, and thus to justify his claim to appellate jurisdiction by his competent discrimination. Even in Rome, however, the power of the law paled for a moment before the political crisis, and Innocent's clever manipu- lation of precedent falls into insignificance beside the states- manlike activity which could turn the calamity of Rome to the gain of the Papacy. His priority in the city had gained a new security from the failure of the imperial experiment of residing in Rome, "v^hich Honorius had attempted in 403. Roman patriotism— eS'ete as it was — survived in an intense longing of the Roman people for then: Caesar's return, and an impatient weariness of the imperial boast that "Where the Emperor is, there is Rome ". The young Honorius consequently yielded to their entreaty, only to inflict on their feelings a deeper wound by the failure of the experiment. All the resources of a worn-out pageantry were called forth after a hundred years of disuse, and on the Milvian Bridge, the Roman people with Innocent and his clergy at their head, welcomed the triumphant youth in his chariot with his father-in-law, the hero Stilicho, beside him. But the dilapidated splendour of the Palatine Hill oppressed Honorius, and he was frankly bored with the shabby magnificence which was the best that old Rome could afford in his honour. " It seemed as if affrighted Rome had decked herself as a bride to meet her long-expected wooer, but the bride was old and the wooer feeble." With ill-disguised relief, Honorius seized the first pretext which the Gothic war afforded to leave the city that had yearned over him with pathetic solicitude. From the sunlit plains of Ravenna, he watched Stilicho complete his cycle of victories by the defeat of Rhadagaisus the Goth, and the relief of Florence, and connived at the plots which were already 2 18 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY gathering thick about the hero's path. Stilicho fell in 408, a victim to the fate which is typical of the defenders of Italy, and his execution removed the last obstacle which stood between the barbarian conqueror and Rome. Urged on by the restless " demon " of his ambition and encouraged by the superstitious terror of his opponents, Alaric, "the scourge of God," pressed on to the walls of Rome. Men watched his progress with the fascination of fear, reminding themselves of Sibylline prophecy and apocalyptic prediction of anti-Christ, while the poem of Claudian has in its appeal all the pathos of a dirge. " Arise, venerable Mother! Free thyself from the ignoble fears of old age ! city, coeval with the earth. When the Don shall water the plains of Egypt, and the Nile the Mceotian marshes, then only shall iron Lachesis lay on thee her doom ! " But the doom was one which neither the passion of the poet, nor the spell of the city's majestic charm, nor the appeal of Pope Innocent could avert, for it was written far back in the pages of the past and carried in its train all the earnests of future promise. From the darkness which settles over the condemned city, the faint light of coming dawn is never entirely absent, and the grim details of the three sieges lose some of their tragic significance when we regard them as the birth-pangs of a new era, or the wounds inevitable to the sudden sharp collision between the ancient and the modern world. The sack of Rome was no mere display of barbaric audacity ; the humiliation of the city was complete, and the life-work of Alaric was deliberately carried out in keeping with the fanatical spirit in which it was conceived. The horror of Europe as expressed by St. Jerome was unfeigned — "With one city the whole world had perished. . . . My voice is choked, and my sobs interrupt the words which I write; the city is subdued which subdued the world." And yet, the collapse of pagan Rome, so bitterly lamented by the great Christian father, not only revealed the hidden strength of the Christian community, but in a real sense augmented its power. The Goths, though Arians, did not carry doctrinal controversy into political warfare, and with a spirit of toleration from which later ages have much to learn, Alaric spared Christian churches from pillage and Christian virgins from violation. Nor was this the only advantage reaped by the Church in Rome. The withdrawal of the Goths in 412 was followed by the gradual return of the scattered Romans to their city, but they were no longer as sheep not having a shepherd. In the place of the absentee Emperor with his incompetent bureaucracy stood one FALL OF KOME TO THE COUNCIL OF EPHESUS 19 who called himself their father; whose oflScial claim combined the mystical element which the imperial idea had fostered with the spirit of practical and efficient leadership, so long invoked in vain. Pope Innocent was absent during the siege on an embassy to Honorius, and thus in his very person stood aloof from the horrors of the fall. For the rest of his life he ruled supreme in the ruined city, and converted the sepulchre of the Roman Empire into the cradle of spiritual sovereignty. Before his death in 417 he once more vindicated his appellate claim by the condemnation of Pelagius, whose heretical teaching founded the great free-will controversy, which held the place in the West occupied by Trinitarianism in the East. By adhering to the Augustinian teaching as opposed to the fatalism of Pelagius, Innocent showed that readiness to identify himself with the spirit of the age which has always been the secret of papal success. The condemnation of Pelagius by Innocent was by no means a foregone conclusion : Pelagius himself had preached in Rome, and the Pope had not interfered to prevent him. The success of the appeal against the heretic, therefore, gave so much gratification to the African fathers, by whom it was presented, that they forgot to resent the tone of authority in which the decision was made. Once again the astounding claims passed unchallenged because they were wisely wielded by an able Pope for the benefit of the Church at large, and no one realised the danger that lurked behind the simple and satisfactory- system of Church government. The pontificate of Innocent showed what the Papacy might become in the hands of a "great "Pope: under his successors, the conditional aspect becomes emphasised. Between the years 417 and 440, a series of inefi'ective Popes did their best to undo what Innocent had achieved. The evil efi'ects of the Gothic invasions were brought to light : wealth streamed in from rich proselytes and crystallised into patrimonies, while the process of materialisation sapped the spiritual energy of the Christian community. For a year and a half after the death of Innocent, Pope Zosimus fluctuated between the conflicting tides of Pelagianism and orthodoxy, and the African fathers, who had raised no protest when Innocent claimed Apostolic authority, set at nought St. Peter's less capable successor, and appealed against him to Csesar. The death of Zosimus was the signal for the third tumult known to history on the occasion of a papal election. An 20 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY incredible lack of definition marked the area of the electorate. The clergy, the people, the Emperor, each claimed a voice, and in the vagueness of their relative rights and the utter lack of machinery, the power of election was apt to devolve on the faction which could best succeed in shouting down its rivals. The imperial party was at first successful in this case, owing to the energy of the prefect Symmachus, who was inclined to support Eulalius. But the popular party was loud in the support of Boniface, and the irresolute Emperor decreed a suspension of the decision during which both candidates were to absent themselves from Rome and a synod of Bishops was to be called upon to arbitrate. The headstrong Eulalius, having already been received with pomp in St. Peter's, tried, however, to force the hand of Honorius by a surprise entry into Rome. This put him in the wrong and left the honours of the contest to his rival. It was a popular victory, inasmuch as Boniface had relied on popular favour, but all the fruits of the contest fell to the Emperor, who assumed, as a right inherent in the imperial office, the power to determine disputed elections to the Papacy. Boniface was succeeded by Celestine, whose pontificate as well as that of Sixtus, his successor, was occupied by the great Nestorian conflict in the East. Like the Trinitarian controversy of which it was an offshoot, Nestorianism did not in itself afi"ect Western Christianity : it was even more intricate and meta- physical than the Arian question, and it absorbed the Papacy in its practical rather than its doctrinal aspect, as an interesting political problem and not as a vital theological contention. Indeed, in the East itself, the spiritual controversy was far from independent of political strife, and the rivalry between Nestorius of Constantinople and Cyril of Alexandria often de- generated into a series of counter-intrigues, centring in the Imperial Court. Nestorianism was an application of the principles underlying Trinitarianism to the person of the Virgin Mary. Nestorius argued against the title " God-bearer," as applied to her by his opponents. Christ-bearer she was indeed — Mother of the blended personalities in her Son ; but that which was born of her was not the Eternal Word which proceedeth from the Father. in 429, Rome was first brought into the conflict by the appeal of each of the protagonists in turn — Nestorius and Cyril. True to the traditions of Innocent, Celestine answered in a mandate, ofi"ering to Nestorius the alternatives either of abject apology within ten days or excommunication. In December 430, Celestine and Cyril combined in excommunicating Nestorius, FALL OF KOME TO THE COUNCIL OF EPHESUS 21 who clung fearlessly to his opinions and relied on the favour of the Imperial Court, and the outcome of his firmness was the first General Council of Ephesus in 431. Once more the unerring papal instinct vindicated the appellate claim of the Pope. When the letters of Celestine were read to the Council by the papal representative, they were found to coincide so exactly with the decision at which the Council had already arrived that a chorus of acclamation greeted the sentiments — " The Council renders thanks to the Second Paul, Celestine ; to the Second Paul, Cyril ; to Celestine, protector of the faith ; to Celestine. unanimous with the Council ". The Council did not bring the heresy to an end. and Nestorianism expired only when it was finally deserted by the Imperial Court, and when its aged author died of the dishonour of exile. But with the close of the Council, the intervention of Rome ends, and Sixtus III., the successor of Celestine, erected a memorial to the contest in the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore. CHAPTER IV LEO THE GREAT : THE HUNS AND THE VANDALS, A.D. 431-460 INNOCENT I. had founded the Papacy on the principles of monarchy ; to Leo I. it remained to give it an imperial character. The first "great" Pope was great in virtue of his age rather than in spite of it ; he was the one great man in an age which is singularly destitute of nobility, the hero of an epoch in which the heroic virtues were conspicuously lacking. And yet he is eminently representative of the time, and there is nothing in his career that is not in accordance with the prin- ciples and ideas of his generation. Leo was a Roman, rugged and simple in character, with the practical genius of his race showing itself in a large capacity for organisation, and a strong "imperial purpose," which effected the transformation of the papal oflSce from an indefinite personal ascendancy to the centre of a world-wide system. His early life afi*orded the best possible training for his high office. In 422, he was made Archdeacon of the Church of Rome, and between then and his election, in 439, he was employed on various diplomatic missions, consummating in an embassy of reconcilia- tion between ^Etius and Albinus, the two rival generals in Gaul. Leo showed none of the conventional self-depreciation on his election to the Papacy. With characteristic simplicity he expresses his confidence that " He will give the power Who bestowed the dignity," somewhat to the astonishment of those who had elected him, who had probably anticipated the usual dramatic refusal of office with the subsequent submission to compulsion. The self-confidence of Leo stood him in good stead as the obstacles in the way of papal power crowded before his eyes. The first enemy which he had to encounter was the advance of heresy, which was the chief menace to Catholic unity, now that paganism had ceased from troubling the realms of Christendom. Leo's method of attack was both characteristic ^nd original, and singularly effective. He was the first Bishop LEO THE GREAT : THE HUNS AND VANDALS 23 of Rome who made use of the pulpit as a real means of reaching the conscience of his people. In his sermons, we have the clearest picture of the man himself which the times afford, as well as admirable illustrations of his methods. His style is simple, severe, and emphatic, and his method essentially Roman. The Catholic faith, he holds, is true and easy to comprehend; it admits of no half-truth and needs no discus- sion. Heretics, therefore, are all enemies to be fought and suppressed — anything but sincere critics open to conviction. All contact other than antagonistic between them and true believers is obnoxious, and the most offensive are those nearest at hand, viz., the Manicheeans. Against the Manichseans, Leo summons all the invectives which a forcible diction can muster, and launches them with apostolic fervour into the midst of his hearers. Having stirred up public opinion by verbal condemnation, he gives it vent in legal persecution. In 443, an investigation was made of the charges of immorality brought against the Manichseans, with results which amply justify Leo's severity— at all events in the light of the principles "of justice, in so far as the fifth century had evolved them. The doctrine of Manes, based on a belief in the inherent evil of all matter, had been made to cover a complete disregard of any moral principle in the material realm. Good and evil were said to have no relation whatever to the physical nature of man, and the practical outcome of such a creed weighed more strongly with Leo than any theoretical error in their dogma. Instead of adding fuel to the flames by argument, after the fashion of an Eastern champion of orthodoxy, Leo quenched the ardour of the Manichseans in a deluge of papal anathemas, strengthened by imperial edict. "The citadel of the devil is in the madness of the Manichffians," he cries, and in the appeal to common sense, as opposed to irrational extremism, lies the clue to Leo's success. The influence of Manichseism was not confined to the obscene sect which cultivated immorality both in its dogma and its ceremonial, its taint is to be felt throughout the teaching of the Church at this period ; in the extravagant adulation of celibacy, as in the excesses of ascetic mortification — even, it has been said, in the writings of St. Augustine himself— the dignity of the body suffers from the artificial conception of material evil. Leo's line of action was not, however, in advance of his age in this or in any other direction : his instinctive practical genius recoiled from extravagance of any kind, condemning alike Catholics whose fasts were an end in themselves and not merely 24 A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY a means of grace, and Manichaeans who disregarded all moral obligation for self- discipline. Towards Eutychianism— the other important heretical contest of Leo's pontificate— his attitude was different. Eutyches was a follower of Cyril, and his doctrine grew out of the computation of the Nestorian heresy. So anxious was he to assert the perfect divinity of the infant Christ, that he was led to deny the twofold nature of the Saviour. It was essentially an Eastern controversy, both locally and typically, and Leo showed no disposition to interfere until he was appealed to by both parties as a matter of course. Eastern theology had become fatally bound up with the politics of the Imperial Court, and the conspicuous lack of dignity which characterises the Eutychian controversy shows how far the Church of the Eastern Empire had deteriorated since the days of Constantino and Arius. The so-called " Robber Council " of Ephesus, summoned in 449 by the Emperor under Eutychian influences, reinstated Eutyches, and deposed his noble antag- onist, Flavian, who died of the effects of ill-treatment at the hands of the lawless heretical monks. This had been done in flagrant disregard of the protests of Hilary, the Roman legate who represented Leo at Ephesus. Leo's indignation knew no bounds, and in 451, the Council of Chalcedon gave him his opportunity for retaliation. The death of the Emperor Theodosius in 450, and the accession of his able sister Pulcheria was the immediate cause of a reaction in favour of the anti- Eutychian party. " At Chalcedon, Leo's famous " Tome," which had been tumultuously suppressed at Ephesus, was read amidst the acclamations of the congregation— " Accursed be he that admits not that Peter has spoken by the mouth of Leo " ! A more solid triumph was the formal Canonical recogn tion of the supremacy of Rome, although it was significantly ascribed solely to the imperial rights of the city. Leo's "Tome" marks an epoch in the history of papal ascendancy as an act of papal definition, which carries authority as a matter of course— violently suppressed for this reason by the party asainst whom it is levelled, and welcomed as a final and authoritative confirmation of their triumph by the champions of orthodoxy. In itself, the " Tome " was characteristic of Leo— assertmg with emphasis the simplicity of the truth, and ignoring as unworthy of notice the Oriental subtleties involved in the basis of error. In the war against heresy, the Papacy was triumphantly vmdicated by Leo's activities. He did not relax his vigour in the more debatable sphere of political supremacy. In the LEO THE GKEAT : THE HUNS AND VANDALS 25 so-called " birthday sermons," preached on the feasts of SS. Peter and Paul, Leo clearly sets forth his conctption of the papal office, in terms which do not attempt to mitigate the absolutism implied, or to gloss over any of the consequences of its recognition. He grounds the Papal authority on the supremacy of St. Peter, for whom he claims a distinct overlordship among the Apostles. The imperial title of the city he waives as a mere symbol : " the Apostles it is who have brought thee to such a height of glory " — not Csesar, who merely paved the way for the larger dominion of Christ. The Papacy is thus raised above the status of a patriarchate, and the Pope is no longer primus inter j^ares, but mediator between Christ and the Apostles. It might seem almost as if the uncompromising assertions of Leo courted a challenge ; at anyrate he cannot have been altogether surprised at the sudden defiance of his antagonist, Hilary of Aries. Hilary was a worthy champion of the opposition, combining the qualities of sanctity and ambition in the degree in which they are often found in the great militant Churchman of history. He seems to have held vague metropolitan rights in Gaul, which he was ambitious of extending — a project which brought him into conflict with Celidonius, Bishop of an out-lying diocese over which Hilary claimed rights of jurisdiction. Both Bishops appealed to Leo — Celidonius as a suppliant; Hilary, as a claimant of rights which had been infringed. Leo declared in favour of Celidonius and summoned a Council of Bishops to condemn Hilary, upon which Hilary boldly defied the authority of the Bishop of Rome, denying any limitation to his own metropolitan rights. The partisanship of the respective chron- iclers of Leo and Hilary has wrapped the end of the quarrel in obscurity. Whether Hilary submitted in penitent dignity to apostolic reproof, or whether he was overawed by papal anathema, is uncertain ; the facts, at least, testify to Leo's actual triumph, while they leave the moral issues indecisive. Celidonius was righted, and Hilary condemned first by a synod of Bishops, and afterwards by an imperial decree which subordinated Gaul complett^ly to the Papacy, and thus extinguished the first flicker of the flame of Gallican independence. The conflict between Leo and Hilary is typical of a series of less important contests by which Leo made the theory of spiritual empire an actual fact. Aquileia, Alexandria, and Illyria — all debatable ground — were reduced from a vague dependence to a definite allegiance to the "universal dominion of Peter". Priscillianism was persecuted in Spain by papal authority, and in Leo's letters to refractory Bishops, infallibility is foreshadowed in many an audacious expression of divine right. 26 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY Leo had already shown his qualities of leadership in two aspects — as the champion of orthodoxy, and as the defender of petrarchal claims — before he stood out in his third and greatest capacity, as a national hero. The legend-loving piety of the primitive imas;ination, as well as the poetic genius of Raphael, has done an injustice to the simple heroism which led Leo to the camp of Attila, on the banks of the Mincio. The terror of the degenerate Romans at the coming of the Huns, enhanced as it was by their " inhuman " appearance and the remarkable military qualities of their leader, reached its zenith as they watched the plundering march through Friuli, and saw the doom approaching which the " scourge of God " — a second and more terrible Alaric — threatened to lay upon the city. Now as never before, Rome stood in need of a saviour, and her need was Leo's opportunity. Accompanied by the consul Arienus, and the ex-prefect Trigetius, he set out at the head of an embassy, which the Emperor and Senate had initiated rather as a counsel of despair than as a hopeful expedient for the deliverance of the city. Many causes have been alleged for the withdrawal of Attila independent of Leo's embassy : he was old and already stricken with the disease which killed him within a year from the time — his army was spent, and his ambition satiated by the siege and sack of Aquileia. Moreover, he had not recovered from defeat at the renowned battle of the Catalaunian Fields, since when he had been troubled with portents and auguries which had shaken his faith in his own mission. These things may have helped Leo, but they cannot supersede his claim to have effected the salvation of Rome. His interview with Attila was brief but momentous, and history knows nothing of it but its results. In spite of the attempts to give, on the one hand, a prosaic interpretation of the withdrawal of Attila, and, on the other, to supply it with a miraculous origin, the heroism of Leo and the gratitude due to him remain unimpaired by either the scruples of historical enquiry or the imaginative fiction, which Raphael has immortalised in his representation of Attila menaced by SS. Peter and Paul. Three years later, Leo again took on himself the defence of the city by another embassy to another barbarian leader — the Vandal Genseric. The enterprise was more desperate, and in its achievement less successful. The spell of Christian civilisa- tion could not appeal with the same force to the conquering Vandal within sight of his goal, as to the disheartened Hunnish chief with all Italy lying between him and Rome. Genseric, moreover, had diplomacy on his side, and all the advantages of LEO THE GREAT : THE HUNS AND VANDALS 27 an ugly palace intrigue to help him. He came as the declared opponent of the tyrant Maximus, and the champion of the ex- empress and her wrongs, and there was no question of buying him off with tribute, as in the earlier crisis in which Leo had delivered Rome. With Rome and her riches open to the gaze of Genseric — her prestige broken and her power of resistance null — it was useless for Leo to attempt to ward off the Vandal sack with the weapons of peace. But when the blow fell, and the barbarian hordes poured into the city, the debt of Rome to its patriot-bishop was felt in a considerable mitigation of the horrors of pillage. But, in spite of Leo's efforts, the Vandal sack remains a byword for indiscriminate plunder : all that Alaric had left undone, Genseric proceeded to carry out, and the lowest depths of humiliation, which half a century of barbarian invasion had left unsounded, were reserved for Rome to experience at the hands of the Vandal pirates. Leo lived just long enough to witness the fruitless efforts of Majorian to recover the lost energy of the Romans, and in 461 he died, in the same year as the Emperor, his only noble contemporary, who shared with him the Roman qualities of disinterested self-sacrifice. CHAPTER V GOTHIC RULE, a.d. 461-568 THE importance of the century following the death of Leo in the history of the Papacy is political rather than personal. There are on the one hand no very distin- guished occupants of the Holy See, and on the other hand events of the most crucial importance follow each other with bewilder- ing rapidity. The extinction of the Western Roman Empire, the rise of the Gothic kingdom, the re-conquest of Italy by Byzantine-Roman arms, and the coming of the forces of disruption in the Lombard settlement of the North — these in turn monopolise the history of Rome, and effect the final transformation of the ancient world into the Middle Ages, while the Papacy, as yet unconscious of victory, pursues its even way in undisturbed self-confidence. Thus, when in 476 — fifteen years after the death of Leo — the boy-Emperor Romulus Augustulus abdicated at the dictation of his Major-Domo, Odoacer, and the Empire of the West exchanged its last Csesar for the rule of a German official, the reigning Pope makes no comment. It really made very little difference. The position of the Bishop was much the same whether Rome was ruled by a titular Emperor under the domination of a Gothic military leader, or by the same barbarian claiming to represent the absentee Emperor of the East, So at least thought Simplicius (468-483) as he watched with apparent indifference the confusion which attended the short reigns of the ill-starred Emperors who followed each other in rapid succession, until the resignation of Augustulus. The Roman Empire might have deserved a less inglorious end, and a panegyric might well have seemed out of place ; moreover, Simplicius was himself absorbed in a quarrel with the Bishop of Constantinople, which no doubt appeared of greater moment than the dynastic misfortunes of the degenerate Imperial House. So the Roman Empire passed away, unwept by its citizens, who failed to trace in its fall the glories of its wonderful past, and 28 GOTHIC RULE 29 unsaluted by the power which was to inherit its sway in the future, already foreshadowed in the steady growth of the spiritual dominion. Perhaps the temporal prosperity of the Papacy was in some measure responsible for this detached interest displayed by the Popes in home politics. It must at this period have been extremely rich, for Hilary of Sardinia (Pope 461-465) is recorded to have spent fabulous suras in the restoration of buildings which had been destroyed in the Vandal sack. At anyrate, the quarrel with the East looms far larger on the papal horizon than the poli- tical vicissitudes of Rome, and for more than thirty-five years the attention of the Popes is distracted from the critical condition of Italian afi'airs. The cause of hostility was a characteristic combination of doctrinal controversy and personal rivalry. The two main contentions centre round the usurpations of Acacius of Constantmople, who had assumed the title of ' Mother of all Christians of the orthodox religion," and the Emperor Zeno's attempts to settle the monophysite heresy by an act of imperial definition. Simplicius opened the breach by excommunicating Acacius, and his successor Felix III. widened it by condemning the " Henoticon " of Zeno. The lengths to which schismatic strife was prepared to go is illustrated by the posthumous reputation of Pope Anastasius — a man of peace, who in 496 shrank from anathematising the dead Acacius — "Felix and Acacius are now both before a higher tribunal. Leave them," he pleaded, '-to that unerring judgment ". For this latitudinarian sentiment the gentle Anastasius forfeited his canonisation in the "Liber Pontificalis," and Dante, nearly seven centuries later, confirms the verdict by describing him in the "Inferno". The quarrel dwindled on until the accession of the orthodox Emperor Justin, who is content to sacrifice the memory of Acacius to papal execration, unlike his more obdurate predecessor whose death at the age of 88 was somewhat groundlessly ascribed by the papal party to the vengeance of Heaven for his champion- ship of the memory of the Bishop. Meanwhile, the peace-policy of Pope Anastasius, so far from restoring unity between East and West, had merely created schism in the Papacy itself. On his death in 498, the See was contested by Symmachus and Lawrence, who claimed to represent the no-compromise and the peace-party respectively. Theodoric the Goth had meanwhile supplanted Odoacer and established his beneficent rule in Italy, in professed dependence on the nominal suzerainty of the Eastern Emperor. To Theodoric, renowned alike for political justice and for religious tolerance, 30 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY both Symmachus and Lawrence appealed, and the Gothic king gave the decision in favour of Symmachus, who boasted the advantages of an earlier consecration and a greater number of votes than his rival. In spite of the confirmation of this verdict by the so-called Palmary Synod in 501, Lawrence and his faction continued to be troublesome until the year 514, and when at last the schism died down, Symmachus showed his gratitude by adorning the already magnificent Church of St. Peter with marble, and building an "Episcopia" or Bishop's house, thus entitling him to be called the founder of the Vatican. Symmachus was succeeded in 514 by Hormesdas, whose pontificate is chiefly famous for the termination of the Mono- physite schism. The same Emperor Justin, whose orthodoxy healed the breach, created fresh trouble by a decree against Arianism, which was probably intended as a direct blow at the authority of the over-mighty vassal King of Italy. The religious policy of Theodoric was worthy of his admirable ruling capacities. His Arianism did not stand in the way of his justice to Catholicism, and he never felt the slightest temptation to persecute. The splendid defence of toleration with which he met the edict of Justin is a standing monument to the greatness of his mental vision — "To pretend to a dominion over the conscience," he says in his letter to Justin, " is to usurp the prerogative of God : by the nature of things the power of sovereigns is confined to political government; they have no right of punishment but over those who disturb the public peace ; the most dangerous heresy is that of a sovereign who separates himself from part of his subjects because they believe not according to his belief". Such a noble expression of opinion deserved a more generous reception than was accorded to it by the Emperor Justin, especially when it was delivered by an ambassador of no less dignity than the Bishop of Rome himself. In spite of protests and excuses, John I. had been forced by Theodoric to undertake an unwelcome journey to Constantinople, and to plead for Arian toleration with the Emperor, to whose rigid orthodoxy the Papacy owed its victory in the monophysite struggle so lately terminated. The Emperor left nothing to be desired in the outward deference with which he treated the Pope : he knelt at his feet and processed with him through the glitterins; streets of new Rome. But, whether through the half- heartedness of John or the politic orthodoxy of Justin, the embassy failed in its main object, and the persecuting edict remained unrepealed. The Pope paid the penalty for defeat by an ignominious death in captivity at the hands of Theodoric, and in GOTHIC KULE 31 recognition of his sufferings the " Liber Pontificalis " affords him the honour of canonisation. John I. was succeeded by Felix IV., the nominee of Theodoric, whose growing absolutism had neither increased his popularity nor improved his character. In the same year (526) Theodoric died, leaving his kingdom exposed to the fatal perils of a minority and the regency of his able but imprudent daughter. The reign of Theodoric forms an epoch in the history of Italy, a momentary relief amid the storm-clouds which stretch before and after — when the avenging hand seems for an instant stayed, and Rome, the poverty-stricken and siege-worn victim of her relentless doom, is " Felix Roma " once more. It is true that dark deeds stain the hero's path — deeds of treachery, such as the murder of Odoacer ; of despotic self-will, in his treatment of Pope John — and above all the promptings of a yet more barbarous suspicion, which darken the close of his career, by the imprisonment and death of the philosopher Boethius. And yet, Theodoric the Ostrogoth is among the wisest and best rulers that Italy has ever known. Great in his aims — the unification of Italy under the dynasty of the Amal — great in his achieve- ments, the revival of law and order in his distracted dominion, he stands out as the first of the founders of modern Italy, and his failure to establish an enduring unity cannot be taken as the measure of his success. His attempt was in one sense prema- ture, for Italy had not yet realised her need ; in another sense, it was too late, for it required as the imperative condition of its success the co-operation of the Papacy, and the Popes had already learnt that their personal autocracy was best assured in the absence of any effective civil authority, independent of, or superior to their own. The great moments of the Papacy had hitherto been moments of crisis in periods of stress and storm. The pontificate of Innocent had coincided with the invasion of Alaric; Leo the Great had stood face to face with Attila the Hun, and he alone had saved Rome from the worst horrors of the Vandal sack. His successors had yet to learn that spiritual weapons unsupported by temporal force may avail for a moment to avert a political catastrophe, but they cannot suffice to preserve the independence of national existence against the steady opposition of a determined rival, in long stretches of peace and repose. During the ten years which followed the death of Theodoric, the Gothic kingdom fell to pieces, and the Popes at first welcomed the change from the respectful despotism of Theodoric to the magnanimous weakness of the regent Amalasuntha. The 32 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY Arianism of the House of Theodoric, which prevented any close alliance with the Papacy, gave at the same time an advantage to the Roman Bishop, by raising him to the position of intermediary between the ruling House and the Eastern Emperor. Moreover, Theodoric had latterly fixed his seat of government at Ravenna, thus leaving Rome to the Pope. To these advantages was now added, in the pontificate of Felix IV., a judicial supremacy, according to which the Pope was given the power to determine all cases between the clergy and the laity. But in spite of the fact that the position of the Popes under the House of Theodoric was a strong one, we find them already looking towards the East for deliverance. Already they turned to the foreigner over the seas, as later they sought a protector beyond the Alps, to save them from the ruler on the spot — the defender within their gates, whose ever-present authority was irksome, even when it lavished favours on its exacting prot6g6. The Emperor Justinian was more than ready to listen to the complaints of the Pope, groundless as they were, and throughout the reign of Theodatus a policy of intrigue with the East was handed down from each Bishop to his successor. John II. (532-535) received a magnificent embassy bearing gifts and ac- companied by a message of protest against the alleged misdoing of Theodatus. John's aged successor, Agapetus, was sent to Constantinople by Theodatus to convey in polite terms the Gothic king's defiance : like his predecessor in similar circum- stances, he was received with the utmost possible deference, but the political issues soon became swamped in a theological contention, and Agapetus died, covered with controversial glory. The pontificate of Silverius (536) saw the arrival of Belisarius, and the overthrow of Theodatus the Goth. Silverius with short- sighted enthusiasm threw wide the gates of Rome and welcomed the deliverer who came under the banner of the Roman Empire. He made himself the tool of the Byzantine conqueror, only to fall a victim to the intrigues of the Imperial Court. Belisarius brought in his train a certain Vigilius, an ecclesiastical advent- urer of extraordinary ability and boundless ambition. Vigilius had accompanied Agapetus on his embassy to Constantinople, where he entered into an unscrupulous bargain with the Empress Theodora, whose influence dominated Justinian and his Empire. The contention of Agapetus had been directed against a protege-bishop of Theodora's, who had been accused of Eutychian opinions, and had refused to declare his allegiance to the Council of Chalcedon. Theodora was bent on restoring the suspected heretic to the See of Constantinople to which he had GOTHIC RULE 33 been nominated. She therefore summoned Vigilins, who under- took to recognise the heretic Anthinus, and, further, to repudiate himself the Council of Chalcedon, which practically pledged him to Eutychian opinions. His compensation was to be no less than the Roman pontificate, as soon as the arms of Belisarius could procure it for him, and the overthrow of Silverius create a vacancy. No sooner was Belisarius safely established in the city than flimsy charges of transactions with the Goths were brought forward against the unfortunate Silverius. The charges were supported by the dramatic display of Theodora's second accomplice, the wife of Belisarius. " Tell us. Pope Silverius," she asked, as she lay on her couch with the conqueror at her feet, "What have we and the Romans done, that you should wish to give us up into the hands of the Goths " ? Dumbfounded at the preposterous charges, Silverius failed to exculpate him- self, and the interested populace was briefly informed that " Pope Silverius was deposed and had become a monk ". Vengeance was not long in overtaking Vigilius, who proved unable to win the favour of the Roman people by acting as their benefactor during the siege of the city by the Gothic Vitiges. Moreover, he unwisely broke with Constantinople, by refusing to support the Emperor in his condemnation of the so-called '• Three Chapters ". This was a well-meant but misguided attempt of Justinian's to secure uniformity by condemning the writings of three priests who had previously been acquitted of heresy by the Council of Chalcedon. Vigilius was peremptorily summoned to Constantinople, and in 446 he left Rome amid the execrations of his disaflfected flock. "Evil hast thou done to us!" they cried after him, " May evil follow thee wherever thou art ! " The story of his doings in Constantinople is an ignominious page of papal history. He first submitted to imperial terrorism, and condemned the "Three Chapters". Then, finding himself deserted by the Western Bishops, he anathematised Justinian's usurpation of ecclesiastical authority. Thus, having alienated the Eastern Bishops, who refused to have any dealings with him, he took sanctuary and sufi'ered indignities which extorted the contemptuous pity of his adversaries. After more vacillations, he was confirmed by the support of seventeen Western Bishops in his opposition to the Emperor, at the fifth quasi-oecumenical Council in 553, venturing so far as to write a defence of the " Three Chapters " in answer to Justinian's attack. Finally, in exile on the rock of Proconnosus, he again recanted, and after a full submission to the Emperor was sufi'ered to set out for Rome, which he did not reach alive. 3 34 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY The career of Vigilius proves that the Papacy was still a purely moral institution, which must stand or fall according as the Bishops prove worthy or unworthy of their calling. It proves also that the yoke of Byzantium was in reality more fatal to its growth than the domination of the Goths. While Vigilius was suffering his inglorious martyrdom at the hands of Justinian, a more heroic drama was being enacted round the walls of old Rome. The meteor-like career of Totila, the young Gothic Hannibal, lives in history to disprove the charges brought against the Goths by prejudiced chroniclers of the Middle Ages, who passed down to our own day the fiction that the Goths were the destroyers of Rome. It is true that the city suffered a time of almost unparallelled distress when in 546 the young conqueror besieged it for more than a year ; it is true, moreover, that Totila in the heat of contest threatened to " turn the whole city into pasture for cattle ". But the threat was never carried out, and Rome suffered no worse mutilation than the destruction of a part of her walls. The deacon, Pelagius, taking to himself the rdle of Innocent and Leo in the absence of their unworthy representative, appealed in vain for a reprieve during the siege : on the entry of Totila, he confronted him again on the threshold of St. Peter's, and with a humility born of pastoral pity, he pleaded for the city — " Lord, spare thine own ". "Comest thou then as a suppliant, Pelagius?" asked Totila. " God has made me thy servant : therefore spare, my Lord, thy servants " — answered the priest. Fm'ther appeal was probably unnecessary to move the heart of the chivalrous young king, but had Pelagius not prevailed, it would have been hard to turn a deaf ear to the dignified pleading of Belisarius against the destruction of the buildings. "Such an outrage," he wrote, "would rob our ancestors of the monuments of their virtues and posterity of the sight of their works. . . . Art thou victor ? destroying her thou wilt not lose the city of another, but thine own. Preserving her thou wilt enrich thyself with the most splendid possession of the earth." Totila paid the price of his clemency on the field of Taginas, where he died a hero's death before the walls of the city which he had forborn to destroy, and which in consequence he had twice proved unable to hold. His death closes the period of the Gothic wars, and ushers in the new era. Five sieges and five sacks had left their mark on the city, which had sunk into a state of social chaos and economic despair. The Pragmatic Sanction of Justinian (554) was a noble attempt to restore its GOTHIC KULE 35 fallen prosperity, but Rome had sunk into a state from which a code was powerless to save it, and we read with a certain pathos the statutory provision for the payment by the starving city of grammarians, rhetoricians, and legists, " in order that youth trained in the liberal sciences may flourish in the Roman Empire ". In spite of the insidious dangers of Byzantine despotism, the Papacy reaped considerable advantage from the results of the Gothic wars. The overthrow of the Arian dynasty was naturally the triumph of orthodoxy, and the removal from Italy of the independent Gothic kingdom released the Popes from an unwelcome cm'b on their independence. More definite were the advantages bestowed by Justinian's legislation, which transferred the plenary civil power to the Pope with the assistance of the Senate. There could be no question henceforth that the Pope was the chief ruler in Rome, and his authority in the city was so well and so soon established that neither the Byzantine exarch, or viceroy, from his seat at Ravenna, nor his local representative, the Ducatus Romanus, could seriously compete with him in the years to come. Pelagius, the deacon, succeeded Vigilius as Pope in 555, but it is disappointing to see that after the noble activity which he showed in his meetings with Totila, he goes out to Constantinople, heaps up riches, which it is true he spends lavishly in Rome, and in spite of an oath of purgation, he never entirely clears himself from the suspicion of having been cognisant of the death of Vigilius. He w^as succeeded by John III., whose pontificate coincides with the first appearance of the Lombards in North Italy, and the gathering of the clouds for a new and terrible storm. The Pope is said to have averted the doom of Italy by an embassy of conciliation to the fallen exarch Narses, who from his sullen retreat in Naples was said to be plotting vengeance with the Northern invaders and their king, Alboin. It was only a momentary reprieve : the " swords of the Lombards " were never for long at rest in their scabbards, and the terror of their name spread a new panic through Italy. For there was a new persistency in their movements, unlike any- thing to which Italy had hitherto been subjected among all the invasions of the barbarians. Alaric had swept through Italy sowing disaster and withdrawn ; Attila had plundered the North, and fallen back in awe before Leo and the might of the Lord ; the Vandals had wreaked their piratical vengeance in one fell swoop on Rome, and carried their plunder away over the sea never to return ; and the Ostrogoths had tarried in peace and 36 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY justice among the Romans until the jealousy of the Emperor drove them forth. But the Lombards brought their wives and children, and settled in the fertile valley of the Po. They murdered their enemies and made their skulls into drinking- cups. They had no fear of the Unseen, and no reverence for priests. They alone among the devastators of the fallen Empire seem utterly destitute of all qualities of nobility, and by their cruelty, their treachery, and their lack of rudimentary personal honour, leave no room for any kind of admiration. And yet, they alone of the barbarian tribes gained a permanent foothold in Italy and achieved an ultimate union of race. CHAPTER VI MORAL SUPREMACY : THE EPOCH OF GREGORY THE GREAT A.D. 568-604 WHILE Italy lay prostrate under the vengeance of the Goth, the fury of the Lombard, and the tyranny of Byzantium, the freshening spirit of a new monasti- ciem breathed from the groves of Subiaco and spread to the heights of Monte Cassino. It is often the case that a time of acute distress endows men with unusual powers of vision, and a period of turmoil not infrequently produces a reaction of spiritual force. It is therefore not altogether surprising that the sixth century should have produced two such men as St. Benedict and St. Gregory. The monastic ideal of St. Benedict was founded on the con- templative mysticism of Jerome, and was adapted to meet the needs of Western Christendom by the suppression of exotic ex- travagance and the infusion of practical organisation. The life of spiritual retirement and simple manual labour had an irresistible attraction for those whose characters were too gentle for these hard times, and the personality of Benedict spread its influence wherever the spell of holiness could be exercised. From the metropolis of Monte Cassino, the Benedictine rule radiated throughout Italy, until every unsequestered district and many a mountain fastness held in its unpretentious religious house a silent witness to the Gospel of peace. The spread of monasticism was not without its importance in the history of papal power. The new monasteries — unlike their predecessors in their strong corporate life, and their industrial efficiency — were the outposts of the spiritual dominion as the military colonies had been of the Empire. Foremost among their ranks were the young Roman nobles — portionless boys and undowered girls, whose fathers had fallen in the barbarian wars, as well as the more fortunate young aristocrats, who lavished their wealth on the houses which sheltered them, and purchased by their renunciation the straight and open way of eternal happiness. Such was the youthful Gregory, the scion of an Imperial 37 38 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY House, from which he inherited the graces of Roman nobility combined with an exceptional spiritual tradition. "A saint among saints," as he is described by John the Deacon, his youth was spent in the decadent Roman world, which claimed his talents and his abnormal endowments, but never won his soul. Of singular personal beauty, which he inherited from both his father and his mother, he dressed with a splendour befitting his station, and lived the ordinary life of the young Roman noble, until the death of his father in 573. He was no sudden conversion from a life of pleasure to the life of the cloister. As long as his father lived, possibly in obedience to the parental will, he had thrown himself heart and soul into the career which had been designed for him, rising before the age of thirty to the responsible office of prsetor of Rome. But he had striven always to " live to God," and throughout his gay youth the example of Benedict lay deep-hidden in his soul. When at last the moment came, and Gregory, still in his early manhood, became his own master, he turned calmly away from the world, which had never attracted him, to that serener life which appealed no more in vain. He did not at first repudiate altogether the claims of secular life, contenting himself with filling his father's villa with the monastic guests whom he delighted to honour. Thus gradually and by slow degrees he severed the bonds which held him back, until he adopted first the rule and then the habit of the Benedictines himself, and finally converted the Roman villa into the monastery of St. Andrews. With the rest of his patrimony he endowed six monasteries in Sicily, and gave alms on the lavish and indis- criminate scale which his warm heart dictated. His Roman pride, his political activity, his humanistic leanings — all became submerged in the austerities of the Benedictine rule, but the soul of the mystic blossomed into joy in the spiritual garden of St. Andrews, and in the years which followed, his heart never swerved from its first enthusiastic allegiance to the life of the cloister. Playing on a favourite metaphor which recurs again and again in his writings, he describes the world as a rough sea, and the monastery as a calm haven, where " the ship of the soul " is at rest. "■ My unhappy mind remembers what it was in the cloister," he writes as Pope in the preface to the " Dialogues " — " How it soared above fleeting things because it thought only of things celestial. ... I ponder on what I now endure ; I ponder on what I have lost. For lo ! now I am shaken by the waves of a great sea, and in the ship of the mind I am dashed by the storms of a strong tempest." MOKAL SUPREMACY 39 There is a general vagueness as to the dates of the earlier events in Gregory's life, but after a comparatively short spell of monastic retirement he was called back to politics at the bidding of Pope Benedict, and sent on an embassy to Constantinople as papal ambassador (Apocrisiarius). It is uncertain how long he stayed there, but in the course of his sojourn he managed to reconcile Benedict's successor, Pelagius, with two successive emperors, Tiberius and Maurice, with whom relations had been strained. He failed, however, in the other object of his mission, which was to extract aid from the emperor against the Lombards, from whom Rome was in imminent danger of unprecedented evil. Gregory was not wholly absorbed in his diplomatic errand. While he was in Constantinople, he engaged in a characteristic controversy with one Eutychius on the Resurrection body, and wrote at the solicitation of his friends a remarkable commentary on Job. But the " Magna Moralia " is only accidentally a com- mentary : it is really an expression in fantastic imagery of Gregory's own views on the moral and religious problems of his age.^ It is an ambitious but not a great work, either from the literary or the theological standpoint ; he had no knowledge of any of the Oriental languages, and had only read his author in the garbled Latin version. He accepts his visionary utterances as literal history, and the beauty of his language never so much as occurs to him. But it is the work of a gi-eat man— simple enough to accept great teaching with unquestioning faith, and generous enough to find in it the satisfaction of the needs of the whole world. Nor was the inner life of the soul neglected in the stress of ecclesiastical politics. With the little company of friends who had followed him from Rome, he used to hold spiritual converse, and " to retire to their society from the constant storm of business as to a safe port bound by their example, as by an anchor-cable, to the placid shore of prayer". It was no divided allegiance which Gregory gave to the monastic ideal: he remained a monk at heart from no merely ascetic motive, nor was he driven to the cloister by an over-mastering sense of the evil of the world, but in the peace of contemplative religion he found his ideal of earthly happiness as well as the fullness of mystical joy. And yet the monastic ideal of Gregory is no less severe than that of Benedict himself, and his self-discipline was Buflficiently austere at times to endanger his life and permanently to undermine his constitution. When on his return from Constantinople he became Abbot of his beloved St. Andrews, 40 A SHORT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY his discipline would seem utterly inhuman if it were not animated by the same spirit of love which marks all his dealings with men. The Gregory who condemns the monk Justus to a lonely deathbed as a penance for secreting three golden coins is the same man who walks graciously through the streets of Rome distributing alms, and with whimsical tenderness makes the famous series of puns suggested by the sight of the Angle children, whose angel faces inspired him to work for the conversion of England. Perhaps the noblest impulse of his life was that which drew him away from the monastery which he loved — away from the city which hung on his teaching and already rang with the praises of his piety — towards the heathen land of King EAlle which was to be reclaimed " De-ira " and resound with " Alleluiah ". A popular tumult led to Gregory's return under the compulsion of Pope Pelagius, after three days' journeying towards the English shore, but the fact that he never reached the kingdom of EAlle does not detract from the splendour of his self-oblation. The angel boys had touched the heart as well as the imagination of Gregory, and the mission of Augustine, which was in truth the outcome of the scene in the market-place, immortalises the name of Gregory in the history of England. In 590, Gregory was again summoned away from St. Andrews by the world which could not spare him for a monk. The call this time was to the Papacy itself, but it was nearly a year before Gregory could be induced to submit to the onerous dignity thus thrust upon him. Some such reluctance was traditional — a sort of conventional expression of humility which was expected of the Bishop-designate by the people who appointed him. It was often artificial and sometimes ridiculous, but we know enough of Gregory's character to feel certain that his reluctance was perfectly sincere. He was leaving a life of sheltered retirement, congenial to his extremely sensitive temperament, for an oflQce of unparallelled danger and diflficulty. To him, the monastic life brought fullness of soul, while ecclesiastical politics meant contraction. But if it is necessary to prove that no hypocritical motives marred the sincerity of Gregory's unworldliness, his attempt to intercept the document applying for the Emperor's confirmation of his appointment, and to substitute for it his own supplication for its refusal, ajffords the strongest evidence of its genuine character. Happily for the history of the Papacy, Gregory was not suc- cessful in avoiding the pontificate. Nor when once enthroned did he fail to rise to his immense responsibilities; he left the MORAL SUPREMACY 41 gracious calm of St. Andrews behind when he said good-bye to the monastery, and he put ofif the monk as completely as he adopted the life of the ecclesiastical statesman : but he never laid aside the saint. If occasionally he looks wistfully back at the monastic garden among the oak-trees of the Ccelian Hill, it is not with the haunting regrets of a man who has failed but with the heart-searchings of an idealist who is conscious of his limitations. To the Emperor's pious sister, he writes : " Under the colour of the episcopate I have been brought back to the world. ... I have lost the joys of my rest, and seem to have risen outwardly, while inwardly I have fallen. I lament that I am driven far away from my Maker's face. . . . Though for myself I fear nothing, I am greatly afraid for those who have been committed to me. On all sides I am tossed by the waves of business, and pressed down by storms, so that I can say with truth, 'I am come into deep waters where the flood overflows me'. ... I loved the beauty of the contemplative life, as a Rachel, barren, but beautiful and of clear vision, which though on account of its quietness it is less productive, yet has a finer perception of light. But, by what judgment I know not, Leah has been brought to me in the night, to wit, the active life, fertile but tender-eyed ; seeing less, though bringing forth more." In a dififerent vein he expresses the same consciousness of his own deficiencies in answering the felicitations of a friend. " It is all very well to make the name the likeness of a thing," he writes in affectionate banter, " and to turn neat sentences and pretty speeches in your letters, and to call a monkey a lion ; but it is just the same thing as we do when we call mangy puppies pards or tigers." Gregory's apparent self-depreciation was the logical outcome of his extraordinarily high conception of the papal office and his absolute conviction in the reality of its power. It was less a matter of legal right than of practical expediency. Times had changed since Leo had found it necessary to insist on an extravagant acknowledgment of St. Peter's claims : no one wanted to be told that the Pope inherited his supremacy from the prince of the Apostles, for everyone knew that the Pope had saved Rome three times from the horrors of pillage, and stood between the Romans and Byzantine tyranny. So Gregory could afi^ord to be less exacting than Leo in demanding the explicit acknowledgment of papal supremacy just in so far as his authority was a greater reality, resting on a more definite basis than that of his predecessors. This is always most noticeable in his dealings with Constantinople, and a striking instance 42 A SHOET HiSTOEt OF THE PAPACY occurs at the outset of his pontificate. The new Pope had an encounter with certain Bishops of Istria, who had refused to condemn the Three Chapters, — an attitude which had by now come to be regarded as unorthodox. The Emperor, however, in this case, chose to interfere for the protection of the Istrian Bishops, and commanded the Pope to withdraw his complaint. Gregory instantly submitted in deference to "the commands of the most pious princes". Again, in 593, Maurice issued an edict forbidding soldiers to become monks during their period of office. It might seem a wise enough provision in the face of the deadly peril which threatened Rome from the Lombards, but it must have been directly against Gregory's most cherished convictions, and indeed he felt it sufficiently strongly to send a vehement protest to Constantinople while at the same time acquiescing in its publication. The protest, while it is forcible and severely explicit, is expressed in words which are almost servile : " What am I who speak this to my lords but dust and a worm ? Nevertheless, feeling that this law is against God the Author of all things I cannot be silent." It has to be remem- bered, however, in this connection and in others, that extrava- gant forms of address to princes were required by the ordinary code of good manners. It is difficult to decide exactly how far Gregory's attitude to the Emperor, as expressed in his letter, is merely dictated by the conformity of a courtier to the conven- tional phraseology and how far he was prompted in his submis- sion on the various points at issue between him and his temporal lord by the reverence for constituted authority which monastic obedience had instilled. Unhappily, neither of these hypotheses offers any solution of the one inexplicable blot on Gregory's pontificate. In 602, the Emperor Maurice was assassinated with wanton cruelty by one of the worst and most brutal adventurers who ever succeeded in establishing a tyranny. In his letter of congratulation to Phocas, Gregory shows the only sign of moral deterioration which his contact with worldly affairs might have effected. He was growing old, and the consequences of his early asceticism were telling on his physique, but neither bodily weakness nor the heat of personal rancour — for he had never been on very good terms with Maurice — can adequately excuse his self-abasement before the red-handed usurper. " Glory to God in the highest, Who as it is written changes times and transfers seasons," he ejaculates at the opening of a fulsome eulogy, in which he rejoices that " the Benignity of your Piety has been raised to the imperial throne." Of course Gregory has an end to serve — MORAL SUPREMACY 43 a boon to ask — for the glory of the Papacy, which follows closely on the phrases of adulation. But the price was too great : the moral example of one of the greatest of the Popes, without this one deep stain, would have been of far greater worth to Christen- dom and to the world than any favour which it was in the power of an Emperor to grant. The causes which had embittered Gregory against Maurice were many and various. Soon after the edict forbidding soldiers to become monks, Maurice interfered in the election of Maxi- mus, Bishop of Salona, in Illyricum. Gregory, diplomatic as ever, gave way at first, allowed the election of Maximus, and received him with honour at the Emperor's request. But, at the same time, he appealed to the Empress Constantina, and finally — seven years later — extorted an apology and submission from the troublesome Bishop. A still more serious affair was the quarrel with John the Faster, the Bishop of Constantinople, who had taken on himself to punish two heretic priests by the uncanonical penalty of flogging. In answer to Gregory's pro- test, the Bishop feigned ignorance of the charges brought against him. The reply of Gregory throws a new light on his character, and illustrates his command of irony, which Dean Church has compared to that of Pio Nono. He professes to be- lieve that "someone else, a secular person" had addressed him in the name of his " most holy brother ". Then, with an ofifensiveness which the delicacy of his trained wit merely aggravates, he accuses this fictitious scapegoat of malignantly lying, quoting the text intentionally suggestive of the epithet by which the Bishop was known : " Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man, but that which cometh out of the mouth that defileth a man ". There is a note of personal rancour in the quarrel, which, in itself, sug- gests an open rivalry between Gregory and the Bishop of Constantinople. In 595, it came to the surface in a direct clash of authority. John the Faster claimed the title of " Universal Bishop," and flaunted it in a document addressed to the Pope. Gregory disputed the claim with all the vehemence of his passionate nature. He takes up the somewhat astonish- ing standpoint that any such assumption of priority on the part of a Bishop — even the Bishop of Rome — would be an un- warrantable usurpation. In his indignation he appeals to the Churches of Antioch and Alexandria, claiming that if there were any superiority of one over another of the Bishops, to them, conjointly with the Bishop of Rome, it ought properly to belong. But even the Pope, he alleges, refuses to claim such a 44 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY title, and he asks the poignant question, what would become of the whole Church if it depended on one patriarch, and he be- came a heretic ? The same question has been asked in more advanced ages, and a satisfactory answer is still hard to find. The contest is one of great interest, for it shows us the mind of the fourth great Father of Christendom on the relative im- portance of the Holy See. While he remains firm in supporting a certain priority in dignity to the Roman See, he repudiates any claim to be set as it were on a higher plane than his brother patriarchs. The patriarchal claims he accepts, but he expressly shares them with Alexandria and Antioch, as claiming no less than Rome to have been "founded on the Rock". Thus Gregory may be said to have favoured the idea of a limited Popedom, lifted above the clamour of rivalry, and yet unim- perilled by the dangerous isolation of infallibility. The quarrel with the Bishop of Constantinople was, in itself, enough to throw Gregory across the path of the autocratic Emperor. But there were still other causes of greater import- ance for the moment which produced an open rupture. Maurice had at last awakened to the fact that Italy would be demolished by the Lombards unless something was done immediately to prevent it. A military expedition was out of the question. Persia was pressing hard on the East, and new Rome must be defended at the expense of the mother city. So Maurice, with doubtful policy, turned to the Franks, who, by a century of conquest, had consolidated in Gaul a powerful kingdom under the enterprising Merovingian dynasty. The Franks, nothing loath, swept down across the Alps, and feasted their eyes on the rich Lombard plains. But the peril of Rome was not lessened by the introduction of fresh barbarian hordes, and Gregory availed himself of the accession of a Catholic Lombard queen to make peace with her husband, King Agilulf. It was not a moment to think of diplomatic formality, or to pause for higher sanction : Ariulf, Duke of Spoleto, was waiting at the gates of Rome, and the situation demanded the decisive action of a strong man with a determined will. So Gregory made peace on his own responsi- bility, and induced Ariulf to retire. In 593, the exarch Ro- manus broke the treaty which had been made without his sanction, and Rome was once more besieged. Gregory, thwarted in his patriotic efforts, took to the pulpit, and gave utterance to the despair which he could no longer suppress — " Let us end worldly desires, at least with the end of the world," he cries, in the belief that the day of doom was at hand. " Let no man blame me if henceforth I speak to you no more; for, as you MOEAL SUPKEMACY 45 all see, our tribulations have increased, we are everywhere surrounded by perils, everywhere is imminent danger of death ; some return to us with their hands lopped off, others are reported to us as captured or slain. Now am I forced to refrain my tongue from exposition, for my soul is weary of life". Tiie tone of his preaching is, however, deceptive. Thwarted by the exarch, who seems to have had private ends to serve in prolonging the war. and suspected at Constantinople of " simplicity," Gregory still struggled to obtain some mitigation of the sufferings of his flock. In spite of an offensive letter from Maurice, which extorted a stinging reply from the Pope, Gregory left no stone unturned which might serve the cause of peace. Such brief spaces of respite as relieve the terrible story of the Lombard oppression owe their origin entirely to the unaided efforts and the dauntless energy of Gregory. By appealing from the suspicious Emperor to his more reasonable wife, he managed to conclude a truce with King Agilulf in 595, and another in 603, again through the agency of the Catholic Queen Theodolinda. It was not the fault of the Pope that peace was not established on a firmer basis and on more durable lines. What the dualism between Byzantine and papal rule in Italy made it impossible to achieve, Gregory successfully contrived in other ways and by other means to bring about. He wrote fatherly letters to Theodolinda, dealing tenderly with her lingering Arian prejudices, and exhorting her to strengthen the conversion of Agilulf. The result was that gradually the leaven of orthodoxy spread from the royal household through the bar- barian ranks of the Lombard settlers, till the bond of religious unity paved the way for the closer bond of nationality which finally made the Teutonic conquerors one with the Romans in the inseparable union of race. For all these things history acknowledges its debt to Gregory the Great, who dignified statecraft by his loftiness of spirit, and gave to the Papacy a splendid pattern for a political Pope. But it was to Gregory the saint, the "Pastor Pastorum," that the men of the Middle Ages turned with affectionate gratitude when they called him Father. In dealing with clerical abuses, he keeps a happy mean between aggression and laxity. He spared one old Bishop who removed his neighbour's landmark, and answered good-humouredly the excuses of another who had been accused of living too well. On the other hand, he condemned " Simony " wherever he detected it as "the first and worst of heresies," and showed uncompromising severity against licence and im- morality among the Clergy. It is not difficult to understand 46 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY the extraordinary attraction which was exercised by the " im- perious saint". As is common with men who are endowed with singular gifts of friendship, he made great demands of his fellows, and treated them in return with extraordinary con- sideration and sympathy. His letters to Leander of Seville, his most intimate friend, are simple and tender and full of good fellowship. " I am not now, good man, he whom you used to know," he says, in disclaiming the affectionate praises of Leander — " I have advanced outwardly, I confess ; but inwardly I have fallen. . . , Much does this burdensome honour oppress me. . . . Now am I tossed with waves and seek the plank of thy intercession, that though not accounted worthy to come rich with my ship entire to shore, I may at anyrate reach it on a plank after loss." But the friendship between Leander and Gregory had a political importance as well, for it was through Leander that Gregory bestowed the first privileges on the Visigothic Church, on which was founded the traditional loyalty of the " Most Catholic Kings " of Spain. In spite of his somewhat guarded use of the dogmatic claims of the Papacy, Gregory has no hesitation whatever in exercising his control over the Church throughout Europe. He claimed and exercised an international authority, and, to an even greater extent than Leo, created the tradition of a spiritual Roman Empire. ■ His relations with Gaul form in themselves a complete department of his policy, and his correspondence with Queen Brunehild shows that the right of the Pope to correct abuses, to arbitrate, and to exercise jurisdiction was recij^rocally acknowledged, whereas in earlier times the Merovingians had not dealt too tenderly with ecclesiastical claims in Gaul. Distant Ireland laid her difficulties before him in at least one authentic letter from her Apostle, St. Columba. The mission of Augustine had been successful beyond all belief in southern England, and the seed sown in the slave-market had born ample fruitage. But absorbed as he was in international affairs, Gregory did not neglect his own immediate responsibilities. His household was carefully superintended, and the utmost simplicity preserved. The Papacy had already accumulated a large quantity of land — the patrimony of Peter, as it came to be called — and in its proper administration Gregory expended much care and effort. He was always careful to protect the peasant and the poor farmer from undue exactions, and minute instructions were issued to the " Defensores " and sub-deacons to whom the actual supervision was entrusted. One of his first and most MOKAL SUPEEMACY 47 detailed letters, after becoming Pope, was written to one Peter, the Sicilian agent, instructing him to correct certain abuses which had crept into the management of the patrimony in Sicily. He concludes with the general recommendation — " So act that your humility may never be grovelling nor your authority overbeiring; but let rectitude give a flavour to your humility and humility make rectitude itself courteous ". The same Peter is kept well up to the mark by an occasional rebuke, which is often veiled in the ironical eulogy so characteristic of Gregory — "I hear from the Abbot MarinianuF," he writes, "that the building in the Praetorian monastery is not yet half done ; what shall I say to this but extol the ardour of your experience. ... I hear, too, that you are quite aware that certain property and several farms really belong to other people ; but that through the representations or the fear of someone or other you are afraid to restore them. If you were really a Christian, you would fear God's judgments rather than man's tattle. Now mind what I say, for I am always telling you about this. . . . Further, you have sent me a wretched hack, and five good donkeys. The hack I cannot ride, he is such a brute ; and the animals that are good I cannot mount, because they are donkeys." Gregory's enemies, after his death, murmured against him as " a spendthrift and squanderer of the manifold treasures of the patriarchate," because he had refused to tax the peasant with the same cruel rigour that his predecessors had thought- lessly used, and because he distributed lavishly among the poor the wealth which their own toil had produced. They even went so far as to burn his books, until they were stopped by the courageous entreaties of Peter the Deacon, who convinced them of their folly by asserting that he had seen the Holy Sph'it in the shape of a dove resting on Gregory's head as he wrote. The last three years of Gregory's life (601-4) were spent in considerable physical suffering, and yet he was as active as ever in political life, and as tenderly considerate to his friends. To one old friend, also approaching the evening of life, Marinianus, bishop of Ravenna, he writes an urgent entreaty to take care of himself, and, if possible, to come and stay with him, that he might have him in his care. Marinianus and Gregory had been fellow-monks at St. Andrew's, but, on Gregory's promotion, they had quarrelled over a question of ceremonial, only to come together again in old age. " You ought to come to me before the summer season that I may personally, as far as I can, provide 48 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY. for your sickness ; since the physicians say that the summer- time is peculiarly unfavourable to your complaint. ... I too, who see myself to be near death, if it shall please God to call me before you, would wish to pass away in your hands. . . . Further, I neither exhort nor admonish you, but I strictly order you not to presume to fast, since the physicians say that abstin- ence is very bad for your complaint." From such letters as this, the extraordinary lovableness of Gregory's character invariably stands out. In his famous "Liber Pastoralis Curse," which was cherished by the Church throughout Europe, and translated 200 years later by our English Alfred, Gregory gives us his own ideal in the portrait of the faithful priest, who is both "justly compassionate and affectionately severe ". Personal humility is to be the key-note of his life, and strong human sympathy the token of his calling. In spite of his own protest — " I direct others to the shore of perfection, while I am myself still tossed among the waves of faults " — we cannot but feel that the life of Gregory identifies itself very closely with that of the ideal shepherd of his Treatise. His own personal religion was primitive and credulous, and he loved to give it expression in splendour and rich symbolism. He has been called the "Master of the Ceremonies" of the Catholic Church, and it is to him that it owes much of the dignified and elaborate ritual which expresses bo adequately the magnificence of the Catholic idea. The severe grandeur of the Gregorian chant was first taught by Gregory to the choristers of St. Peter's, and in his organisation of the Septiform Litany originated the rich pageantry of the ecclesiastical processions which illuminate the darkest pictures of the Middle Ages with the splendour of Christian joy. Gregory loved richness and colour for its own sake, whether in the wings of an angel or the glow of a procession, with the true Italian delight in brilliance and warmth. In his book of " Dialogues," written for the edification of the Lombard Court, he accumulated an amazing collection of legends of a more or less miraculous nature, some of which are full of imaginative beauty, and others of the simplicity of truth, while many are almost grotesque in their far-fetched absurdity. But there is little justice or insight in the criticism which sees in Gregory's " superstition " a moral defect ; in him the poet and the mystic were inextricably interwoven, and there is, after all, no very sharp dividing line between the man who sees miracles in every- day life and the man who sees in everyday life a miracle. PART II THE DARK AGES CHAPTER VII THE BREACH BETWEEN EAST AND WEST Part I. — The Opening of the Breach, a.d. 604-701 THE achievement of Gregory the Great was not of such a character as to obtain instant recognition. It is not in the time of its young ambition and untested strength that a great institution is apt to pay its debts, and it needed more than a century of strife and a series of political crises to prove the stability of the foundation of papal power before the gratitude due to the greatest of its founders was recognised. In the great struggle of the next two centuries, when East and West stood face to face, and the Popes fought their way to the unique position which they hold in history, the militant bishops had cause enough to praise the memory of him who had paved the way to victory by establishing the Papacy as a moral and political power throughout Europe. Very little is known of Gregory's immediate successors, and there is no sign at first of the gathering storm-clouds. The East was absorbed in its Persian wars, and Phocas spent all the energy of which he was capable in thwarting conspiracies against his life and devising ingenious methods of punishment for the opponents of his tyranny. Such relations with Byzantium as come to light in the obscurity of the papal annals are of a friendly nature. Boniface III. in his single year of office obtained recognition from the Emperor of the title of Apostolic Head of Christendom, and Boniface IV. received a more sub- stantial earnest of imperial goodwill in the gift of the Pantheon. In the dedication of the shrine of Cybele and all the gods to St. Mary and all the Saints is symbolised both the antagonism and the continuity of Rome's two histories. Boniface and his clergy might sprinkle the walls of the pagan Church with holy water, and their Gloria in Excelsis cleave the sky through the opening in the vaulted roof, but the deposed deities still lingered on in the minds of the Christian worshippers as demons and evil spirits, and the Queen of Heaven inherited no small part of her honour from the tradition of Athene. Even so did the 51 52 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY imperial past, more powerful now than in the days when the old empire was dying, survive in the idea of spiritual dominion, and take new form ere long at the coronation of the first medi- aeval emperor. Tranquillity outlasted the reigns of Deusdedit (615-618) and Honorius I. (625-638), though signs were not wanting of the discord to come. The overthrow of Phocas by the more worthy usurper Heraclius was the signal for the first of a long series of risings in Ravenna against the Byzantine government, which co\ild no longer keep effective control over the exarchate. But Deusdedit held aloof, and it is significant that in this early phase of the struggle there is no trace of any preconcerted attempt at independence on the part of the popes. Honorius I., the ablest of Gregory's immediate successors, occupied him- self in maintaining the Lombard peace and adorning the city with a new basilica, without a thought of political strife. His successors condemned him for his diplomatic lenity towards the Monothelite heresy, which had found favour at the Imperial Court. Monothelitism was an offshoot of the Monophysite struggle which had raged in earlier generations. Heraclius saw in the doctrine, which taught that in Christ there existed not one nature but one will, a convenient compromise between the con- flicting schools of thought, whose contentions had for so long distracted the empire. In 638 he issued his Ecthesis, a mani- fseto in favour of Monothelitism, and sent it to Rome for the Bishop's acceptance. Pope Severinus refused to comply, and in consequence had to see the troops of the exarch sack the papal treasury after besieging the Lateran for three days to shake his obstinacy. His successor, Theodore (642-649), although himself a Greek, was even more violently opposed to the Ecthesis, which he regarded as a dishonest quibble on a vital dilemma. He avoided direct hostilities, and stood aloof from the rebellion of Maurice the Chartular, who had raised all the classes of Rome in political rebellion against the Emperor. The Pope preferred to confine the contest to the doctrinal sphere, — if indeed other motives for revolt appealed to him at all, which is very doubt- ful. He therefore confined himself to the patronage of the dis- reputable ex-patriarch Pyrrhus, who was expelled from his patriarchate for supposed connivance in the murder of the son of Heraclius. Being supplanted in his patriarchate by another Monothelite, Pyrrhus found it convenient to abjure the heresy at the feet of the Pope, until the death of his supplanter and the accession of a tolerant emperor made it expedient to apostatize once more. Theodore's terrible anathema, signed with the THE BREACH BETWEEN EAST AND WEST 53 blood of Christ, followed the renegade to the Imperial Court, where Constans II. was on the point of issuing his Type, or edict of pacification, forbidding all further dispute on the subject of the One Nature and the One Will. The storm aroused by the Ecthesis was as nothing compared with that evoked by the Type. The heroic Pope Martin, con- vinced in his own cause and its consummate importance, sum- moned a Council of fifteen Bishops to condemn the offensive document, in defiance of the presence of the exarch, with imperial troops at his back, and Emperor's mandate to support him in enforcing his will. But the soldiery was by now national and Roman, and the exarch, baffled in his first attempt to coerce the Pope, retired to Naples, where, according to papal historians, he repented and died. Another exarch was sent in 653 with more rigorous authority and a larger imperial con- tingent. Martin feigned illness and at first refused to see the exarch. But on the next day, the exarch forced an entry to the Lateran, and read an imperial decree of deposition against Martin as he lay on his couch before the High Altar. In vain the Pope retaliated with anathema, in vain his clergy rallied round to defend him from the armed force of the exarch. The soldiers struck the lights off the Altar, and in the confusion which followed, carried the Pope away to the Palace of the Caesars, whence he was conveyed by sea to Constantinople. His subsequent treatment at the hands of the Emperor falls little short of martyrdom. Submitted to an ill-treatment which evoked the pity of his enemies, he was tried on a series of manufactured charges, and finally condemned to banishment in the Chersonese. With his clothes in rags and a chain attached to his neck, he set out for his place of exile, where he died two years afterwards, deserted by his friends to whom he makes piteous appeals for alms, complaining that " they have forgotten my miseries, and do not care to know whether I am alive or dead '. A still deeper humiliation was in store, before the Papacy was to emerge from its subjection. In 662, the restless Emperor Constans II. set out on a visit to Italy, with a view to effecting the belated recovery of his dominions in South Italy, and the subjugation of the Pope Vitalian. Chased by the ghost of his murdered brother, the hapless Emperor advanced to Benevento, where he was defeated by the Lombard princeling Romuald. On the sixth milestone along the Appian way, with every outward sign of deferential cordiality, the Pope received the Imperial wanderer, who came as a guest to his own city. Stranger and 54 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY brief sojourner as he was, he lost no time in making good his possession. Abject humiliation was exacted from the Pope, and the cost of entertaining the Emperor and his luxurious Byzantine suite was defrayed by the Papal Treasury. The city, too, paid its tribute in the surrender of its bronze statues and the spoliation of the tiles of gilt bronze which adorned the roof of the Pantheon. These and other treasures were carried away by Constans, when at last he relieved Rome of his presence to visit Naples and Sicily. At Syracuse, four years later, he met a coward's death at the hand of a slave, leaving the spoils of Rome to fall into the hands of the Saracen conquerors of the island. The visit of Constans II. is the darkest moment for the Papacy in the long period of struggle with the East. From the moment of his departure the clouds begin to lift. In the time of Pope Donus (676-678) the new Emperor Con- stantine Pogonatus declared himself in favour of the Papacy. His predecessor had encouraged the Archbishop of Ravenna to throw off the supremacy of the Roman Bishop, and granted to the Exarchate complete immunity from papal control. The new Emperor cancelled these privileges and insisted on the con- secration of the existing Archbishop by Pope Agathon (678-682). Thus the supremacy of the Pope in the West was acknowledged and enforced by the Emperor himself. In 680 the Papacy gained a still more important victory at Constantinople itself, by the final overthrow of Monothelitism at the sixth OEcumenical Council. Three bishops and three legates represented the Bishop of Rome, and it is a sign of the times that Agathon apologises for his representatives' lack of culture, on the plea that they had been forced to earn their living by manual labour, owing to the poverty of Italy. The friendship between the Emperor and the Pope was how- ever fictitious, and the pontificate of Sergius (687-701) brought to light the truth of which the whole of mediaeval history is an illustration — that the existence of two such principles as those which the Empire and the Papacy represent is inconsistent on any other basis than that of a normal antagonism. The trouble arose on the refusal of Sergius to ratify a canon of discipline passed by the Trullan Synod at Constantinople. The Emperor tried to reinact the tragedy of Pope Martin : he summoned the Pope to Constantinople, and sent his envoy to fetch him. But he miscalculated the effects which the earlier humiliation of the Popes had produced. Not only Rome, but the whole of imperial Italy stood by the Pope. The armies of Ravenna and Pentapolis followed the envoy to Rorne, where he found himself in the THE BKEACH BETWEEN EAST AND WEST 55 ignominious plight of a fugitive at the mercy of Sergius. He was obliged to hide in the Lateran while the Pope quelled the tumult which his coming had caused, and i&nally he took refuge in flight, amid the jeers of the derisive Romans. Thus in the victory of Sergius the wrongs of Martin were avenged, just as in subsequent generations the drama of Canossa was expatiated at Anagni. Already it was evident that tem- poral and spiritual overlordship could not coexist as separate and equal prerogatives held by distinct individuals. A weak Pope would always have to submit to a strong Emperor, as Martin and Vitalian had submitted to the tyrant Constans; on the other hand, bishops would not be wanting of the ability and energy of Sergius, powerful enough to assert the supremacy of their spiritual prerogative. Temporal and spiritual power might exist side by side in the same universe : sun and moon — to use the canonists' metaphor — might shine together in the same heaven. But the one must outshine the other ; the sun prevails, and we call it day ; or the moon shines out before the retreating sun, forming the night. If this had been realised while the opposition to papal supre- macy came from the worn-out eastern empire, before the birth of the vigorous Germanic institution, the history of the Papacy would have been much less interesting, free from much that is sordid, and bereft of its largest opportunities. Part II. — The Widening of the Gulf, a.d. 704-741 The story of the seventh century would be incomplete with- out a reference to the custom of pilgrimage, which grew up at this time. The profound reverence of royal converts, such as Cadwalla of Mercia, when he came to receive baptism at the hands of Sergius in 689, must have made a striking impression on the Romans, distracted as they were between their quarrels with Byzantium and their perpetual dread of the Lombards. Their city, which the ravages of plague and famine had reduced to a conglomeration of poverty-stricken hamlets scattered amongst ghost-haunted ruins, was still the desire of nations. Travellers came and went, falling on their knees as they approached her gates, and leaving their gifts at her shrines ere they went their way, to tell of her beauty and spread abroad the wonder of her fame. Others, more deeply stirred by the spell of that super- natural charm which every generation has confessed, entered the 56 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY city never to return. Thus did Coenrad of Mercia and Ofifa of Essex, who, twenty years later than the baptism of Cadwalla, forsook their own people and their royal estate, to tread as monks the holy ground of the eternal city. Meanwhile Popes John VI. (701-705) and John VII. (705-707) maintained the passive resistance which had become the tradi- tional papal policy towards Byzantium. They negotiated inde- pendently with the Lombards, and refused to ratify, while they avoided condemning, the Trullan canon. Pope Constantine (708- 715), the " last of the subject Popes," adopted a more reactionary attitude. He visited Constantinople, and kept on excellent terms with the Emperor at the expense of the papal principle. But his attitude was by now in no way representative of popular feeling and the Byzantine yoke was never more resented than at the moment of the papal alliance. A punitive expedition against Ravenna in 709 increased the anti-imperial hostility, and on the overthrow of Justinian II. by Philippicus Bardanes led to a more serious revolt both in Romagna and in Rome. All that was now needed to complete the work of the seventh century was some great unifying principle of opposition — a casus belli which should draw together the various units of disaffection — the clergy, with their wounded orthodoxy, the nobility, insulted by the vaunted luxury of the Byzantine courtiers, the ill-paid army and the dis- affected populace-sunder the leadership of a national pope. The opportunity came at last in the great iconoclastic struggle, in which the accumulated grievances of the four centuries since the foundation of Constantinople found vent. In 715, Gregory II. was raised to the Pontificate— a Roman in whom was combined the evangelising zeal of his forerunner and namesake, and the ambition of Leo without the greater Gregory's spiritual insight, or the sagacity of the first Great Pope. Resolute in defence, and courageous in attack, he was, however, a worthy antagonist of Leo, the Isaurian, the ablest and least criminal of Byzantine usurpers. For ten years there was peace, while Leo consolidated his empire, and Gregory, with difficulty, staved off a Lombard attack, and rebuilt the Roman walls as a precaution. But in 726, the Emperor, unable to resist the fascination of religious controversy, startled Christen- dom by his first edict against the worship of images. It is not improbable that Leo was actuated throughout the controversy by a disinterested desire to purify the Christian religion. Super- stition had, no doubt, thrown a veil over the mind of the Church in East and West alike, and obscured its clarity of vision. Mo- hammedan insurgents derided their opponents with having ex- THE BREACH BETWEEN EAST AND WEST 57 changed one form of Pantheism for another — the worship of the heavens for the idolatory of the saints ; and when we are confronted in the records with the countless pictures of Christ " not made with hands," and innumerable statues of the Virgin endowed with inconceivable virtues of healing and forgiveness, there seems only too much truth in the charge. It is not for his aims but for his methods that Leo must be condemned, and the failure of his efforts was due to the process by which he sought to carry them out. Iconoclasm has been aptly de- scribed as " a premature rationalism, enforced upon an unreason- ing age — an attempt to spiritualise by law and edict a generation which had been unspiritualised by centuries of materialistic devotion " (Milman). The first edict was followed by an earthquake in the ^gean, which the outraged devotees interpreted as Divine vengeance on the Emperor's sacrilege. Leo, however, not above superstitious qualms, saw in it a rebuke for his own half-measures, and promptly issued a second edict, ordering the destruction of the images, which the former decree had proved powerless to rob of their veneration. The effect was an instantaneous and open rebellion. An officer executing the destruction of a popular Crucifix with unnecessary outrage, was beaten to death by the women of Constantinople. An armed force charged the resisting mob in the streets of new Rome, while rebellion reigned in the islands and on the coast of the iEgean. In the West, meanwhile, all semblance of loyalty was thrown to the winds : the Pope hurled defiance, and Rome threatened to elect a new Emperor of the West. Naples assassinated its Duke, and Ravenna expelled its exarch. Only the Lombard king kept his head, and took advantage of the universal con- fusion to achieve the conquest of Ravenna — the long-deferred hope of Lombard aggression since the foundation of the kingdom. Gregory, in alarm, turned to Venice, with whose help Ravenna was re-taken, for of the two hostile forces which menaced him, that of the energetic Lombard king Liutprand was certainly the more dangerous. Indeed, between the forces of the icono- clasts, under the exarch Eutychius, and the importunate over- tui'es of Liutprand, the poor Pope was in a considerable dilemma, and it is hardly surprising that his remonstrances with the Em- peror should show more agitation than argument, and more com- mand of incriminating invective than of dignified self-restraint. " These are coarse and rude arguments," he writes, with some truth, " suited to a coarse and rude mind, such as yours, but they contain the truth." His letter is not a very favourable 68 A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY specimen of a papal document ; threats which he never meant to carry out alternate with abuses which are more bombastic than forcible, and his biblical analogies are apt to lose force from their inaccurate application. But it must be remembered that rumours of plots against his life rang in the Pope's ears as he wrote ; the exarch's legions lay encamped before the walls of Rome, while in the distance Liutprand was drawing nearer, with all the Lombard forces at his back. It is true that the rest of Italy drew together in defence of the Pope ; that the Romans had bound themselves by a solemn oath to live and die in saving him. But ultimately Gregory knew that no power could deliver him from the hand of one or other of his enemies, and of the two, Byzantium as the most distant was the least to be feared. Foreseeing his dilemma, he had followed up his first letter with another more conciliatory document which is notable as containing the first papal attempt to distinguish be- tween the two spheres of temporal and spiritual government — " the powers of the palace and of the Church " as he defines them. But the conception was too new to ruffle the serenity of the Emperor, who disposes of it with the simple assertion — " I am Emperor and I am priest ". Such was the situation in 729, and never was there a moment in papal history on which more vital issues depended. One last desperate appeal to Charles Martel, the hero of the Prank- ish nation, one final attempt to stir up rebellion in the Lom- bard dominions, and the Pope, inspired by the noblest examples of papal heroism, set out in the spirit of Leo for the Lombard camp. The invincible Liutprand sank on his knees before the defenceless Gregory, and sufi'ered himself to be led to the tomb of St. Peter. Here, in lowliest self-abasement, he surrendered the ambitions which he had brought so near to realisation, and won in return for himself and the exarch the priestly pardon for which no price seemed too high to pay. Soon after the withdrawal of Liutprand, Gregory died, but not before he had proved his willingness to maintain the Imperial authority by the suppression of a popular rebellion against Leo in 730. By his energy and courage, Gregory II. had secured the first step in the direction of temporal independence : to his successor, Gregory III., it remained to follow in his steps. Obviously the first thing required of the new Pope was to define his attitude towards iconoclasm. Accordingly, he sent an embassy in 731, with a message to the Emperor couched in such uncompromising language that the presbyter who was charged with it lacked the THE BKEACH BETWEEN EAST AND WEST 59 courage to deliver it. His next step was to summon a Council in Rome, which passed a decree of defiance; but this document, like the earlier message, failed to reach the Imperial Court, owing to the arrest and imprisonment of the bearer in Sicily. The Emperor refused to receive communications of which the gist was too well known to him, but he must have heard with concern of the influx of new images, splendidly mounted on marble and silver pillars, which Gregory had ordered for the adornment of St. Peter's. Then followed a war of reprisals. The Emperor sent a fleet to Italy with a view to reclaiming his own, but it foundered off the coast of Calabria. To indemnify himself he seized Church possessions in Sicily and Calabria, thus confiscating property which brought the Pope 35,000 gold pieces a year. The Pope in retaliation annexed Gallese in Tuscany "to the Holy Republic and the Roman Army," by a secret treaty with the Duke of Spoleto, who relied on the papal alliance as a means of throwing oflf his allegiance to his suzerain Liutprand. This, of coiu-se, provoked war with the Lombard king, who seized four cities of the Roman Duchy and prepared for further attack. Once more the Papacy was exposed to the perils of a three- cornered struggle, and once more the Pope turned his eyes to the well-tried v^alour of the Frankish nation, whence alone deliver- ance could come. Unfortunately for Gregory, an hereditary alliance already existed between the Lombard kingdom and the Frankish Mayors of the Palace, the de facto rulers of France, who by their energy and valour had already supplanted the old Merovingian dynasty in all but name. In vain Gregory besought Charles Mart el in panic-stricken appeals " not to close his ears against his supplications, lest St. Peter close against him the gates of Heaven ". In vain he appealed to the pride of the hero of Tours, quoting the Lombard taunt, "Let him come, this Charles, with his army of Franks ; let him, if he can, rescue you out of our hands ". Even the gift of the keys of St. Peter's tomb and the filings from the Apostle's chains failed to shake the friendship of the Frank for his old friend and ally. Charles deplored the situation, but his Frankish honour forbade him to alleviate it : death alone removed the tension which in 741 held the Papacy in suspense. In the same year died three great men : first, Leo the Isaurian — the last Emperor who strove to make his power in Italy a reality ; then Charles Martel, who had stemmed the tide of Saracen conquest and delivered France from the infidel at Poictiers ; and lastly. Pope Gregory III., the founder of the Frankish alliance, which holds so momentous a place in papal history. CHAPTER VIII THE APPEAL TO THE FRANKS, AND THE REVIVAL OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE, a.d. 741-800 IT is to the credit of Pope Zacharius (742-752) that he took advantage of the changes which the year 741 had made in the protagonists of the European struggle to introduce a policy of peace. A treaty with Liutprand, followed up by two personal interviews, created a twenty years' truce between the Papacy and the Lombard kingdom. Awed by the presence of the Pope in his own capital, and moved by his eloquence, Liutprand gave way to the papal demands, which included nothing less than the restoration of all Liutprand's conquests from the Greek Emperor. Having thus undone in his last hour by a single generous impulse the work of a long and energetic career, the Lombard king, of whom none but his enemies the popes had ever spoken ill, ended his days in peace. The peace policy of Zacharius began with the Lombards, but spread ere long to Constantinople. The new Emperor Constantino Copronymous was a more tolerant iconoclast than his father, and his practical mind more quickly realised the necessary limitations of imperial intervention in Italian affairs. Since the Emperor could no longer hold his own against the Lombards, he was grateful for the titular authority which the papal policy had preserved for him, and not too anxious to prevent the Papacy from benefiting by the recovery of the imperial territories. All real advantage from the recovery of the Exarchate fell, of course, to the Pope, but in return for the restoration of imperial prestige thus acquired, the Emperor bestowed on Zacharius the cities of Norma and Nympha. The peace of Liutprand outlasted the reign of his pious successor Rachis, but when in 749 the Lombards wearied of their saintly ruler and encouraged him to retire to a monastery, choosing in his stead his warrior brother Astolf, the unnatural Lombard-papal alliance temporarily broke down. Zacharius was therefore glad of an opportunity, which occurred in 752, of renewing negotiations with the Franks. 6Q THE APPEAL TO THE FEANKS 61 Pepin, the son of Charles Martel, saw that the moment had come at last for which his dynasty had waited and towards which it had laboured for at least two generations. Anxious to salve his conscience for the perjury which he contemplated, Pepin sent an embassy to Zacharius to inquire of him -'whether it was well to keep to kings who had no royal power ". The Pope, who understood the message and knew what was expected of him, replied that " it was better that the man who had the real power should also have the title of king ". The verdict of Zacharius confirmed the overthrow of the "pageant of Mero- vingian sovereignty '' which the anthropomorphic prejudices of the Franks, and the cautious diplomacy of the de facto rulers had preserved, long after all real power had passed from the dynasty. The brilliant career of Charles Martel had, however, overcome the obstacles which deterred his house from actual usurpation, and the papal sanction removed such lingering scruples as held Pepin back from completing the work of his dynasty. It was a decisive moment in papal history when the Popes thus began to arbitrate in national affairs. In the first bestowal of the Pope's blessing on an act of usurpation in answer to the usurper's appeal, the claim to give and withold all temporal authority is already foreshadowed. Meanwhile, Astolf had taken Ravenna and was already threatening Rome in defiance of Liutprand's treaty. At this crisis the good Pope Zacharius died, and was succeeded by the Roman Stephen II. (752-757), whose short and momentous pontificate sealed the Prankish alliance which holds so high an importance in papal history. Stephen did not at once despair of the peace-policy, and succeeded in arresting the Lombard march, and in renewing the twenty years' truce with Astolf. But both the Pope and the King realised on how slight a foundation it rested, and under the cover of amity, each jealously watched the movements of the other. In 753, Stephen left Rome with the avowed intention of visiting Astolf at his own court as his predecessor had done. But the visit to Pavia was merely a blind, or rather a stepping-stone to another destination, as Astolf realised when Stephen left him to take his way across the Alps. Early in the year 754, the Pope met the king of the Franks at Ponthion. and as they proceeded on their way to Paris, King Pepin walking on foot beside the Pope's stirrup, the terms of the treaty of Kiersy were informally defined. Each had a boon to ask, and each a reward to oS"er — King Pepin, bearing himself in dutiful sub- mission, solicited the Apostolic benediction on himself and his 62 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY children in their newly-acquired dignity : Pope Stephen, pros- trating himself before the King of the Franks, besought his help against the Lombards. At St. Denis, Stephen consecrated Pepin and his sons legitimate rulers of France, receiving in return the promise of Ravenna and the Pentapolis as soon as Pepin should be able to wrest it from Astolf. Pepin solemnly undertook the burden of the Lombard war, in return for which Pope Stephen, "with the consent of the Roman people," conferred on him the title of Patricius. It was no mere titular dignity which the Pope thus bestowed on his protector, but an office which comprised certain specified duties and defined the relationship in which the holder stood towards the city. It is true that the relationship was vague and the responsibilities rather indefinite. But the Patriciate, since it had been conferred by custom on the exarch of Ravenna, had acquired a recognised official and legal significance, and it is in this sense — allied to the terms " Protector " and " Defensor " — that it was conferred on Pepin. The Popes were careful not to lay too much stress on this aspect of the title, and Pepin was cautious in his use of it. But the Patriciate was the stepping-stone to higher things : Pepin did well to be cautious, for his non-interference in the internal policy of the Papacy was the surest means of hastening on the climax towards which events were already trending. Astolf, the Lombard, had meanwhile tried in vain to prevent the Franco-papal alliance, sending the royal monk Carloman to intervene. But nothing could daunt the untried religious enthusiasm of Pepin, who swept down across the Alps and defeated the Lombards at Susa. Besieged by the Franks in his capital at Pavia, Astolf promised to surrender the papal lands, and Pepin, in his first Deed of Gift, made them over to the Pope, who veiled his acceptance behind the vague term " Respublica ". The precedent thus established was quickly followed up. Hardly had Pepin's forces retired behind the Alps, when Astolf advanced on Rome, calling scornfully on the Romans to " Let the Franks come and deliver you out of our hands ". The taunt was forwarded to the quarter where it would be most tellmg, in a letter from S. Peter to the king of the Franks, bidding him on pain of eternal punishment to come and deliver the Apostolic See in its dire need. Another invasion was the result, and another Prankish donation, which was followed by the death of the Lombard king — "the tyrant and associate of the devil," wrote the Pope, " is pierced by the sword of God and flung down into the Gulf of Hell ". In other words, Astolf the Warrior had met his end in a hunting accident, and THE APPEAL TO THE FEANKS 63 Desiderius reigned in his stead. Already, in the blasphemous abusiveness of the Pope, and in the clamour of faction fight which surrounded his death-bed, the consequences of the institution of temporal power are traceable, and the Papacy- might almost be said to have changed its character during the three years which intervened between the Treaty of Kiersy and the death of Pope Stephen H. The election of the new Pope was the victory of the progres- sive party, who relied on the Franks, over the reactionary faction who turned their eyes to the Emperor as the more natural protector of Rome. Paul I. (757-767) was the brother of his predecessor, and his superior in diplomacy and in the arts of temporal government. He was more amiable and easy-going than Stephen, and his dealings with men are marked by less bluster and more common-sense. In the face of possible hostility from Byzantium, Paul dared not provoke a quarrel with the Lombard king, whose side his predecessor had taken against his monastic rival Rachis. The Pope had, therefore, to fall back on diplomacy of a rather doubtful honesty. He invited Desiderius to Rome for the purpose of negotiating a renewal of the truce. It was agreed that Desiderius should restore the four cities which he had siezed in revenge for papal assistance given to the rebel duke of Spoleto. In return the Pope undertook to obtain from King Pepin the surrender of the Lombard hostages detained at the Frankish Court. The Lombard ambassador went rejoic- ing on his way to Paris, bearing the Pope's open letter to the Frankish king, little suspecting that it would be forestalled by another document explaining that Paul had acted under com- pulsion, and entreating Pepin to refuse the Lombard request. Thus the Lombard peace was preserved by papal artifice, and the precedent was established by which the spiritual prerogative was called upon to justify political subterfuge. But the first protest against the temporal sovereignty of the Popes was purely political in character, the first of a long series of revolutionary outbursts which dogged the Papacy throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. The Roman nobility of the eighth century, the forerunners of the Colonna and Orsini of a later age, watched with jealous anxiety the accumulation of papal territory and by taking up the cry of municipal privilege pre- pared themselves for resistance. The gradual extension of the Patrimony, supplemented by the donations of the King of the Franks, brought the Papacy into direct competition with neigh- bouring landowners, and as a natural consequence weakened the bond of spiritual allegiance. In 767, while Paul I. lay dying 64 A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY in the Lateran palace, Toto of Naples, a Tuscan landowner, came to Rome and, with the help of armed followers, forced the Romans to accept his brother Constantine as Pope. No one was less fitted than this weak young man to act the part of anti-pope, but his brother compelled him to accept the perilous dignity, causing him to be ordained in all the necessary degrees of Holy Orders successively, while he himself discharged the safer and more remunerative functions of the power behind the throne. The rebellion of Toto failed, like almost all the oligarchical movements of history, from the twofold cause of jealousy among the units composing the ruling faction, and the instability of their supporters among the lower orders. The great ecclesiastical officials, headed by Christophorus, the Primicerius, and Sergius, his son, availed themselves of a sudden impulse of reaction to efi'ect with the help of the Lombards the overthrow of Con- stantine. The unfortunate usurper was dragged through the city, mutilated and condemned by a Lateran synod, which in consideration of his personal unimportance suffered him to end his days in inglorious obscm-ity. Apart from the importance which attaches to the brief career of Constantine as a comment on the early effects of temporal power, this incident is interesting as revealing the growth during this period of the power of the great officials. The Lateran Court had inherited the heterogeneous character of the Imperial palace, as the fountain of all government. The seven Judices de Clero, of whom the Primicerios was the foremost, were the heads of the various departments. Though only in minor orders, by reason of their secular duties, they ranked next to the Pope himself, over the heads of the Cardinals and Bishops. In ecclesiastical processions they led the Pope by the hand, sup- porting him on the right and on the left as his immediate dependents. Each of the Judices had a staff of notaries under him, which formed the executive body. Only next in importance were the secular officers of the household, the Vestarius, the Cubicularius, and the Major Domo, who combined their personal offices with wide judicial and administrative powers. This elaboration of the machinery of papal government, belonging as it does to the first period of temporal power, suggests a com- parison with the rise of territorialism, as it is to be found in the early beginnings of feudal monarchy. What had puzzled Tacitus in his observation of the German tribes — the dignity attached to personal service — was fast becoming true of the Romans them- selves. The offices of personal attendance on the Pope were sought by Roman nobles with the same avidity as the great THE APPEAL TO THE FKANKS G5 palace offices were sought by the Franks. The comparison must not, however, be pressed too far. The palace organisation of the Papacy was predominantly an inheritance from tlie imperial past, borrowed in part from the traditions which clung to the city, and in part directly copied from Byzantium. The overthrow of Constantino was effected by a combination of the great officials and the Lombards, but no sooner was it accomplished than the allies drew apart. The Lombard candi- date for the papal succession was defeated by Stephen III., the nominee of Christophorus. Stephen was the one man who had remained loyal to Paul I. on his lonely death-bed, but unhappily this act of fidelity does not seem to be characteristic of him as Pope. His first object was to effect the downfall of those who had raised him up by conspiring with his former opponent. King Desiderius. He treacherously delivered Christophorus and Sergius over to the Lombards, after suborning their sup- porters among the lower classes by pleading his own defence- lessness against the vengeance of Desiderius. In France, meanwhile, King Pepin had been succeeded by the mutually hostile brothers Carloman and Charles. Urged on by the Pope, Queen Bertha had managed to reconcile her two sons, and in 770 set out on a journey to Rome. But her visit was a disappointment to Stephen, who had hoped to renew, through her mediation, the long-standing Franco-papal alliance. To the Pope's consternation, rumours reached him, and were too quickly confirmed, of a double marriage treaty between the Frankish brothers and the daughters of Desiderius. Stephen's dissuasion omitted no argument, moral or political, which the situation might suggest. He praised the beauty of the Frankish women to the disparagement of the Lombard race ; he reminded the princes of the fable which lay on the Lombards the respon- sibility for the introduction of leprosy into Italy ; lastly, he abjured them, upon pain of anathema, to remain faithful to their wives of their own nation. But Charles, even in the earliest stage of his career, recognised no obstacles, and deafened him- self to papal rebuke. He married the Lombard Desiderata, and poured robust scorn on his more tractable brother. Stephen's panic was however unnecessary, for the Franco-Lombard alliance barely survived its fulfilment. By a characteristic stroke of apparent caprice, which probably veiled a well-considered political move, Charles in 771 repudiated Desiderata and re- vived the papal alliance. Secure in the renewal of the Frankish alliance, Pope Stephen died, and was succeeded in 772 by Hadrian I, The contrast between the new Pope and his 66 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY predecessor was complete. The cunning and unscrupulous Sicilian, who broke faith with his friends as freely as he flattered his enemies, was succeeded by a high-minded Roman of noble birth and distinguished bearing. Himself in sympathy with the great official class, one of Hadrian's first acts was to recall the party of Christophorus, thereby pledging himself to hostility with the Lombard, which the renewal of the Frankish alliance had already prepared. Associated with the recall of the officials was the fall of their inveterate enemy Afiarta, the paid assassin, who acted as Lombard agent at Pavia and at Rome. Hadrian pressed for the fulfilment of the original Lombard treaty, less with the thought of settlement than of bringing things to an issue. Charles meanwhile had embarked on hostilities with King Desi- derius on his own account by seizing the territories of his nephews on the death of his brother Carloman. Carloman's widow appealed against Charles to the Lombard Court, and Desiderius eagerly embraced her cause with the hope of stirring up civil war amongst the Franks, and so keeping Charles out of Italy. In 774 Desiderius took the offensive by seizing four papal cities, and entered Etruria on his way to Rome. Twenty monks threw themselves at his feet in vain, and a deputation of priests made fruitless intercession on behalf of the Apostolic city. Desiderius was no second Liutprand, to turn back within sight of his goal, and Hadrian fitly judged that the moment had come to put the loyalty of the Frankish hero to the test. The con- tinual, and sometimes groundless, complaints of Paul and Stephen III., as well as the plausible representations of Desi- derius, had cooled the first ardour of the Patricians, and Charles met the first appeal of Hadrian with non-committal courtesy. Desiderius protested that he came to Rome as a pilgrim, desir- ing nothing but an interview with the Pope. Hadrian, with some reason, suspected the pilgrim who came in the guise of an invader, and closed his gates against the wolf in sheep's clothing, Charles, however, continued to suspect the shepherd who had given so many false alarms. Two preliminary embas- sies failed to achieve a settlement before Charles set out in person across the Mont Cenis. The Lombard resistance was no more effective now than in the time of Pepin. After laying siege to Pavia, where Desiderius himself had withdrawn, Charles pressed on to Verona and overthrew the Lombard heir-apparent, who held the town in defence of the exiled family of Carloman. Prince Adelchis fled to Byzantine protection, while the family of Carloman, together with their champion, the Frankish rebel Autchar, threw themselves on the mercy of the conqueror. Leav- THE APPEAL TO THE FEANKS 67 ing his army encamped before Pavia, Charles set out for Rome, the first of the series of visits which led to the climax of the year 800. In its political aspect, the visit of Charles to Hadrian merely ratified and confirmed what had taken place between Pepin and Stephen in 754. The treaty of Kiersy was produced by the Pope, and duly accepted by the Frankish king. The days of the Lombard kingdom were numbered, and Charles had effected the purpose for which the Patriciate had been bestowed on his father. The enemies of St. Peter had been overthrown by his self-chosen protector ; it remained for St. Peter's repre- sentative to secure the spoils of victory. Whatever mental reservations Charles may have made in his acceptance of the treaty of Kiersy, he displayed no reluctance to promise that the Church alone should be the gainer by his Italian conquests. Now, as in 754, the Exarchate with the whole of the Pentapolis was promised to the Pope, as soon as the work of conquest should be completed. Charles's amenity to the papal demands is not really inconsistent with his own territorial ambition. His schemes of Frankish aggrandisement hardly included Italy at present in more than the vague sense which the term Patrician covered. Moreover, his Saxon and Frisian wars kept him fully occupied nearer home, and it served his ends better to erect a strong papal state, capable of maintaining its own against the Lombards, than to expend his own resources in an endeavour to establish a Frankish kingdom in Italy which in his absence he would be unable to control. The same coui-iderations had moved his father Pepin to construct the original treaty, which had been signed in the name of his two sons as well as his own. But between the original drafting of the treaty of Kiersy and its ratification in 774, new weight had been thrown into the balance from the papal side by the daring invpntion of the Donation of Constantine. The exact date when the clerical lawyers first stated that Constantine had formally adopted Pope Silvester as heir to his temporal dominion is unknown, but ever since the emancipa- tion of the Papacy from the Byzantine yoke the need for legalis- ing the basis of papal autocracy must have arisen. To a later age, less ruled by legal formalism than the eighth century, the de facto sovereignty of the Pope might have justified its existence de jure. Besides, it devolved on the Pope to provide for the poor of Rome, and papal revenues were largely drawn from Imperial sources. But neither rationalistic nor humanitarian arguments satisfied the legal conscience of the eighth centiu-y, which demanded that all authority should be founded on legal right, and every right should have a warrant. It was in order 68 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY to meet this deficiency, at the moment when it was likely to be felt, and to forestall inquiry which might prove inconvenient at so critical an epoch, that the clerical lawyers supplied the panacea of the Forged Donation. A certain amount can -be said in justification of the invention, but it remains undoubtedly the most deplorable incident of early papal history. It supplied a fictionary basis to an institution worthy of a nobler foundation, and committed posterity to the alternative of adherence either to a fraudulent delusion or to a distorted view of history. Charles rode away from Rome in the Easter week of 774, and rejoined his army in the north. The downfall of Pavia was com- pleted. Desiderius and his wife were forced into monastic retire- ment, and the Lombard dukes did homage to Charles, who placed on his own head the iron crown of Alboin. Arichis, Duke of Bene- vento, alone held aloof in sullen loyalty to Adelchis, the son of Desiderius. No sooner had Charles withdrawn across the Alps than an epidemic of rebellion brought to light the consequences of the Lombard downfall. Ravenna, always chafing against " the yoke of Roman servitude," refused to submit to papal domination under the terms of the treaty of Kiersy. Spoleto, forgetful of past benefits, assumed independence and foreswore her former homage. Friuli prepared for revolt in the north, and Benevento in the south became the centre of intrigue for the Lombard pretender, and opened up negotiations with Byzantium. A punitive expedition into Friuli was all that it was possible for Charles to accomplish at the moment, but with characteristic good sense he brought diplomatic activity to bear on the real centre of disaff"ection in overtures to the Empress Irene. For Charles still kept up the fiction of Imperial vassalage, and to ward ofi" a direct collision between the Franks and the Empire was as yet the main anchor of his Italian policy. A marriage was accordingly proposed, but never carried into effect, between Charles's daughter and the young Emperor Constantine VI. These same negotiations led to Charles's third expedition to Italy in 780-781, when another interview with the Pope took place, less favourable to tbe Holy See than that of seven years before. Charles insisted upon the coronation of his son Pepin as King of Italy, and thus, to the Pope's distress, established a per- manent dynastic interest in Italy. Meanwhile peace with the East was by no means easy to maintain. The fiction of Imperial vassalage was strained to its uttermost to cover Charles's conquests and donations, and the exiled pretender Adelchis grew daily in the favour of the Byzan- tine Court. Arichis, of Benevento, was in open intrigue with THE APPEAL TO THE FEANKS 69 Adelchis, whose claims were the pretext of an oflfensive Lombard league. An important new donation gave the nominal posses- sion of Roman Tuscany to Hadrian, but there were obstacles in the way of actual seizure. Arichis succumbed to Charles's demands, only to break faith with him as soon as he had withdrawn. He pledged himself to the support of the Eastern Empire, and only his death in 787 freed Charles from the imminence of war. To fill his place Charles sent his son Grim- oald, who had lived as a hostage at the Frankish court, and returned to his own people pledged to a philo-Frankish policy. In 795, Pope Hadrian died, and Charles, on receiving the news of his death, wept as for a brother. The two men had been united in the closest bond of political interest and mutual dependence for more than twenty years, and Charles knew well how uncertain and how momentous was the immediate future. The long reign of Hadrian had not been entirely spent in political aggrandisement, although he extended the papal boundary to the limit which it preserved throughout the Middle Ages and, roughly speaking, maintained until 1870. Material prosperity had gone hand in hand with political expansion, and Hadrian was at least as active in the one as in the other direction. He restored the walls and the dams of the Tiber, and he renewed the Trajan aqueducts which carried water to Rome from the Sabatine country. Above all, he was interested in the colonisation of the Campagna. He extended the system of forming Domus Culture, or small agri- cultural settlements, which his forerunner Zacharias had insti- tuted. The revenues which these colonies produced were devoted entirely to poor relief, and a hundred poor people were fed daily at the Vatican on the proceeds. Meanwhile, the first age of temporal power was also a period of artistic activity ; workers in mosaic and in tapestry were busy decorating St. Peter's. But artistic activity was accompanied by intellectual apathy. In the dearth of literary enterprise, such names as that of Adalberga, the cultured wife of Arichis the rebel, or the still greater historian, Paulus Diaconus, stand out in remarkable isolation in Italy, as compared with the new kingdoms of the West. Hadrian was succeeded by Leo IIL (796-816), who immedi- ately sent a complimentary embassy to Charles, informing him of his election and delivering into his hands the banner of Rome and the keys of the Apostle's grave. The new reign soon showed signs that it was to be a troubled one. The power of the clerical aristocracy had grown since the days of Toto of Nepi, and under Hadrian it had developed into nepotism. Hadrian's nephews now began to conspire against Leo, whom they regarded 70 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY as an upstart, and Paschalis, the Primicerius, headed a revolt. On the 25th of April, 799, the Pope set out from S, Laurence, in Lucina, accompanied by an ecclesiastical procession chanting the greater Litany. On the way the Pope was attacked by Paschalis and Campulus, both nephews of Pope Hadrian, with an armed force at their backs. With outrageous barbarism they tried to mutilate him, and failing, left him a prisoner in the monastery of S. Erasmus. Hence, through the loyalty of his adherents and the hastiness of his foes, he managed to escape to St. Peter's. The Frankish envoy and Winichis, Duke of Spoleto, helped him to flee to his natural protector, Charles. Charles was in Saxony, engaged in an important campaign, and the coming of the Pope at this particular juncture was disconcerting. However, he met him at Paderborn, listened to his grievances, and sent him back to Rome with two envoys, who were instructed to take initial proceedings against the rebel officials. Moreover, he promised to follow them to Rome in person in time for the Christmas festival. With the fulfilment of this promise is connected the great central event in mediaeval history. Charles came to Rome in 800 little more than a barbarian conqueror, whose sword had freed Italy from the Lombards, and whose piety had enriched the papal dominions : he left it a few days later " Charles Augustus, great and pacific Emperor of the Romans, crowned by God ". No other single act in the history of modern Europe can be compared in importance with the simple ceremony in St. Peter's, when the Pope placed on the head of the kneeling king the crown of the Western Empire. Fraught with consequences for good and for evil in the future which flowed from it, and instant with problems of a theoretical and practical natiu'e which the whole of mediaeval history is an attempt to solve, the coronation of Charles foreshadows the historical features of the new era, and gathers up all that is permanent in the Imperial past. It is impossible to conceive of European history without it, and the opportunity was unique — it would never have occurred again. After 324 years of disuse, the idea which the western Imperium represented was still a reality in men's minds, and its barren titles were the desire of the bar- barian nations. The revival of the Empire in the person of Charles was the climax of the faith in the survival of the Imperial principle, which accounts for the "Imperatores and Basileis" of Britain, the Lombard " Flavii," and the Patricians of Rome among the Gothic and Frankish leaders. But it was fast fading into a memory, and the rise of the Teutonic king- doms had already proclaimed the triumph of separatism and THE APPEAL TO THE FRANKS 71 disorder over the principle of Imperial unity. No one less than Charles could have stemmed the tide even now, and no one later than he could have attempted it. His success was only partial : political unity barely outlasted him, and the forces of disruption had won their way before the close of the centviry. But his achievement, incomplete as it was, left a deeper and more permanent impression than many a coup d'etat, for it effected issues graver than politics and laid foundations too deep for anarchy or revolution to touch. To the question as to the nature of the achievement of Charlemagne, the whole of papal history is an answer. CHAPTER IX DECAY OF THE CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE, ad. 800-867 THE revival of the Empire was not without its immediate effect on the mind of Christendom, biit the impression was vague, and its significance was barely understood. Something momentous had happened — a climax had been reached, and a turning-point passed in the world's history. So much was dimly grasped by Charlemagne's contemporaries ; but the exact nature of the change — the consequences which it en- tailed, and the problems which were to flow from it — these were as yet the secret of the future. It was not until later ages brought to light the great mediaeval contest between the Empire and the Papacy that the coronation of Charles assumed its right historical proportions. The years which immediately follow inaugurate the period of definition, from which the dual principle of Mediaeval Europe gradually emerges. Again and again, with each fresh round of the contest, the combatants turn back to the original question — What had actually happened at the Coronation of the first Mediaeval Emperor ? The Pope claimed that the revival of the Empire emanated from him, on the ground that Leo had ne- gotiated with Charles, and Leo had bestowed the Crown which Charles knelt to receive. The Emperor as consistently urged that Charles had won the Empire by his military prowess, and owed the legal confirmation of it, not to the papal sanction, but to the acclamation of the Roman people. But to talk of " rights " was in itself a legal paradox : Charles had no " right," other than that which his sword had won for him, to claim the Crown, and whatever legal power the Pope might claim in the bestowal of it, could at best only have emanated from Constantinople. The truth was that the Coronation was a splendid act of rebellion, which might alone made possible, and expediency alone could justify. According to Eginhard, Leo's act on Christmas Day, 800, was a surprise, and an unwelcome one, to Charles, who is said to have declared that he would not have entered the basilica had he known of the Pope's intention. It is a little difficult to har- 72 DECAY OF THE CAROLINGIAN EMPIEE 73 monise this statement with the obvious trend of Charles's policy in the period which leads up to it. Moreover, Alcuin had written to Charles in 799, advising him to go at once to the succour of Italy, because " that which we woitld possess must be upheld, in order that we lose not the greater to acquire the less ". The Christmas gift, which followed shortly after the letter, was addressed, " Ad splendorem Imperialis potentiae," showing clearly that Charles's acceptance of the Imperial Crown was not only premeditated, but had also been discussed with his chief counsellor some time before. But, on the other hand, Charles was still negotiating with Byzantium about a maiTiage project with the Empress Irene, and it is quite possible that the exact moment which the Pope chose for the ceremony was, therefore, not a convenient one for Charles, who would probably be anxious to cement the friendship between himself and the Empress in every possible way before embarking on an act of rebellion. Moreover, support is given to Eginhard's statement by the character of the ceremony itself, which in its impressive simplicity suggests that the Coronation Act was more or less spontaneous. Lastly, hypocrisy was entirely foreign to the character of Charles, which, though by no means perfect, was incapable of duplicity, or of feigning a regret that he did not feel. Probably the truth was that the Coronation was a surprise as to the moment of its consummation, but not as to the idea, which had already been in the air for a long time. As long as four years before the actual date, a mosaic in the triclinium of the Lateran represented on the one side, Christ giving the keys of the Apostles' grave to Pope Silvester, and the banner of Rome to Constantine, while, on the other side, St. Peter bestowed the pallium on Leo III., and a standard on Charlemagne. Historians of the time like to talk of the " translation " of the Empire, in order to emphasise the idea of continuity. The ex- pression covers, however, only a surface truth. The mediaeval Emperor was only in appearance the successor of Justinian, for the life within the Empire was new. It was Teutonic, and soon to be feudal. Its universality was a fiction, supported by popu- lar allegiance alone : the real spiritual unity had already passed to the Church, which had gathered to itself all that was undying in the spirit of the Ancient Empire. Charles seems to have understood this from the first, for he at once renounced the idea of making Rome his capital, and contented himself with enforcing his suzerainty in principle. He imposed no new taxes or mili- tary burdens on the city, and he respected the limitations which the non-interference policy of recent Emperors had imposed on 74 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY Imperial sovereignty in Rome. Legally, however, he insisted on the acknowledgment of his supremacy, and from the first his Missi held their courts in the city, and his envoys heard the appeals of his subjects. After Easter, 801, Charles left the affairs of Italy chiefly to his sons. Leo, although he was decidedly unpopular, was cap- able of maintaining cood order, remaining, on the whole, loyal to the Empire, which he regarded as his creation. In 814, Charles died, and his son. Lewis, whom he had already associated with him in the Empire, succeeded him as sole Emperor. It was the substitution of weakness for strength, and the effects were immediately felt by Leo, in two rebellions of the nobles, in 814 and 815. It was the person and the policy of Leo that the ris- ings were directed against, not apparently the growth of temporal power nor the establishment of the new political order. Leo's successor, Stephen IV. (816-817), adopts a more depend- ent tone towards the Emperor than his predecessor, but a Pope could afford to be pliant in his dealings with Lewis the Pious. The Emperor, who had in obedience to his father, seized the Imperial Crown, and placed it on his own head at Aachen, now submitted to receive it again from the hands of the Pope at Rheims, thus conceding the principle that papal coronation was an indispensable. condition of Imperial sovereignty. In return for this act of grace, gifts and privileges were showered on Stephen by Lewis, whose piety could find no adequate expres- sion except in self-abasement before his spiritual compeer. Paschalis I. (817-824) ushers in the first period of papal triumph. His ordination (for he was a monk) was hurried so as to prevent Imperial intervention, — henceforth the first object of a Bishop-designate. His reign saw the opening of the dynastic struggle which led to the premature downfall of the Carolingian dynasty. A revolt against Lewis was headed by Charles's grand- son, Bernard, deputy-king of Italy, who had succeeded his father, Pipin, in 810. Although he was supported by all the elements of disorder of which Italy could boast — always a con- siderable contingent — Bernard was obliged to throw himself at his uncle's feet before he had had time to organise his forces. With cowardly barbarity, Lewis allowed the youth to be blinded, in such a way that he died of the effects. The Emperor, in con- sequence, submitted to the performance of public penance, thus for the first time exposing the Imperial dignity to public humiliation. Soon after, a more direct triumph fell to the Papacy by a successful resistance of Imperial jurisdiction. Paschalis had DECAY OF THE CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE 75 ordered the execution of two rebel Imperial officials, and called down the disapproval of Lewis on his precipitancy. In spite of Lewis's attempts to take judicial proceedings, the Pope refused to submit to an Imperial trial, and managed to clear liimself instead by an Oath of Purgation after the manner of his predecessors. The reign of Eugenius II. (824-827) is chiefly memorable for the imposition of the Constitution of Lothar. The co-Emperor — a considerably more effective person than his father — was sent to Rome to negotiate in the Imperial interests with the new Pope. The last reign had revealed a distinct fall in the Imperial prestige : Rome had shown a corresponding disposition to treat her Emperor too cheaply. The Constitution of Lothar was directed against this growing spirit of independence, and particu- larly against the Pope, whose rights, however, are carefully respected. The five main points with which it deals are : — 1. The Imperial Protection, which is carefully defined on the principle of the joint authority of the Pope and the Emperor. The Pope is to have immediate and initiatory powers, and the Emperor appellate jurisdiction. 2. Personal rights are carefully guarded. Roman and Salic law are to exist side by side, the choice between them resting with the individual. 3. Oath of fealty to the Emperor is to be imposed on all officials. 4. Territorial authority of the Pope is carefully laid down according to statute. 5. Papal elections are to be ratified by the Emperor, and the oath taken by the Pope in the presence of the Missus " after the manner of the election of Eugenius ". The attempt of Lothar to establish a modus vivendi between Emperor and Pope has, however, a documental rather than an historical importance, for it was soon swept away in the vortex which destroyed the fortunes of the Carolingian dynasty. In 829, the House of Lewis the Pious began to divide against itself. A fourteen years' strviggle of the sons against their father, and brother against brother led to the triumph of separatism on the field of Auxerre, and the final overthrow of European unity in the partition treaty of Verdun, 843. Unfortunately, the traditional connection between the Papacy and the House of Charlemagne was too strong to allow Pope Gregory IV. (827-844) to stand aloof from the household disputes which were rapidly overwhelming it. The Pope was moreover neither strong enough to arbitrate nor wise enough to improve matters by his intervention. In 830, he tried to interfere in 76 A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY person on behalf of the Emperor, when Lewis was a captive in the hands of his sons, but the attempt was a failure, and he returned to Rome " without honour ". Subsequently, when con- science prompted him to reprimand Lothar for his undutiful conduct, Gregory had to submit to the pillage of his property, and the execution of his oflQcials. By the partition of Verdun, in which the Pope had no voice, Italy became incorporated into the Middle Kingdom which with the Imperial title passed into the hands of Lothar and became known as Lotharingia. Meanwhile, the pontificate of Gregory IV. saw the beginning of the Saracen invasion of Italy. By 830, the pirate-fanatics had practically made themselves masters of Sicily. In 840 they gained their first foothold on Italian soil by means of a disputed election in Benevento, both sides appealing in turn, with an incredible lack of patriotism, to the terrible invader. Once more Italy was about to become the prey of a foreign invader, and once more the Bishops of Rome come forward as her deliverers. In the foundation of the new fortification of Gregoriopolis at Ostia, Gregory inaugurated that policy of systematic defence which his successors carried on with so much energy and persistence. Gregory was not a moment too soon. In the three years' reign of his successor Sergius II. (844-847), the Saracens advanced as far as Rome itself, and sacked St. Peter's, spoiling the sacred shrine of the Apostles, and pillaging the " treasure-house of three centuries of art". The valour of Guido of Spoleto eventually relieved the beleaguered city, but not before the shock was felt to the farthest limits of Christendom. A tax was imposed by Lothar throughout the Imperial dominions for the fortification of St. Peter's, and Europe suffered its first distraint for the salvation of its shrines from Mohammedan desecration. The relations of Sergius with the Emperor had not always been so harmonious, but the advantage remained with the Papacy. At the time of the accession of Sergius, Lothar sent his son Lewis to dispute the validity of papal election without the Imperial consent, in accordance with the terms of the new Constitution. Sergius received the Imperial prince with even more than the customary honours, but when Lewis reached St. Peter's, he found the doors of the Basilica locked and barred against him. The Pope refused to admit him until he had gauged the spirit in which he came. Not until he had pledged himself to peace was Lewis allowed to present his gift according to the custom of his fathers. Finally, together with his Franks, he acknowledged Sergius, and received at his hands the Imperial Crown. DECAY OF THE CAKOLINGIAN EMPIRE 77 The short reign of Sergius had not passed without dissension among the Romans, and his death was followed by a sack of the Vatican, which was carried out more ruthlessly than usual. The people saw in the Saracen invasion an act of divine retribution for the simoniacal practices of the Pope, who with his brother is said to have established a tyranny in Rome. The strong and weak points of temporal power as a political system were never brought into stronger relief than in the time of the Saracen invasions. The same Popes who exercise oppression over their subjects and mingle ingloriously in the household politics of the decadent Carolingians, are found active in organising resistance to the foreign invader, and unsparing in their self-sacrifice for the defence of their holy places against the infidel. The climax in the early struggle with the Saracens was reached in the reign of the able Leo IV. (847-855). With a sagacity born of despair, the southern seaports had formed themselves into a league for neutral defence under the auspices of the Pope. Leo IV. blessed their enterprise and sent them forth, fortified by the Mass and inspired by his own enthusiasm, to meet the Saracen fleet off Ostia. The heroism of the Neapolitan navy in rowing out to meet the invader brought on an immediate action, and the help of a storm gave a decisive victory to the defendants. The remnants of the Moorish army who reached the Italian shores were taken prisoners by the Roman troops, under the leadership of Leo himself, who conveyed them back to Rome to swell the labour market for his new enterprise. This was the building of the Leonine city, which stands as a monument to the sang-froid and energy of the Pope, who could conceive and effect a project for adorning Rome with new splendours at the very moment when the Saracens were overrunning the Campagna and entering into a death-struggle with the papal fleet. The magnificence of the consecration of the new city in the year 852 kindles the enthusiasm of the most pessimistic chroniclers, and no shadow from the impending storm-clouds darkens their accounts of the Imperial pageant which completed the handiwork of Leo IV. This rapid tran- sition from gloomy foreboding to almost irresponsible rejoicing is characteristic of the Middle Ages : pageant and calamity were never inconsistent ; a litany was as festal in its outward pomp as a triumphal procession, and the darkest hour of mediaeval history is painted in the most glowing colours and the richest symbolism. Thus, never before in the history of the city were more royal 78 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY pilgrims attracted to Rome than now in her days of adversity. Among them came Ethelwulf of Wessex, hereafter to become a monk, with the boy Alfred, to whom the Pope showed more than his usual graciousness, anointing him as heir to his father's Crown, in spite of the existence of his three elder brothers. Daily a fresh contingent flocked to Rome along the pilgrim's way, among them most of the saints and a considerable proportion of the criminals of Europe. The strange penal code of the time — at times the gentlest, and at times the most inhuman ever known — prescribed a journey to Rome as the recognised expiation of the most heinous crimes which society recognised. Bands of murderers and highway robbers, with chained hands and sandalled feet, would call at a wayside monastery and demand as a right free entertainment at the hands of their religious hosts. Occasionally their right-of-way was abused, and Leo on one occasion complains to the Emperor that the Imperial Missi had molested the pilgrim-sinners, who were under the Pope's special protection. But the complaint was not very serious, and it is almost the only sign we have of ill-feeling between Lewis and Leo, who seem to have contrived to keep on unusually good terms with each other. The Emperor had made up his mind, however, that Leo's successor should be, if not an Imperial nominee, at least one who knew how to serve the Emperor's interests in Rome. Such a man was Arsenius, Bishop of Portus, but in his own person he was dis- qualified for the Papacy by the episcopal ofiice which he already held. His son Anastasius was therefore carefully trained up for this purpose. But he lacked the wisdom to bide his time until everything was prepared, and in the reign of Leo IV. he went into opposition. On the election of Leo's successor, Benedict III. (855-858), Anastasius attempted to seize the Papacy by force. He won over the Imperial envoys, and with their co-operation took possession of the Lateran, making the newly-elected Pope his prisoner. The loyalty of the Romans, however, saved Rome from this act of tyranny, and the fortunes of Anastasius were finally overthrown. He ended his days as Abbot of St. Maria Trastavere, from which honourable sinecure he henceforth proved innocuous to papal policy. The strangest of all the legends which afterwards came to be attached to the Papacy in the age of its decadence took its date from the pontificate of Benedict III. The legend of Pope Joan has no place in history other than that which it can claim as pointing to the low moral standard which posterity was ready to ascribe to the first ages of papal monarchy. The belief that the DECAY OF THE CAKOLINGTAN EMPIRE 79 patriot Pope Leo IV. was succeeded by a woman of infamous character, resting as it does on absolutely no foundation, is only worthy of notice because of the credulity of fanatical opponents of the papal principle in later ages. The successor of 'Benedict III. was one of the men of genius who make the epochs of papal history. Nicholas I. (858-867) owed his successes in some measure no doubt to the fact that he owed his election to the influence of the Emperor Lewis, who was present at the time. He thus embarked free from the embarass- ments of Imperial opposition ; but he soon showed an unusual capacity to use the good fortune with which he was endowed. Everything seemed to conspire to break the new harmony be- tween the Papacy and the Empire thus established, but when- ever discord threatened, Nicholas held fast to the dominant. From the familiar quarter of Ravenna, the first troubles came. John, the Archbishop, had oppressed the papal subjects in Emilia and appealed against the wrath of the Pope to the Emperor. Lewis sent him back to Rome with Imperial Missi to support him in his defence. Nicholas, however, took his stand on the spiritual prerogative, which gave him an assured victory. John was proclaimed heterodox, and the Missi contumacious for associating themselves with him. The Decree of 769, for- bidding foreign interference in papal elections, was revived by the way to remind Lewis of his obligations. The affair ended in a visit of Nicholas to Ravenna, where he calmed the agitated populace and received the submission of the Archbishop. Meanwhile, a more serious entanglement was brought about by a domestic tragedy in the household of the Emperor's brother. Lothar of Lotharingia had divorced his innocent wife. Thiutberga, for the sake of his mistress, and obtained by bribery the sanction of his act by the Synod of Metz. Nicholas, zealous for the purity of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and indignant at the connivance of the Frankish Bishops with the king's immoral practices, fulminated against the Synod, reversed its decrees, and excom- municated its members. Following the example of John of Ravenna, the Bishops appealed to the Emperor, representing to Lewis that the Imperial dignity was compromised in the Pope's action against his brother. Lewis accordingly descended on Rome, urged on by the Bishops, to punish the Pope. The dignity and wisdom of Nicholas saved the situation. He withdrew to St. Peter's by night, and remained there two days in prayer, vouchsafing no reply to the Emperor's vituperations, and main- taining an awe-inspiring calmness in the face of his defiance. An interview with Lewis in the Lateran followed, in which the 80 A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY Emperor failed to bend the Pope to his will. The Bishops damaged their own cause by their demeanour ; they laid on the shrine of St. Peter a document expressed in terms of extravagant defiance which failed to draw any reply. They shocked public opinion by suffering their followers to attack an ecclesiastical procession and break the Cross of St. Helena, which was believed to contain portions of the True Cross. Lewis withdrew to Ravenna, but not before he had formally reconciled himself with the outraged Pope, who had not launched his spiritual weapons in vain. Lothar of Lotharingia was persuaded, for a time at least, to conform to the moral law as interpreted by the Pope, and his unfortunate wife was compelled to continue her life of torture at his side. Unlike most of the Popes of this period, Nicholas did not allow the papal-imperial struggle to absorb his whole energies. An interesting illustration of his constructive statesmanship is supplied by the so-called Bulgarian constitution. The Slav king, Boris of Bulgaria, pathetically harassed by the conflicting doctrines of the Eastern and Western missionaries, referred his difficulties to the Pope as the fountain of doctrinal interpre- tation. In 866, Boris sent his son to Rome bearing gifts which were magnificent enough to excite the jealousy of Lewis, who coveted Bulgaria for the Empire. Nicholas, however, tactfully smoothed over the situation, and sent his famous " Responsa " to the Bulgarian king. From the answers of the Pope to the questions referred to him by Boris can be gathered an almost complete code for a barbaric nation, and in this respect the work of Nicholas has been compared to the Jesuit Constitution of Paraguay. The Bulgarian king is exhorted on the subjects of daily life, social conduct, customs of war, and — predominantly of course — his relationship to the Clergy. Among other things, Boris is instructed how to dress, what to eat, how to prepare for battle, and how to treat the vanquished. In conduct he is to be merciful, and humble in his bearing, for the ideals set before him are those of the new world — of feudalism, as it was already known to Europe, and of chivalry, which owed its origin essentially to the mediaeval Church. But the pontificate of Nicholas, looked at as a whole, is greater than any of his single achievements. The fact that he was the first Pope to be crowned with the papal tiara is significant, for in him papal monarchy finds its first conscious expression. Other Popes had exercised a prerogative as wide — a few of his predecessors had seen with the eyes of vision the ideal which Nicholas realised. But no one before him had DECAY OF THE CAKOLINGIAN EMPIKE 81 taken papal supremacy so completely for granted, or forced the world to recognise and acknowledge it as the pivot of the European political system. His personal attributes were largely but not entirely responsible. The decay of the Carolingian Empire left Europe without a political leader, and the Papacy was undoubtedly the most natural power to fill the breach. The deferential attitude of particular Carolingian princes — above all, of Lewis the Pious — had contributed to the growth of the idea of spiritual dominion which the consolidation of the national divisions of Europe had tended to define. Lastly, the famous Isidorian decretals, which were compiled at this time by an unscrupulous French monk, collected all the fictionary papal documents, beginning with the Donation of Constantino, into a producible warrant. Nicholas was the first Pope to make use of this fraudulent charter of prerogative, which gained universal acceptance in the credulous age which is responsible for it, and was probably implicitly believed in by the Popes themselves. In his personal merits, his intrepidity, and his persistence, as well as his rarer gifts of political originality, Nicholas I. is worthy to be called the forerunner of Gregory VII. CHAPTER X ARISTOCRATIC TYRANNY AND SUBJECT POPES, A.D. 867-954 NICHOLAS was not an easy Pope to succeed. His individuality had stamped itself on the politics of his age, and he left behind him strong enemies and ardent admirers, who combined in hostility to his successor, Adrian II. (867-872). Adrian was a well-intentioned man of compromise, without much initiative or strength of purpose. He was accused by the partisans of his predecessor of annulling the decrees of Nicholas, and in his anxiety to clear himself from this charge he incurred the epithet of "Nicholaite" from the other party. He persisted in maintaining the impossible domestic relations of Lothar and Thiutberga, and terrorised the cowardly sinner into perjury, by making him swear that he had abjured the illicit society of his lover ever since the arbitration of Nicholas. In 871, the Emperor Lewis took the Sultan prisoner at Bari, and thereby kindled the jealousy of Basil and the Emperor of the East. In order to smooth over the situation, Lewis wrote a letter to Basil, which is interesting for the light which it throws on the theory of Imperial election, as it was interpreted at this time. Lewis ascribes his right to the title of the Imperium to the sanction of the Roman people, as expressed by the acclama- tion at the Coronation of Charles — " From the Romans received we this name and this dignity". Even without the confirmation of the Pope the claim would hold good, and he illustrates this by reference to previous Emperors crowned without papal consent, but he recognises at the same time that " the divine operation through papal consecration " gives added validity to a title already established. They were brave words coming as they did from the last of the Carlings who was worthy of the tradition of his House, on the eve of its final humiliation. In the same year as his letter to Basil, Lewis was taken prisoner by Adelchis of Benevento, who was said to be in league with the Sultan. In spite of the 82 AEISTOCKATIC TYRANNY AND SUBJECT POPES 83 consolation which Adrian hastened to administer by a repetition of the Coronation ceremony in Rome, Lewis never recovered from the blow thus dealt at his Imperial honour. He died soon after in the middle of his Saracen campaign, but not before he had brought the treacherous Duke of Benevento to his feet and forced him to sue for pardon through the intercession of the new Pope, John VIII. (872-882). In the reign of John VIII., the doom of the Papacy became apparent. It had been too long and too closely associated with the tangled politics of the Carling House not to share in its decay. Of the two branches which contended for the Imperial crown in 875, the Pope naturally turned to the Prankish line, and threw his support unreservedly on to the side of Charles the Bald. The connection of the Popes had always been closer with the Franks than with the Germans, owing partly to circumstance, partly to geographical conditions, and partly to the undefinable kinship of national character which exists between the Italians and the Franks of every age. The opposition party, headed by Formosus, Bishop of Portus, favoured Charles the Fat of Germany, but the weight of papal influence, which the long purse of the Franks secured, held the balance at first in favour of Charles the Bald. From 875 to 877, the Prankish line maintained its ascendancy, but on the death of Charles the Bald, the Imperial Crown was once more open to competition. Lambert of Spoleto descended on Rome, and took the Pope prisoner in the name of Charles the Fat. John, however, escaped to France, and espoused the cause of Lewis the Stammerer. But the Pope soon saw that his loyalty to the Prankish line would avail him nothing : Lewis was a " roi faineant," who let his chances slip. His son-in-law, Boso of Aries, showed more energy, but he was hopelessly defeated by the representative of the German line, who attained his goal in 879. John VIII. had the wisdom to make a virtue of necessity. He received the new Emperor with a show of cordiality, which failed to deceive either party. For three years they maintained a studied neutrality under the cloak of superficial friendship. John, meanwhile, showed remarkable energy in organising the Saracen campaign, inspiring the formation of a papal navy, and paving the way for a united stand in South Italy by confirming the lukewarm loyalty of the Southern ports. But the Emperor held sullenly aloof, and refused to join his efforts for the salva- tion of Italy to those of the Pope. John VIII. died in 882 — the last of the great Popes of the 84 A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY ninth century. He is said to have been poisoned by%is enemies of the German party. He had done what he could to save the Papacy from its inevitable fate, but he was just too late. At the beginning of his pontificate, the Papacy was already identified with a party : at the end it passed into the hands of a faction. During the next ten years, Marinus I. (882-884) and Stephen V. (885-891) watched with powerless inactivity the contest for the Imperium between Guido of Spoleto and Berengar of Friuli — both Carlings on the female side. The whole of Italy, including the Papacy itself, became absorbed in the contemplation of a guerilla war between two insignificant factions, for the pos- session of a barren title to which neither side had any but the most shadowy claim. The inglorious struggle ended in the Coronation of the Duke of Spoleto in 891, but he died in the same year, leaving his dearly-bought dignity to his young son, Lambert. The new Pope, Formosus, who succeeded Stephen in 891, after a violent and aggressive career, played fast and loose with Lambert, professing to care for him, and his interests as a father, while he intrigued behind his back with Arnulf of Ger- many. Invited by Formosus, this Arnulf suddenly descended on Italy, took Rome, which was inadequately defended by Lam- bert's mother, and ended his meteoric adventure in defeat after a paralytic stroke on his way home. Formosus barely outlived Arnulf, and met the posthumous reward of the duplicity of his life in the scandalous post-mortem trial which disgraces the pontificate of Stephen VI. (896-897). Stephen was a staunch parti- san of Lambert of Spoleto, but the act of vindictive sacrilege which makes his pontificate notorious in papal history is in no way characteristic of the chivalrous young idol of Italy who now inherited the burden of the Imperium. The body of For- mosus, clad in pontifical vestments, was submitted to a barbaric mock-trial, and after condemnation, stripped of the ceremonial garments, and thrown into the Tiber. But the conscience of Rome was stricken by the outrage, and some few priests, whom Formosus had consecrated, ventured to defend the dishonoured memory of their patron. One of these reminded the Romans that it had always been their way to maltreat their benefactors, and put them to death. The shaft went home : stung by the taunt of ingratitude, the populace rose against Stephen VI., and strangled him in the name of Formosus. He was succeeded by Romanus, of whom nothing is recorded but his death, which oc- curred in the fourth month of his pontificate. His successor, Theodore II., lived just long enough to do honour to the remains of Formosus, which were discovered by a fisherman in the Tiber. AEISTOCRATIC TYRANNY AND SUBJECT POPES 85 John IX. (898-900) formally condemned the " Corpse Synod," and sealed his allegiance to the German party by the coronation of Lambert. This accomplished, Pope and Emperor worked to- gether for the restoration of law and order in Rome, but the premature death of Lambert, after a fall from his horse, shattered the hopes of those who had seen the possibility in him of effect- ing a united Italy. His death re-opened the contest for the Imperium, and his party transferred their favour to Lewis of Provence, who could trace Carolingian descent through his father, Count Boeo. His opponent, Bcrengar of Friuli, was urged by defeat into betraying Italy to the Hungarians, an act for which he can no more be held personally responsible than those who forced his hand. The decay of papal authority had thrown Italy into the hands of the nobles, who appreciated the idea of Italian unity as little as they knew how to effect it. John IX. was succeeded by Benedict IV. (900-903), " a mild and priest-like man," who made no attempt to originate a policy, and contented himself with further cementing the papal allegi- ance to the German House by crowning Lewis of Provence. Leo v., who succeded Benedict in 903, fell a victim to the ambi- tion of Cardinal Anastasius. With him died the eighth Pope in the eight years of papal history. These rapid successions showed, if proof were necessary, that papal power was following the Carolingian Empire to its fall. The death of Leo V. inaugurates the period of tyranny by the civic nobility, which henceforth put the Papacy into com- mission, maintaining it as a peg on which to hang their own ambitions. The household of Theophylact soon raised itself above its equals, chiefly owing to the influence of two remark- able women. While Theophylact gradually accumulated in his own person all the chief ofiices of the papal court, his wife, Theodora, by her charms and her personality, held sway in Rome with almost absolute authority. It was through her influence that the energetic villain, Sergius II., was elected to the Papacy in 904, having assisted himself in its attainment to the extent of effecting the death of his two predecessors. He proved a better Pope than might have been expected. He restored the bishopric of Silva Candida, which the Saracens had robbed of the sources of its endowment. He re-established the Convent Corsarum, which had suffered the same fate, on condition that a hundred kyries should be sung daily by the nuns for his soul. We may hope that the condition was faithfully kept, for we owe to him the re-building of the Lateran, and the preservation of all that it holds of historic interest and decorative beauty. 86 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY Sergius II. was succeeded by two insignificant men, Anastasius, the Roman (911-913), and Lands, a Lombard (913-914), who doubt- less placed their bishopric at the disposal of the wife of Theophy- lact. The sway of Theodora was now shared by her more beautiful daughter Marozia, who through the instrumentality of three successive husbands controlled the history of Rome and the Papacy for the next fifteen years. Since the days of Eudoxia and Amalasuntha, there had been a conspicuous absence of prominent women in the records of the city, and their reappear- ance at this time is significant. Mediaeval Rome was a clerical city, and the ascendancy of Theodora and Marozia testifies to a temporary triumph of secularism over the ecclesiastical system. There was nothing noble in the tyranny which these two women exercised over the afi'airs of the city. No large political issues dignified their intrigues, and all their fascinations and wiles were exercised in the service of their personal gratification. The moral decadence of the society which they created has never been surpassed, but their vices lacked distinction, and their sway had none of the brilliance which has often accompanied the decadent phases of European history. Theodora's influence did however justify itself in the appoint- ment to the Papacy of John X. (914-928), who was possibly her lover, and certainly the first statesman of his age. About the same time Marozia married Alberic, a German soldier of fortune, who is known to history as the forerunner of the " condottieri," who play so large a part in the story of Italy. Through these two men — the Pope and the warrior — the influence of the wife and daughter of Theophylact made itself paramount in the immediate future. With remarkable activity John devoted himself to the Saracen war. He formed a league with the turbulent nobles of the South, and even enlisted the help of the Eastern Emperor, who had by now forgotten to bear his grudge against Italy. With Alberic as his vice-gerent, the Pope gained a memorable series of victories in the valley of the Garigliane, which resulted in the expulsion of the enemy from South Italy. John and Alberic returned in triumph to Rome, conscious of having carried through between them a great enterprise, and earned the gratitude of their countrymen. But Rome was sunk too low to do her patriots honour, and a vortex of political intrigue swept away the fortunes of the two heroes of the Saracen campaign. In order to gratify the Imperial sentiment of the people, Theodora and the Pope had summoned Berengar of Friuli to take up the Imperium which had lain useless and idle in tlie AEISTOCKATIC TYRANNY AND SUBJECT POPES 87 hands of Lewis of Provence. In 915, Berengar entered Rome and was received with a magnificence worthy of a nobler epoch. While the scholae sang their " laudes," two goodly youths advanced to do homage to the Emperor-elect. These were the son of Theophylact and the brother of the Pope, and in their joint act Berengar might read the symbol of Roman society. For eight years Berengar passively carried on the tradition of the Western Empire, until he was assassinated in 924 by his son- in-law, Adalbert. The death of Berengar marks the extinction of the Empire as a national concern. The temporal leadership of Europe had passed away from Italy for ever. The very title of Emperor, which had lingered on so persistently after the Empire had fallen to pieces, was henceforth sufifered to lapse. The " dark ages" were dark indeed in the hour when the eternity of the Roman Empire waB forgotten. Rudolf ot Burgundy retained the Crown of Italy for three years after the death of Berengar, and was then overthrown by Irmengard, the daughter of Berengar, who is said to have rivalled Cleopatra by her chai*m, and outshone in physical beauty her contemporary Marozia. The Pope joined Irmengard in espousing the cause of her step-brother Hugo, and thus brought about his own ruin. The personal ascendancy of another woman in Italy stung Marozia into opposition. The death of Alberic had left her free to offer her band to Guido of Tuscany, another son of the late Emperor, who could boast as good a claim to the Empire as his step-brother Hugo. In the interests of Guido, Marozia plotted to bring about the fall of John X. For two years longer he managed to hold his own through the support of his brother Peter, but a surprise attack on the Lateran, in 928, finally overwhelmed him. He lingered a year in a dungeon in the Castle of St. Angelo, where he closed his brilliant career in a manner which was becoming characteristic of the Popes. After two Popes, concerning whom we know nothing at all — Leo VI. and Stephen VII. — Marozia achieved the climax of her ambition in the election of her son to the Papacy as John XL (931-936). Her third marriage in the following year was the initial step which brought her to ruin. Her third husband was the same Hugo whom she had formerly opposed — the prot^g^ of her rival, and the opponent of the late lamented Guido. Hugo was typical of his age, bold and brutal, with an outward show of chivalry and piety which belied every action which is recorded of him. He found his worst enemy in his young step-son, the boy Alberic, whom his mother unwisely pressed into the service 88 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY of her new lord. A trivial quarrel turned the sullen hatred of Alberic into open hostility, which rapidly developed into re- bellion. Inciting the mob against the tyranny of his mother, Alberic overthrew Hugo, who fled in ignominy from the city, and seized and imprisoned both Marozia and his brother the young Pope. Alberic held the reins of government as " Prince and Senator of all the Romans ". In spite of the verdict of con- temporary records, the dictatorship of Alberic was by no means a calamity for the city. It is true that he deprived the Papacy of all its temporal power, and kept his brother the Pope in honourable captivity. But the political tutelage of the Church gave it its chance to recover from the moral degradation which the association of the Papacy with the House of Theophylact had brought about. The subjection of the Popes to Alberic was a salutary humiliation ; it drove theni back to look for their spiritual weapons, and finding them blunted by lack of use, they turned to the armoury of moral reform. The death of his brother John XI. enabled Alberic to elect in his stead a tractable Benedictine Pope, whose conception of the papal ofiice coincided wiih his own. Leo VII. (936-939) cheerfully renounced all claim to temporal power, and espoused the cause of the new monastic reform, which was fraught with importance for the future of papal history. More than a ■ century of deterioration had reduced the Benedictine rule to a dead letter, and brought the monasteries to a condition which awoke a sense of tragedy in the generation of Odo of Cluny. In the tenth century, which is comparable in this and in other respects to the fifteenth, ideas were all in the crucible, and it was doubtful what would emerge. The monastic vocation was no longer taken for granted as a guarantee of future salvation ; it was bound up too closely with the mystic conception of spiritual dominion, which the Imperium had gone far to eclipse. Charles the Great had helped the monasteries down- ward by the practice of bestowing them as fiefs on lay barons, and the Saracen raids had completed the work which the forces of secularism had begun. That a reaction set in early in the tenth century was due partly to the political necessity of finding a raison d'etre for the Church which had been deprived of all its worldly power, and partly to the individual efibrts of Odo of Cluny. The Loyola of his age, Odo travelled about in France and Italy preaching the cause of the new monasticism, pointing to Monte Cassino and Subiaco, and contrasting the ignoble present with the glorious past. Cluniac reform became the watchword of the hour: ARISTOCRATIC TYRANNY AND SUBJECT POPES 89 Leo VII. brought it to Rome, and Alberic associated it with his policy of government. The bandit monks of Farfa, who used their charter as a pretext for licentious living, and terrorised the countryside with their lawless rapacity, were forcibly expelled from their haunts, and in time at least Italy was purged from the worst evils of corrupt monasticism. After Leo VII., three more Popes were created by Alberic, reigning at his discretion, and according to his political principles. Stephen VIII. (939-942) seems to have been un- fortunate, and suffered mutilation probably in an attempt to shake off the yoke of Alberic. In any case his enterprise failed, and we read that he took refuge in solitude and misanthropy. Stephen was succeeded by Marinus II. (942-946), " a gentle and peace-loving man," who never swerved in his obedience to the secular master of Rome. Under Agapitus II. (946-955), the first symptom ot unrest made itself felt, in the assumption of the title of King of Italy by Berengar of Ivrea. His project was merely the signal for a mightier than he to approach. Invited by the Pope to deliver Italy from Berengar, Otto the Great began to rebuild in his mind the Empire of Charlemagne. At the same time the power of Alberic tottered and fell. He succeeded before he died in securing the election of his son Octavian to the Papacy as John XII. But a self-willed boy of sixteen, with his character already undermined by his training in luxury, was no fit successor to a beneficent despot, whose only claim to his subjects' obedience was his power to make himself acceptable to them. CHAPTER XI THE BEGINNINGS OF REFORM : THE POPES AND THE OTTOS, A.D. 955-1046 THE fundamental weakness which underlay the conception of the mediaeval Papacy was its inability to stand alone. Spiritual authority was insufficient by itself to secure the supremacy of Rome : the claims of St. Peter — even when they were advanced by the worthiest of his successors — required the weight of the Roman Empire to give them force. Temporal power in the tenth century was merely an expression. The Donations and Deeds of Gift, however generous they might appear on paper, always contained an implied condition. The King or the Emperor bestowed the lands — in so far as they were his to give : they became the property of the Church, provided the Pope could make good his possession. Hence the Papacy continually found itself on the horns of a dilemma. Obliged by the nature of things to take refuge behind a privileged defender, the Popes had to choose between the perpetual domination of some adjacent or co-existing authority and the intermittent protection of a strong exterior power. If the one was inconveniently near, the other was obviously too far away. Viewed in the light of a protector, the civic nobility of Rome was more effective than the distant German King, but protection and oppression were too often interchangeable terms, and if the Alps formed an obstacle in the way of the former, they were no less a defence against the latter. The interest of the tenth century lies in the fluctuation of the papal fortunes between these two alternatives. There was also a third, but the times were too barbarous, and political thought was too crude to do it justice. The cause of nationalism, as represented by Lambert of Spoleto, and at this particular juncture by Berengar of Ivrea, never had any real chance of success. Italy was racially too diffuse and geographically too incoherent for the consciousness of national unity to gain any real hold : besides, there was nothing in the idea which appealed %o the mind of the tenth century Italian. The Roman Empire THE BEGINNINGS OF KEFORM 91 was a cause to die for — so was the Universal Church — so also in its way was the principle of disorder — lawleesness — rebellion — and the exhilarating strife of factions. But the lord of Ivrea with his handful of knights — who was he that the Tuscan peasants should flock to his standard, or the nobles of the Campagna set aside their own feuds in his service ? If the Pope wanted a protector, let him appeal to Csesar across the Alps, and let Rome delight once more in the splendour of an Imperial Coronation, with its inevitable sequel of carnage in the streets. Thus the appeal to Otto the Great was urgent in its demand and general in the direction from which it came. Invited first by Agapitus in 951, Otto had justified his German reputation in the defeat of Berengar of Ivrea, whe fell back at his approach without making a stand. With the vision of Charles already before his eyes. Otto proposed to press on to Rome, and sent envoys to the Pope to arrange for his reception. But Alberic had not yet made over his power to his son, and the would-be Emperor was met with a flat refusal from the Senator of Rome. Otto recognised that his attempt was premature : he therefore contented himself with consolidating his interests in North Italy by completing the subjection of Berengar, and by marrying Adelaide, the widow of the late King Lothar, who had headed in her own name the invitation which had brought the German King to Italy. The son of Alberic afforded to Otto the opportunity which his father had denied. The young Octavian, already " Prince and Senator," succeeded Agapetas as Pope just before the death of his father, in 954, taking the name of John XII. Anyone might have staggered under the weight of so crushing a burden of power, and the boy-Pope had not even passed through the ordi- nary apprenticeship of government. He brought to his task a considerable amount of natural energy, which might, under more favourable circumstances, have developed into a real capacity for ruling. But whatever he might have become, he certainly showed no signs of fulfilling any promise except that which his precocious vices foretold. He opened his pontificate with a disastrous expedition against the southern duchies, which induced him to summon Otto to the rescue. Meanwhile, his enemies were bringing their influence to bear in the same direc- tion, and a formidable list of charges against the Pope was com- piled for his undoing. Otto came to Pavia in 961, and received the various embassies of his Italian well-wishers. The indictment of John he brushed aside with half-humorous contempt: "he is a boy: the ex- 92 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY ample of good men may reform him ". Early in January, 962, Otto journeyed to Rome, having sworn to keep faith with his young host, who, in return, undertook to hold no dealings with Berengar, or his son, Adalbert. In spite of the apparent under- standing. Otto was ill at ease in Rome. Even at the time of the Coronation itself, he ordered Ansfried of Louvain to stand near and protect him with his spear as he knelt before St. Peter's tomb. His suspicions, moreover, were not without foundation. Hardly had he left the city when the Pope, chafing under the yoke of his protector, which, as usual, proved irksome at close quarters, re-opened his intrigues with Berengar, and with scarcely veiled treachery threw off his allegiance to the Emperor whom he had just crowned. The result of this was Otto's second expedition to Rome in 963. He arrived to find the city in a state of unwonted quiet : John XII. had gone off hunting — his most serious offence in the eyes of his critics ! — and the Cardinals and Bishops were ready to submit his conduct to the Emperor. The tenth century showed no leniency towards wild oats. The accusation against the boy-Pope brought before Otto was long and serious enough to cover the career of a veteran. A considerable number of real crimes, and a pitiable proportion of vices, were brought to his charge ; but the emphasis was laid in almost every case on the follies and neglects which were the natural outcome of his train- ing in despotism, and his youth. He had neglected to attend matins, — he had not been frequent at Mass. He had devoted his time to field sports and amours. He had " drunk to Venus and other devils " in a Lateran orgy. In short, he had proved himself unworthy of the pontificate in all that he had done and said. Otto summoned the Pope in respectful language three times, and eventually received a reply from the hunting-field, which was both spirited and illiterate : "John Bishop, servant of the servants of God, to all the bishops — We have heard that you want to appoint another Pope. If you do so, I will excommuni- cate you by Almighty God, and you shall not ordinate nobody, or celebrate Mass.'' John's ultimatum, thus crudely expressed, left Otto no choice but to depose him " because of his reprobate life ". In his place Otto appointed Leo VIII., a man of indecisive character and blameless reputation, who was unable to hold his own against the hostile forces of the anti-German party. It was probably at this time that Otto was supposed to have deprived the Romans of their rights, by enforcing upon them an oath by THE BEGINNINGS OF EEFOKM 93 which they undertook not to elect or ordain any Pope without his or his son's consent. The Pope designate, moreover, waB to swear allegiance to the Emperor in the presence of the Imperial Missi. The form of the oath, as far as can be judged from the rather meagre accounts of the chroniclers, was, however, identi- cal with that which Lothar imposed in 824. Why, then, does Liutprand, the biographer of Otto, emphasise the surrender of electoral rights by the Roman people in 964 ? It seems prob- able that the innovation belonged rather to the region of fact than of theory, and even the practical change was probably over-estimated by the Imperial biographer. The theory re- mained the same as in the time of Lothar, but since the year 824, no Emperor had been strong enough to make good his claim to supersede the electoral rights of the people. This, at least, is a possible solution of the difficult problem which the so-called Privilege of Otto suggests. In return for the conces- sion — whether it was new or founded upon precedent — Otto con- firmed the previous donations which gave to the Papacy the Duchy of Rome, part of the Sabine and Tuscan territory, and the exarchate of Ravenna. To this was to be added the Cam- pagna, with the " restitution " of Naples, and Gaeta, Fundi, and Sicily, as soon as they could be conquered from the Saracens. In 964, John XII. returned to Rome, and began to rally his forces. The anti-German party had been growing in strength ever since Otto's Coronation, and Leo VIII., unable to stand against it, was obliged to fly for protection to Otto. But John XII. could not concentrate his energies for decisive action. An amorous adventure cost him his life just at the moment when he had regained his undeserved ascendancy in Rome. The sword of an injured husband freed Rome from the tyranny of the last of the Theophylacts, and the Papacy from the ignominy which his reckless, if not altogether responsible, profligacy had brought upon it. To fill his place as anti-pope, his partisans elected the gram- maticus Benedict V. Otto, however, descended on the distracted city, and replaced Leo VIII. for a few more months of sovereignty, carrying back to Germany in triumph the ex-king, Berengar, and the would-be anti-pope. Leo VIII. barely survived his restoration. He was succeeded by another descendent of Theophylact, who so far departed from the tradition of his House that he reigned as the candidate of the German party, and, like his predecessor, was driven to take refuge at the side of Otto from the revolution which convulsed the city soon after his election. A counter-revolution in the 94 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY following year, however, enabled the new Pope, John XIII., to return to Rome, supported by the rumour that Otto was pre- paring for an expedition against the city. The clemency of the Emperor had been tried too long by the instability of Rome, and he set out, for the fourth time, with vengeance in his train. The authors of the rebellion were mutilated and put to death, and Peter the Prefect was hung by the hair from the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius. Soon after the suppression of this revolt, John XIII. found a surer means of securing his position in the city. In spite of the energy of Otto, Imperial protection had broken down : John, therefore, turned to the alternative force of defence, and intro- duced a new factor in the complicated balance of Papal -Imperial politics by his alliance with the House of Crescentius. During the next half century, the Crescentines play less conspicuously, and, on the whole, more creditably, the part which the Theophy- lacts had played in an earlier generation. But whereas Theophy- lact had founded the supremacy of his House by making the Popes his creatures, Crescentius of the Marble Horse owed his personal ascendancy, and the subsequent fortunes of his family, to the patronage of John XIII. John's plan was to dwarf the hostile nobility of Rome by deliberately raising one House above the rest. He did not foresee the danger which inevit- ably underlay his policy, and he did not live long enough to learn it by experience. The last recorded act of John XIII. was the marriage of the Emperor's son. Otto, whom he had already crowned co-Emperor, with the Eastern princess Theophano. The wedding was both picturesque and momentous. Otto had long been suing for her hand, but the father of Theophano, Nicephorus Phocas, had haughtily withheld his consent. Her stepfather, John Zimisces, who had supplanted her parent, was more amenable, and in 972 the beautiful sixteen-year-old bride was conducted with great honour to her husband in Rome. Otto II. was a clever and attractive youth of seventeen, with the heart of a hero concealed in his small, slight body. In the same year John XIII. died and was succeeded, after an interval of schism, by Benedict VI. (973-974), who owed his security on the throne of S. Peter to the last efforts of Otto the Great. Otto himself died in May of the same year. His achievements were great, but their character was purely personal. His dominion was an empire only in name : Germany was distracted by feudal and national forces which his constitution had been THE BEGINNINGS OF KEFORM 95 unable to touch ; Italy had summoned him in her hour of need and resented it when he answered her call. Like his fore- runner, Charlemagne, he had been invited by the Pope, and like him had subjugated the Papacy. But the Popes of the ninth century had instantly set to work to emancipate themselves, whereas the Papacy under the Ottos was not in a position to do so. The dirge of the monk of Soracte gives a clue to the senti- ment of the Italian who watched from the Campagna the descents of the German kings — " Woe to Rome ! oppressed and down-trodden by so many nations. Thou art taken captive by the Saxon king, thy people are judged by the sword. . . . Thou who wast a mother art become a daughter — thou wast too beautiful " (Benedict of Soracte). The death of Otto was the signal for rebellion in Rome against German domination as personified by Benedict VI. The Cres- centii soon gave proof of the dangerous eminence to which John XIII. had raised them. Headed by Crescentius de Theodora the rebels seized the unfortunate Pope and strangled him in the castle of S. Angelo. In his place they put forward the " monster " Boniface VII., the son of Ferrucius. The subsequent events of the rebellion are unknown to us. There seems to have been a reaction, which led to the flight of Boniface to Byzantium and the election of the pious Bishop of Sutri by the Emperor Otto II. Benedict VII. (974-983) was a zealous champion of Cluniac reform, and his pontificate seems to have been entirely taken up with the restoration of monasteries, particvdarly of the influential and beautiful House dedicated to SS. Boniface and Alexis, which was destined to become the source of Slavonic evangelisation. In 980 Otto II. came in peace to Rome. Benedict VII. had en- treated him to come and deliver south Italy from the Saracens, who were pressing harder than ever on the papal frontiers. The Greeks, moreover, were engaged in an attempt to recover Capua and Benevento, and the situation was desperate enough to demand instant alleviation. The expedition of Otto was not fortunate. He was defeated by the Saracens at Stilo, and narrowly escaped being kidnapped by the Greeks in a naval enterprise in which he had shown ex- cessive personal daring. He rejoined the Pope at Verona, where the infant Otto III. was crowned by Benedict VII. just before his death in 983. The death of the Pope recalled Otto to Rome, where he negotiated the election of his chancellor, Peter of Pavia, as John XIV. (983-984). Exhausted by the excessive demand which Italy had made on the delicate young Emperor, Otto II. died in Rome in the winter of his twenty-eighth year, and, alone 96 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY of all the German Emperors of Rome, was buried in the crypt of St. Peter's. John XIV. must have trembled for his own safety as he stood by the grave of Otto II. Germany demanded the instant return of the child Otto III. and the Imperial regent Theophano.. and already the inevitable anti-German spirit was making itself felt in Rome. Early in 984, the anti-pope Boniface VII., who had fled to Byzantium at the end of the Crescentine revolt, reappeared in Rome and, supported by a faction of malcontents, seized John XIV. The unfortunate Pope was thrown into a dungeon in St. Angelo, and having failed to die, he was strangled after four months' captivity. Boniface VII. was, however, overthrown him- self in the following year by the Crescentii, who conducted a counter-revolution in the name of the national party. It is difficult to follow the sequence of events, but the Crescentii cannot have been uniformly successful at first, for in 985 John XV. succeeded to the Papacy, and is described as hostile to Crescentius and favourable to the German party. Things must have moved rapidly, however, for in the same year, Cres- centius succeeded in making himself Patricius of Rome, and in his own person tried to restore the dictatorship of Alberic. But he lacked either the self-confidence or the audacity of his greater prototype, for his attitude towards Theophano, when she came in the name of Otto III. to Rome in 989, was as deferential and subservient as Imperial arrogance could demand. On the other hand, his actual position in Rome was little short of sovereignty. The envoys of Hugh Capet, the founder of the Capetian dynasty in France, complained that it was impossible to get even a hearing from the Pope unless one brought presents for the " tyrant " Crescentius. The position of John XV. finally became untenable. He fled from Rome to Count Hugo of Tuscany — a strong Imperialist, who forthwith summoned the boy Otto. With the spirit of a Csesar and the temperament of a saint, the figure of Otto III. is one of the most pathetic which European history presents. Belonging, as it has been said, to the realm of poetry rather than of history, he seemed destined by nature and by circumstance to failure and disillusionment. His heart beat high in anticipation as he set out in 996 to visit the city of his dreams. He was going to rescue the Church — to restore the Empire ; he was Csesar — he was Constantino ; he was going to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. And he was fifteen years old. Crescentius proved himself all that was compliant, and no hint of aristocratic opposition mare the epic character which THE BEGINNINGS OF REFOEM 97 Otto was so anxious to maintain on this momentous occasion. Before the Imperial coronation had taken place, and as if to give the young Emperor full scope to inaugurate a new era, John XV. died. With Otto was his cousin Bruno, his kindred spirit and chosen companion, who shared his dreams and understood his ideals. The boy-Emperor saw no drawback in the appointment of a pious and courageous youth to be his coadjutor in the reformation of Christendom, and if he had lived long enough, Gregory V. would almost certainly have justified his confidence. To Gregory, imbued with Cluniac traditions, and afire with young intolerance, the condition of the Papacy as he found it was a matter for tears. It was not without justification that Arnulf of Orleans had dissuaded the synod of Rheims from appealing in 995 to Rome. His recapitulation of papal history was a substantial apology for tenth century " Protestantism " : "0 unfortunate Rome, in the silence of the past thou gavest our ancestors the light of the Fathers of the Church. Our times, however, thou hast darkened with a night so terrible as shall make them notorious even in the future. Once thou gavest us the renowned Leos, the great Gregories . . . What have we not witnessed in these days? We have seen John, surnamed Octavian, wallowing in the mire of sensuality, and even conspiring against Otto whom he himself had crowned. . . . Emperor Otto was succeeded by Emperor Otto, who excelled all princes in arms, in wisdom, and in knowledge. A dreadful monster, how- ever, dripping with the blood of his predecessor, filled the chair of Peter : Boniface, a man who in criminality surpassed the rest of mankind." The invective concludes with the condemnation of the unworthy Pope as "an idol in God's Temple, from whom we may as well expect oracles as from a block of stone". To the challenge of the Galilean Bishop, the Synod of St. Peters, summoned by the two boy-leaders of Europe after Otto's coronation, was in some measure an answer. Before dealing with general abuses, political order was restored by the trial of CrescentiuB. The rebel noble was first banished, and then pardoned, by an indiscreet act of royal clemency. The result was that as soon as Otto had left the city, the rebellion broke out again with renewed vigour, and Crescentius had merely re- gathered his forces in the interval of peace. Gregory V. escaped to Pavia, where his calm and dignified behaviour set an example which other Popes in parallel dilemmas would have done well to follow. He wasted no words in useless recrimination, but contented himself with simply excommunicating Crescentius, and instead of giving way to hysterical panic, he transacted his 7 98 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY official business, received envoys, and arbitrated in European politics as he would have done in his Roman palace. Meanwhile, Crescentiue had not failed to find a suitable opponent for the German Pope in Philagathus, an unscrupulous diplomat, who had been employed by Otto in an important embassy to Constantinople. On his return from the East, Philagathus sold himself to Crescentius, and regardless of the bonds of gratitude and political faith, used his newly-acquired influence with the eastern Emperor against his late patron. The career of Philagathus as anti-pope was, however, cut short by an expedition of Otto, accompanied by Gregory, in 997. The ferocity which the young Emperor displayed in suppressing the revolt, and the uncharacteristic barbarity of his treatment of Phila- gathus, seem to indicate the first effects of disillusionment on his character. The anti-pope was captured in an attempt to escape ; he was mutilated, condemned by a synod, degraded, and processed through Rome seated backwards on an ass ; finally, he was thrown into a dungeon, whence he was never heard of again. It remained to subdue Crescentius, who was holding out against overwhelming numbers in St. Angelo. After a heroic resistance, the German battering-rams finally forced him to capitulate. He was beheaded on the battlements, and his body was afterwards exposed on Monte Mario. His tragic end, and the fiction that his career was a- vindication of national liberties, have entitled Crescentius to a place among the heroes of modern Italy. In reality, however, his rebellion was merely one of the long series of risings of the civic aristocracy which take the place in papal history of the feudal revolts of England, France, or Germany. Otto's tender conscience soon convicted him for his ruthless treatment of the Roman rebels, and remorse threw him back on the mystic side of his nature, which was always at war with his Caesarean ambitions. He spent the year 998 on a pilgrimage to the chief shrines of Italy, and held intercourse with St. Nilus, the hermit of the south, placing his Imperial crown in the hands of the saint in a characteristic moment of spiritual enthusiasm. Otto's devotional exercises were suddenly cut short by the news of the death of Gregory V. The first of the German Popes, whose names stand for the regeneration of the Papacy — in fact, the first non-Roman Pope for 250 years — the royal youth, who had inaugurated the era of reform, was cut ofl" at the moment when the time was ripe for action. In the place of his cousin, Otto gave the Romans his tutor Gerbert, a Frenchman, a scientific genius and a man of ex- perience, who took the significant title of Silvester II. His THE BEGINNINGS OF REFORM 99 intimate knowledge of his Imperial pupil gave him an over- whelming advantage in all relations between himself and Otto, and made his pontificate an epoch in papal-imperial history. He stimulated the young Emperor's all-too-vivid imagination, encouraged his visionary flights, and played down to his boyish vanity. Under his influence, the glamour of unreality fogged the imperial ideals of Otto : the yearning after Hellenic Orien- talism, inculcated from babyhood by his Greek mother, now dominated the other elements of his complex but plastic nature. It was under Silvester's guidance that Otto's " Book of For- mularies " was drawn up, which introduced to the Roman court the elaborate ceremonial of Byzantium. In the place of the vigorous Teutonic simplicity of Otto the Great, his grandson surrounded himself with the ridiculous ostentation of Eastern etiquette. Meanwhile, the Pope held the vision of Constantine ever before the eyes of his pupil. The Donation of Otto III., though it denies the claim of the Church to temporal power as a matter of historic right, is lavish in its actual generosity. Silvester was opportunist enough to accept the gift without pressing the point as to the nature of the claim. He received the eight Romagnol counties which Otto bestowed on him, and flatteringly persuaded the Emperor to stay in Rome. New allegiance to the Church came from the surprising direction of Hungary. The King Stephen sent envoys to Rome, asking for investiture from Sylvester in return for spiritual obedience. Otto associated himself with Silvester in acquies- cence, hoping to receive the newly-converted country as a new fief of the Empire. Stephen, however, ignored the Emperor's interference, and thereafter recognised the ecclesiastical bond alone. In spite of Silvester's entreaties. Otto left Italy in 999, being recalled to Germany by the usual double motive of political necessity and spiritual attraction. The death of the capable regent, his aunt Matilda, necessitated his re-visiting the real centre of his dominions, and the summons was enhanced by a vow to visit the grave of his chosen patron, St. Adalbert. The apprehension of Silvester was too well founded. The dreaded year 1000 was at hand, and the panic-stricken anticipation of the day of Doom produced a general political hysteria. While Otto knelt in mystical rapture before the cave at Aachen, where Charles the Great was buried, taking from the neck of the greater dreamer a gold chain as an insignia of empire, Rome — the desire both of the dead hero and of the living boy — had once more raised the cry of " No interference ". 100 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY Otto hurried back to Rome early in 1000, supported by a German army, and the city subsided at his approach. He once more took up his abode in the Palace on the Aventine over- looking the monastery dedicated to St. Adalbert of Prague: The murmur of unrest was lulled, but it had not vanished. The civic jealousy of Rome for the little town of Tivoli was aroused by the clemency of Otto, who at the solicitation of Sylvester, showed mercy in suppressing a revolt on the part of the towns- folk against the Dux. The municipal rivalry between the world- capital and the little Campagnol town was the pretext for a revolution in Rome. Otto's palace was besieged by an infuriated mob, and the young Emperor, with an eloquence born of bitter- ness of soul, addressed the rebels from a tower. " Are you," he cried, "my Romans, for whose sake I have left my country and my relations ? Out of love for you I have shed the blood of my Saxons and of all Germans, yea even mine own . . . You were my favourite children ; for you I have incurred the ill-will of all the rest. And in reward you desert your father. You have cruelly slaughtered my trusted friends, you have shut me myself out from among you ; though this you could not wholly do, since I cannot banish from my heart those whom I have cherished with a father's love." (Recorded by Tanymar, who heard it.) The sincerity of Otto's disillusion touched the fickle hearts of his hearers, and the leaders of the revolt were thrown half-dead at his feet. But the young Emperor never recovered his confidence : he fled to St. Romuald, the Lombard hermit, for consolation, and for some time tried to forget the overthrow of his ambition in the cultivation of his soul. But Otto was too restless for a monk. Rome attracted him, fatally and irresistibly, to the last. With feverish energy he harried the Campagna, beset by enemies on every side, and finally died in the arms of Silvester II. in a castle outside the city. At the age of 21 he died — the supreme example of royal self-sacrifice of which the history of Italy afi'ords so many instances. " The magic of the name of Rome " was never responsible for a more pitiable tragedy. Otto's ideals died with him. The old Pope only outlived him for a year, and died with the sound of failure ringing in his ears. The last of the national kings, Arduin of Ivrea, was crowned at Pavia, and Rome fell into the hands of John Crescentius, the third Patricius of the illustrious line of rebels. For the next six years (1003-9) John Crescentius held absolute sway in Rome and set up two puppet Popes, John XVII. and John XVIII., who leave no record of personality behind them. The final overthrow THE BEGINNINGS OF EEFOKM 101 of the Crescentines was eflfected by a third would-be tyrant House, that of the Counts of Tusculum. They traced their descent to the Theophylacts, whose example they tried to emulate. In 1009, a member of their House succeeded to the Papacy as Sergius IV. and during his three years' pontificate John Crescentius noticeably lost ground. The chroniclers give no details, and the records are defective, but it seems that on the death of John Crescentius and Sergius IV. Theophylact of Tusculum seized the Papacy by force from Gregory, the Crescen- tine candidate. The Tusculans had been careful to preserve an ostentatious show of loyalty to Henry 11. who had succeeded his cousin, Otto III., in Germany. Hence, when the two Popes appealed to Henry to arbitrate, he naturally rejected Gregory, and pledged himself to recognise the Tusculan Benedict VIII. The rule of the new Pope, though it was founded on no very exalted moral conception of Popedom, was vigorous and effective. He made his brother Romanus Senator of the city, and together with him restored a measure of firm government, which Rome had not known for many a generation. His first object was to restore the Papacy to the level of an Italian power, and with this object in view he immediately turned his atten- tion to South Italy and the Saracens. Hitherto the Popes had drawn their allies entirely from the fickle south, and their inabihty to gain more than a temporary advantage over the elusive and ubiquitous Mohammedan was largely due to the uncertain loyalty of their southern adherents. Benedict VIII. inaugurated a new era in the Saracen war by calling on the northern seaports to contribute their share to the defence of Italy and the Church. With a fleet drawn from Pisa and Genoa, who thus for the first time make their appearance in the history of the Church, the Papal forces gained a complete and decisive maritime victory over the con- quering chief Mogehid. Meanwhile, the Greeks were renewing their attempt to win back the Byzantine provinces, and, against their onset, Benedict had recourse to another innovation, which was fraught with consequences for the future of Italy. As early as 1010, Dattus and Melus of Bari had employed the services of a pilgrim- contingent of Norman knights to assist them in an attempt to throw off the Byzantine yoke— an attempt which ended dis- astrously in the defeat of Cannae. They were the fore-runners of a more deliberate migration. The survivors of Cannae sold their swords to the highest bidder, and vacillated between the opposing forces with the sans-gene of the true mercenary. 102 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY When, in 1022, Henry II. yielded to the Pope's appeal and came in person to South Italy, the fiercest resistance which he had to encounter came from the new Greek fortress of Troja, which was held against him by a strong Norman contingent under the command of the Greek Catapan, While Henry was at work in the south regaining his hold on Byzantine-Lombard provinces, Benedict began to turn his attention to reform. His efforts to enforce celibacy and put down simony were actuated by political motives rather than spiritual zeal. But they were none the less laudable, and it was a pity that they came too late on his political programme for him to bring them to a successful issue. Benedict VIII. was succeeded in 1024 by his brother, Rom anus, who had for the last ten years controlled the civil government of the city as Senator. The second House of Theophylact, like their forerunners and ancestors, brought about their downfall by an attempt to identify too closely the co- ordinate spheres of the Patriciate and the Papacy. The Senator Romanus was not a success as Pope John XIX. He knew nothing about theology, and he shocked the cardinals by his ignorance of papal history. He was genuinely surprised at the consternation which was aroused when he nearly yielded the title of Universal Bishop to the Patriarch of Alexandria. Nor was he more effective on his greatest state occasion, the coro- nation of the new Emperor Conrad II. in 1027. Rome was by now accustomed to the idea of riot and disorder in connection with Imperial coronation, and the Romans looked forward to the street fight which invariably followed as they would to a carnival. But seldom was the scene more blood-stained, or, one would have thought, less impressive than it was under the auspices of John XIX. A petty quarrel for precedence between the Bishops of Milan and Ravenna added the strife of factions to that of parties, and gave a touch of the ridiculous to the familiar accompaniments of the scene. The presence of two foreign kings was no check on the unbridled passions of the Romans, and we can but wonder at the simple piety of King Canute, who, in half-barbaric wonder, found enough inspiration in the scene to stir him to make resolutions for future good government. On the death of John XIX. in 1033 his relations committed the crowning act of indiscretion which brought about the final overthrow of the House of Tusculum. They raised his nephew, the child Theophylact, to the Papal throne as Benedict IX. Undeterred by the precedent of John XII., they placed the THE BEGINNINGS OF EEFOEM 103 delicate weapons of tyranny in the hands of a boy too young to wield them. His elder brother, Gregory, siezed the Patrician power as Senator of Rome, biit he could not protect Benedict from the consequences of his youth. The Romans would tolerate a good deal in the successor of St. Peter, but a child- apostle struck them as unnatural and preposterous. A con- spiracy of the captains in 1035 nearly cost the boy his life, but the panic created by an eclipse of the sun enabled him to escape to Conrad for protection. The Emperor was at Cremona, engaged in suppressing a revolt of the Lombard "vavasours," or small landowners. But he needed the Pope's co-operation against Heribert, the rebel Archbishop of Milan; he, therefore, restored Benedict to Rome, and in return bade him excom- municate Heribert. Supported by his brothers, Benedict instituted a reign of terror in Rome. The Lateran became the scene of wild orgies and extravagant follies. No story told of the Tusculan brothers was too execrable or too fantastically criminal to gain credence in Rome. The city seems to have been infested by a moral epidemic, but the records are too slight to enlighten us as to its history. Benedict himself seems to have put an end to his pontifical career by falling in love with his cousin, whose father, Ghardo de Saxo, required his would-be son-in-law to resign the Papacy as the condition of marriage with his daughter. Girardo had been bribed by the Roman candidate for the Papal throne, who instantly assumed the tiara as Sylvester III. But Girardo broke faith with his nephew, and Benedict IX., thwarted in his amorous bargain, resumed his office. But at last, finding himself powerless against the tide of hatred which his vices had accumulated, he sold the Papacy to a third candidate, John Gratianus, who consented to make over to Benedict the annual revenue, known as Peter's Pence, derived from England. Thus, in 1045, there were said to be three Popes in Rome, who had all of them seized the Holy Office by force, two of whom were morally unfit to be priests. The third, who took the title of Gregory VI., was a man of different calibre. He was a person of blameless reputation, who had bought the Papacy in order to deliver it out of unworthy hands. He was an enthusiast for reform, and his elevation was received with acclamation at Cluny. He was hailed with delight by the famous ascetic, St. Peter Damiani, who rejoiced that "the Dove had returned to the Ark ". Moreover, there stood at his side one whose name stands first among the great makers of the Papacy, and it is impossible to doubt the moral worthiness of the Pope 104 A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY from whom Hildebrand, in affectionate gratitude, took his title. But Gregory VI. could not get rid of the consequences of the past: his reprobate predecessors clogged his path, and his over- sensitive conscience smote him for the bold stroke of simony by which he had attained his position. In 1046, the German King, Henry III,, came to Italy, with the intention of putting an end to the disorders of Rome. At the Council of Sutri, the three Popes were one and all set aside. Sylvester III. was summarily deposed, and confined to a monas- tery. Gregory VI. confessed himself guilty of simony, and with quiet dignity surrendered to the Council. His short career was misunderstood by the majority of his contemporaries, who were uncertain whether to regard him as an apostate or a fool. It required the genius of a Hildebrand to do justice to his bold anachronism. From Sutri, Henry pressed on to Rome, where the formal deposition of the three Popes was read in St. Peter's. Benedict IX. still held out in the fortress of Tusculum, but Rome had done with Tusculan tyranny, and recognised in Henry III. a deliverer worthy of their unanimous allegiance. The general enthusiasm of his reception was enhanced by his verbal recognition of the electoral rights of Rome, when Henry bade the Romans choose their own Pope. The Senators gracefully yielded the right to the King, who indeed found the task of election no light one. It was difficult to find anyone worthy or willing to accept the re- sponsibility. Finally, Sindger of Bamberg reluctantly accepted, and took the title of Clement II. The coronation of Henry III., which followed immediately on the election of the new Pope, ushers in the new epoch, which is perhaps the most momentous in the whole of papal history. New principles and new ideas were about to come to birth, on which was to be founded the new Papacy. Under the Counts of Tusculum the Papacy had sunk to its lowest level : under Hildebrand it was to reach the pinnacle of power. CHAPTER XII THE PAPACY UNDER HILDEBRAND, a.d. 1046-1085 Part I, Hildebrand IN the period which is opened by the Council of Sutri, the principles upon which reform depended were self-evident, but the remoter issues which were bound up with it were hardly grasped at all. It was well to realise the abuses of simony and to wage war against clerical immorality ; but the root of the evil still remained untouched as long as the Church was ready to submit to the tutelage of secular authority. As long as papal elections required Imperial confirmation, the course of reform lay at the discretion of the Emperor, while spiritual appointments remained in the hands of the lay baronage, where was the guarantee for a worthy priesthood ? This was an aspect of the question which only time could reveal ; one man alone apprehended it at the time of the Council of Sutri, and he — the monk Hildebrand — left Home on the election of Clement II. Honour is due to the Emperor Henry III. for his lofty con- ception of the papal office, and for his statesmanlike zeal in the cause of its restoration as a moral force. Honour, too, must be ascribed to the reforming Popes who prepared the work of Hildebrand by recalling the ideal of Gregory I. If they were too ready in the pursuit of peace to cast away the sword, too intent upon inward restitution to turn their attention to emanci- pation from outward control, the mistake was an easy one to make. With such an emperor as Henry III. to deal with, it was hardly remarkable that the reforming Popes should accept his intervention in a submissive spirit. Indeed, the attitude of Hildebrand, who remained unsympathetic and critical in his retreat at Cluny, must have looked like sullen pessimism rather than political foresight. Clement II. only lived for a few months as Pope, and his sudden death in 1047 gave rise to the suspicion that he had been poisoned. The party of Benedict IX. had still to be reckoned with ; the ex-Pope returned to Rome on the death of Clement, and supported by Boniface of Tuscany — the chief Imperial vassal of Italy — he became the centre of an anti-imperial revolt. 105 106 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY But the alertness of Henry put an end to Benedict's prospects. He issued his challenge before his opponents were ready to take it up. He sent Poppo, Bishop of Brixen, to Boniface, and bade the Margrave escort him as Pope-designate to Rome. Boniface had no choice but reluctantly to comply, and abandoning Bene- dict, he stood by at the consecration of Poppo as Damasus II. Hardly had the new Pope effected the final expulsion of Benedict from Rome, when he himself met with a sudden death, which added to the sinister impressions created by recent papal history. To find a successor was harder than ever. Eventually Bruno of Toul, by an impulse little short of heroic, consented to risk his life in the service of St. Peter, and in 1049 assumed the title of Leo IX. He took pains to disguise the fact that he came as a stranger imposed on Rome by a foreign power, and no hint of German pride showed through his outward deference to the Roman people. Accompanied by Hildebrand, who had probably indicated the attitude which he adopted, Bruno approached the city bare-foot, and as a pilgrim craved permission to enter. He had previously stipulated to Henry that his acceptance of the papal ofiice should be conditional on the unanimous election of the Roman synod. His vindication of the electoral rights of Rome went a long way towards establishing his popularity in the city, and gave him at the outset an advantage which other German popes had not been wise enough to secure. But the Papacy to which as Leo IX. he succeeded was the mere shadow of its former self. Its temporal resources had been squandered by the Tusculans to the point of destitution ; and the new Pope even contemplated the prospect of selling his wardrobe as a means of paying his way. The Romans, once earning their bread in the prosperous service of the Lateran court, now lived precariously on the occasional alms of rich pilgrims, who, like Macbeth of Scotland in 1050, were moved to generosity by their pitiful condition. As with material wealth, so with the spiritual heritage of the new Pope. Half a century of bondage to an ex- tortionate and self-seeking nobility had obliterated the work of the Ottos, and effaced the memory of Gregory V. and Sylvester II. Peter Damiani's indictment of ecclesiastical morals, con- tained in his " Gomorrhianus," was condemned, not for exaggeration, but for its uncompromising revelation of the de- plorable truth, Leo adopted the wisest course open to him under the circum- stances. He remained but a little while in Rome, where he was confronted with distress which he was powerless to relieve. In THE PAPACY UNDEK HILDEBEAND 107 company with Hildebrand he travelled about in Italy and in Europe, restorins; his dominions at home and his authority abroad. In 1051, he made an expedition to South Italy, where he was adopted by the duchy of Benevento as its sovereign in place of the Lombard Pandulf. The value of the acquisition was, however, impaired by the Normans, who harried it under William of the Long Arm from their stronghold in Apulia. To ward off the hostility of the Normans, Leo collected an army of German mercenaries, and the two forces met in pitched battle at Civitate in 1053. The Pope, who headed the campaign in person, was completely defeated, but the Normans chivalrously received him into their midst, and besought his forgiveness for having taken up arms against him. Their generosity deserved a better return than it met with at the hands of Leo, who had no sooner pronounced the absolution which his enemies craved than he conspired against them with their persistent antagonist, the Eastern Emperor. Apart from his military failure in the South, Leo got much discredited for the Norman campaign, and its disasters were interpreted as the judgment of God, " since it befits the priest only to make war with the weapons of the spirit, and not to draw the iron sword in temporal matters" (Herman Contractus). Peter Damiani, Leo's personal friend, did not scruple to take him to task in a bold letter of remonstrance, in which he appeals to the example of Gregory in his dealings with the Lombards, contrasting it with that of Leo to the latter's disad- vantage. With a fine disregard of the interests of temporal power, the saint asks — " Why should armed hosts bluster with the sword for temporal and transitory possessions of the Church ? Why should Christians murder Christians on account of the loss of wretched property?" The glamour of Peter Damiani's idealism should not blind us to the real issues upon which papal policy depended. The development of the Papacy on spiritual lines seemed to lie within the boundary of a charmed circle. Temporal power was its antithesis, but it was also indispensable as a political expression of the spiritual conception. Such an expression was absolutely necessary in an age which invariably sought to visualise its ideals, and to express its abstract beliefs in terms of the concrete and the tangible. Again and again the conscience of mediaeval Christendom is outraged by the sight of a Pope leading his forces against a political antagonist, without a suspicion of the logical inconsistency which underlay these scruples. More effective than his diplomacy in South Italy were Leo's 108 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY wanderings in Europe. In Germany, he supported the Emperor by excommunicating the rebel, Godfrey of Lotharingia, who was brought to the feet of the Pope and the Emperor at Aachen. From Aachen he went to Rheims, where he attended an impor- tant Council, and asserted his prerogative by issuing decrees and commands without reference to the French King, who had ab- sented himself from the Council, owing to his jealousy of papal control. A Synod at Mainz followed the Council of Rheims, and Leo took the opportunity of making a general survey of ecclesi- astical affairs in Germany before returning to Rome in 1050. The value of Leo's European tour was incalculable to his young travelling companion, Hildebrand, whose alert intelligence was quick to receive impressions, and retentive in storing them up for the future. In 1054, Leo IX. died, and was succeeded by Victor II., another nominee of the German Emperor. The reason why Hildebrand was not elected has been the subject of discussion, but there were many motives which may have pointed to the postponement. Most probably he already foresaw the dimensions of the struggle by which he would be obliged to accomplish his end, and the character and might of Henry III. made him an unsuitable antagonist. Moreover, the condition of Rome was unfavourable : the general distress caused the populace as usual to turn against" the Popes, and without the loyalty of the city it would be hopeless to embark on the great life-and-death contest which the genius of Hildebrand had already sighted. So, for nearly twenty years longer, Hildebrand remained the power behind the throne, and unostentatiously secured the pre- liminary steps which paved the way for his ultimate triumph. In the same year as the coronation of Victor, Henry III. made an expedition to Italy with the object of reasserting his hold on the Tuscan province, which had fallen into the possession of his turbulent vassal, Godfrey of Lotharingia, through his marriage with Beatrice, the widow of the late Margrave. Two years later Henry III. died, bequeathing his crown to his six-year-old son, Henry IV., whom he commended to the care of the Pope. Pope Victor was present at the death of the great Emperor, and es- corted his child-heir to Aachen, where he crowned him. The minority of Henry IV., so disastrous from the Imperial standpoint, was the opportunity of the Papacy. To add to the advantage, the Empress, who was nominally regent, was a weak woman, and the education of the boy-king was neglected. Im- perial politics lay at the discretion of the Pope and the chief Imperial vassal, Godfrey of Tuscany, whose interests were THE PAPACY UNDER HILDEBRAND 109 from the first co-ordinate. Accordingly, when, in 1057 the death of Victor caused a new election, Stephen IX., the brother of Duke Godfrey, was elected by those who were on the spot, and his appointment was confirmed in the name of the Emperor. Hildebrand, though absent at the time, fully approved of the appointment. Stephen was a man after his own heart — an ardent reformer, a staunch advocate of the doctrine of papal freedom, and a fearless pioneer of new principles. Unfortunately, his pontifi- cate only lasted for a year, and his death, in 1058, caused a violent outbreak of hostility in Rome on the part of the noble factions. The Crescentine and the Tusculan parties waived their tradi- tional antagonism, and combined to elect the Bishop of Velletri, as anti-pope, Benedict X. Hildebrand, who was still absent from Rome, heard of it with consternation, and managed, for the moment, to patch up an alliance between the Empress Agnes and Godfrey of Tuscany, who consented to lay aside their mutual grievances and use their joint-authority in the support of Hildebrand's candidate, Nicholas II. But the event had proved to Hildebrand that the time was passed for the real issue to be submerged, and the famous Decree of Election of the year 1059 marks the beginning of a new phase, in which the Papacy sought no longer to disguise the rivalry underlying its dealings with the Empire. The schism which followed the death of Stephen IX. exposed the utter weakness of the papal position, owing to the anomalous condition of the principle of election, and Hildebrand resolved that such an opportunity should not occur again. The Decree of 1059 raised the Cardinal Bishops to the status of senators for the purpose of electing the Pope. The old indefinite electoral body— the " Clerus, Ordo, populusque" of Rome— were disfranchised, and the right of the Emperor to confirm the choice of the Cardinals was preserved in a vague clause, " saving due honour and reverence to Henry, at this present time king . . . even as we have granted this right to him and his successors, as many as shall personally obtain it from the Apostolic See ". The Synod, which passed the decree, was the largest which had ever met in the Lateran, but the priests who composed it were almost exclusively Italian. It was a national as well as a hierarchical revolution, in which every element of anti-German feeling had its share, and, for the moment, owing to the internal politics of Germany, it was suf- fered to pass unchallenged. There can be no reasonable doubt that the Decree of Election was largely, if not entirely, the work of Hildebrand, and that with its passing the Hildebrandine Papacy came into existence. 110 A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY But the legal foundation thus laid under Nicholas II. called for new security for political defence. The Decree of Election was followed up by the Norman Alliance, and at Melfi the Pope re- ceived the homage of Richard of Aversa and Robert' Guiscard, the two most prominent leaders in Italy of the foremost military nation of Europe. On the death of Nicholas II. in 1061 the opposition to the New Papacy broke out, and made itself generally felt throughout Italy in three years' civil war, which was the prelude to a greater struggle still to come. In this earlier contest, the antagonism raged round the German Crown rather than, as later, against it. In Germany, the Empress-regent was a cipher, and the boy Henry was under the tutelage of Archbishop Hanno, who had seized the Government by violence and kidnapped the King. Hanno was inclined to favour Hildebrand and his nominee, Alexander II., as against the opposition party of the Italian nobility and the anti-pope Cadalus. But the condition of Ger- many gave Hildebrand no assurance for depending on it as an ally. Against Hanno was arrayed the might of the German Counts, who were hostile both to his government and to his principles. On the one hand, they disputed the Archbishop's despotism, and, on the other, they disliked his association with the champion of reform, for the former implied hostility to feudal privileges, while the latter threatened the system of lay patronage which was the bulwark of their caste. In Italy the distribution of parties was fairly even, and at first Pope and anti-pope seemed to have equal chances of success. To counter-balance the German Counts, who ranged themselves on the side of Cadalus, Alexander relied for military support on the swords of the Normans, whose allegiance was as yet untried in the service of the Papacy. The leaders were drawn from the hierarchy by Alexander, and from the Roman nobility by his rival. Each side had its champions in the field of dialectic. The caustic eloquence of the worldling Bishop Benzo won for Cadalus many of his most signal triumphs, while the sonorous diatribes of Peter Damiani placed all the force of ascetic denunciation at the disposal of Alexander II. While the military struggle raged in Rome with a seriousness of pur- pose which recalled the contest of Caesar and Pompey, Benzo and Damiani hurled invectives across the literary arena. From the Lateran, which Alexander II. made his headquarters, the saint addresses the anti-pope as " the arrow from the bow of Satan, the rod of Asher, the shipwreck of chastity, the scum of the century, the food of Hell ". More efi"ective are the satirical THE PAPACY UNDEK HILDEBRAND 111 replies of the conceited Bishop of Alba, who compares himself to Cicero, and complains that " Asinander (i.e. Alexander) fills the world with nettles and vipers ". More than once Alexander was worsted by Benzo in the warfare of words, where the inferior abilities of Cadalus had failed to gain a political advantage. The connecting link between Germany and Italy was Milan. The Lombard city had long been a centre of political and religious turbulence. It was originally the stronghold of re- action as opposed to reform, and all the papal denunciations of clerical marriage had failed to shake the autocracy of the secularised clergy who dominated the city. Latterly, however, a democratic reform party had arisen, which, in the name of progress, had created riots, and attacked the married clergy in the streets. Hildebrand was, of course, in sympathy with the party of the Patarines, as the progressivists were called, and, under his auspices, Peter Damiani was sent to restore order. The hierarchy of Milan, who took refuge behind the privileges which they claimed as granted to them by St. Ambrose, heard of Peter's approach with the deepest concern. Nor were their fears unfounded. The "order" which the saint restored was one- sided : the old abuses were rigorously stamped out, and the Ambrosian privileges were mercilessly swept aside. For a time at least the Patarines remained in possession. But the contest between Alexander and Cadalus reopened the breach. The Ambrosian party flocked to the standard of Cadalus, while the Patarines took up the cause of Alexander. Meanwhile, Cadalus had managed to conquer the Leonina, but he fell back before the forces of Godfrey of Tuscany, who had undertaken to arbitrate between the two parties by forcing both to submit to the decision of the German Government. This was in 1062, and Henry was in the hands of Hanno of Cologne. Hanno had once been the leader of the Patarines, so that his sympathies were predisposed in favour of Alexander. Hence the German decision was given in favour of the reform party, which resulted in the return of Alexander to Rome, whence both he and his rival had been banished by the decree of Godfrey. But a revolution in Germany, which overthrew Hanno and restored the Empress to power, reflected itself in Italy to the discomfiture of the Pope in the renewal of the civil war. The next year was occupied by both parties in fruitless embassies to Henry, who was powerless in the hands of the ecclesiastical factions ; in futile recriminations on the part of Damiani, and wasted grandiloquence from the pen of Benzo. Finally, the restoration of Hanno to power in Germany brought 112 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY a decisive victory for Alexander, which was confirmed by the Council of Mantua in 1064. Supported by Godfrey of Tuscany and the Norman knights, the New Papacy was secured in its triumph. Alexander and Cadalus had not fought out their duel in vain, but it was with the strategists rather than the com- batants that the real issues lay. To the paramount influence of Hildebrand throughout the contest, the testimony of his grudg- ing admirer, Peter Damiani, bears witness. " I respect the Pope," he writes, "but I prostrate myself in adoration before you. You make him Lord, but he makes you God." The impress of Hildebrand's personality was never more forcibly felt than by the friend who had never liked him. The two men, akin in nothing but their aims, seemed bound together by a bond which their divergence of temperament, verging on the point of antipathy, failed to break. The magnetic attraction of genius alone can account for the unswerving loyalty and the unwilling deference which the independent and masterful ascetic invariably rendered to his "Holy Satan" — to use his own epithet for Hildebrand. The peace which had descended on the Papacy was once more disturbed in 1066 by Richard of Capua, the captain of the Norman forces, who seems to have considered the remuneration for his services to the Papacy inadequate. He marched against Rome, demanding the title of Patricius, and threatening to extort it by force. But Richard had miscalculated the extent of the Pope's dependence on him. Alexander appealed to his more powerful friend Godfrey of Tuscany, who came with his forces to Rome and reduced the Norman Duke to a proper sense of the relation of vassalage. With Godfrey came his step-daughter Matilda, the future Duchess of Tuscany, who was destined to have so large an influence on the fortunes of Hildebrand. Even in her girlhood Matilda showed signs of an individuality more strongly marked than is characteristic of the women of her period. She was courageous, proud, and indomitable, and her susceptibility to Hildebrand's influence was based on all that was strongest in her nature. She was impressionable without losing her independence of judgment : she grasped the full meaning of the Hildebrandine ideal, saw without flinching the goal to which it led, and laboured steadily for its fulfilment. The friendship between Matilda and Hildebrand which began at this time was sealed by experience till it became one of the most momentous and honourable of such relationships which history has ever recorded. Without the reliable support of the great Duchess, as she afterwards THE PAPACY UNDER HILDEBRAND 113 became, the greatest drama of papal history could never have been played. In the same year, the character of the young German King began to make itself felt in his relationship to the Pope. Henry IV. will always remain something of an enigma to history. His impulsiveness, his general ineffectiveness, intermingled with occasional spurts of energy — his power of recovering from disaster which gives the lie to the contemporary belief in his incompetence, form a picture of which it is hard to grasp the main outline. In 1066 he was married to the beautiful and deserving Bertha of Turin. But he took a capricious dislike to his bride and threatened to divorce her, and with this end in view he intrigued with the Archbishop of Mainz. He was, however, thwarted by Alexander, who sent Peter Damiani as legate to threaten the King with extreme spiritual penalties if he proceeded with the divorce. Urged by the Bishops, who dared not resist the papal commands, Henry submitted to Peter Damiani, received his Queen with honour, and became devoted to her in a short time, his domestic felicity relieving the tragedy of his later career. The submission of the King was followed by the humiliation of the German bishops, who had formed an aristocratic ring round the King during his minority, and were unwilling to relinquish their absolutism now that he had out- grown the leading-strings. A summons to answer a charge of simony brought the three leaders of the German hierarchy, among them the autocrat Hanno, to Rome, where they were formally condemned by the Easter Synod of 1070. The three Bishops returned to Germany completely humiliated by their reception in Rome ; Hanno of Cologne became a servitor in his own religious house, Siegfried of Mainz retired to Cluny, and Herman of Bamberg set to work to reform his episcopate on monastic lines. Meanwhile, the work of Hildebrand was already changing the face of Italy. Fresh disputes in Milan had brought new and more vital issues to the surface in connection with the con- secration of the Archbishop. In 1068, Archbishop Guido, the partisan of Cadalus, retired, and sent the deacon Godfrey, as a candidate for the Archbishopric, to King Hemy. But the clergy of Milan rose in a body against this infringement of the privilege of St. Ambrose : they claimed the right to elect their own Archbishop, and forced Guido to apologise and resume office in his own person. Four years later, death released Guido from his burden, and reopened the question of the election. This time the dispute turned on the right of ratification, and not as 8 114 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY before on the power of election, which was tacitly conceded to the Cathedral body. The question was whether the Pope or the German King had the right to confirm the appointment submitted to them by the Canons of Milan. Erlembald, the leader of the Patarines, declared for the Pope, but the Imperial party refused to nominate his candidate Atto, and forced the latter to repudiate his election. But the death of the anti-pope Cadalus at this juncture secured the ultimate triumph of the Hildebrandine party. Thanks to the efibrts of Erlembald, Atto was confirmed in the Archbishopric, and, for the time at least, the German King had lost his foothold in the Lombard capital. Such was the situation in the North. In the South, con- ditions were even more favourable to the high papal party. With the exception of Richard of Aversa, the Normans vied with one another in zeal for the championship of the Holy See. As a race, these roving warriors seem to have been endowed with a peculiarly religious temperament. They had fallen on their knees and craved absolution from their pontifical captive after the battle of Civitate. They had undertaken the conquest of Sicily as a religious war, and dedicated their arms to the service of St. Peter. The great William had set out for the conquest of England under the papal banner, for which he had petitioned with a gratifying humility. The adoption of the cause of William the Conqueror was the individual efi'ort of Hildebrand, and nothing is more characteristic of his infallible intuition than the persistency with which he urged the identi- fication of the papal interests with the Norman conquest of England. He was statesman enough to see beyond the piety of the English kings, when they came as pilgrims to the confession of St. Peter; he read between the lines of the ecclesiastical reports, and detected the insular spirit which animated Anglo- Catholicism from the time of Augustine; he recognised the geographical conditions by which nature fostered that spirit, and he welcomed as an antidote the project which would in all probability draw the island nation nearer to Europe, and so bring it into closer touch with Rome. Part II. Gregory VII. In twenty years of silent toil and unobtrusive draughtsman- ship, Hildebrand had laid the foundations of his wonderful creation. The death of Alexander II. in 1073 called him to direct its completion in the eyes of the world. " Let Hildebrand be Pope ! " was the cry of the Romans, which was echoed to the THE PAPACY UNDER HILDEBRAND 115 limits of Christendom. And indeed the time was fully ripe. The fabric was all prepared, and none but the designer himself could supply the few master-strokes which remained to be efifected. His objects were so clearly defined that they need no classification, but they may be summarised under two aspects. On the one hand, there is his positive end — the reorganisation of the Church by means of the papal supremacy — and on the other hand, the negative aspect, which is the corollary of the former — the liberation of the Church from lay control in all the branches of its government. Hildebrand was consecrated on June 29, 1073, taking his title from his first patron, Gregory VI., in recognition of services to the Papacy which had been singularly unrequited. His election was not confirmed or ratified by the German King, who claimed no voice in the matter but acquiesced in its accomplish- ment. In a letter to Godfrey II. of Tuscany, the husband of the Duchess Matilda, Gregory VII. defines the attitude which he in- tended to adopt towards Henry IV. They were to be as father and son. but if the King were to fail in dutiful submission, then "we will not, God helping us, incur the curse pronounced on him ' who keepeth back his sword from blood ' ". The words contained a challenge, but if they reached the King they fell on deaf ears, for Henry was absorbed in a life and death struggle with his Saxon vassals. Gregory's first Council, in 1074, sounded the keynote of his pontificate in spiritual afi'airs, and prepared the way for the formation of parties. The decrees against simony and clerical marriage were re-issued with renewed force, and extreme penal- ties attached to them. Opposition broke out simultaneously in all the centres of Christendom where the decrees were pro- mulgated. In Rome itself, where moral conditions were at their worst, the clergy upon whom the penalties fell became the nucleus of opposition. The sixty " Mansionarii," or lay-deputies, who impersonated the Cardinals of St. Peter's, were expelled without mercy, and the Cathedral was no longer the scene of nocturnal orgies, which had outraged the feelings of so many pious pilgrims to the Apostles' grave. As at Milan the Patarines had forced the higher clergy into opposition to the New Papacy, so in Rome the execution of the decrees threw a large body of clerical offenders on to the anti-Gregorian side. At Passau, Bishop Altmann was nearly murdered in an attempt to enforce the edict. In Paris, a Synod returned to Gregory the answer that, "what he wanted was inacceptable and contrary to reason," and at Cambrai, the monks unanimously declared themselves in 116 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY favour of " the usages (i.e. concubinage) which have been wisely established by the indulgence of our fathers ". Henry IV. meanwhile maintained his outward neutrality and adopted an attitude of hostile inaction, dictated by the political crisis with which he was faced in Germany. In the face of an opposition so general and so concerted, it was necessary to bind the Normans still more closely to the Holy See. With this object in view Gregory visited South Italy in 1074, and endeavoured unsuccessfully to extort an oath of allegiance from Robert Guiscard. The Norman settlement was divided against itself, and Robert was jealous of Gregory's friendship with his rivals, Richard of Capua and Gisulf of Salerno. The oath which Robert refused and which Richard of Capua and Landulf of Benevento accepted, gave the primary allegiance of the Normans to the Papacy, and made their loyalty to Henry conditional on the Papal pleasure. Thus, secure in the renewed support of the Normans, Gregory returned to Rome, where he received a letter of profound self-abasement and peni- tent submission from Henry — a frame of mind dictated by his defeat at the hands of the Saxons. Events seemed to point to a forward policy. Europe was pre- pared for something startling, and in 1075, Gregory's second Council launched his ultimatum at his enemies. A decree was passed which in " uncompromising language forbade the lay in- vestiture of the clergy in all its forms and throughout all the ranks of the hierarchy. The Investiture Edict was a momentous innovation, and its direct results were fifty years of war and centuries of controversy. And yet it was in reality the climax towards which events had been tending ever since the year 800. For nearly 300 years, spiritual and temporal principles had been at war in the political arena; all the failures of reform — the dark phases of secular tyranny in papal history, and the darker moments of ecclesiastical degradation — were traceable to the root antagonism which underlay spiritual and temporal interests, and the inability of contemporaries to distinguish between them. The insight of Hildebrand was required to formulate the dis- tinction, and his unerring political genius instantly recognised that it was a question of war to the hilt. If the Church was to be pure, the Church must be free, and the freedom of the Church meant freedom from lay control. Such was the logic of Hilde- brand, and so far he was justified. But he went further, and aimed at maintaining the temporal power of the Church intact, while at the same time he waged war against its natural con- sequence, the principle of secularism. It was here that his logic THE PAPACY UNDER HILDEBRAND 117 broke down. The metaphor of Peter Damiani, comparing the relation of the temporal to the spiritual power to that of the body to the bouI, expresses only one aspect of the Hildebrandine ideal ; the force of the simile was destroyed when it was applied to a materialised conception of spirituality. It was not, however, the theoretical aspect of the question which roused the militant spirit of Europe. Gregory's contem- poraries saw in the Investiture Edict an unwarrantable encroach- ment on the part of the Papacy, which called for immediate resistance. At the head of the opposition stood the German King, and Henry was temporarily in a strong position, owing to a series of military successes in Saxony. The fall of Erlenbald and the defeat of the Patarines gave him the support of Milan, which received a new anti-papal Archbishop in the German Tedald. But the first blow was struck in Rome itself, by the rebel Cencius — half brigand and half noble, who identified the losing cause of anti-reform with the spirit of lawless aristocracy, and thus sealed its doom. On Christmas Day, 1075, Gregory was celebrating Mass in St. Maria Maggiore. Cencius, sup- ported by kindred spirits of his own class, rushed the building with drawn sword, seized the Pope by the hair, wounded him, and carried him off to his fortress on the Campagna. Here Gregory was ill-treated by Cencius and insulted by his sisters, till he was finally rescued by the Roman people, who were now and always his warmest allies in his own territories. The dig- nity and courage of the Pope throughout the episode contrast very favourably with the blustering brutality of his captors. He submitted with Spartan endurance to the indignities heaped upon him, and answered the recriminations of the virago women with stern silence. Instead of begging for release, he dictated his own terms to Cencius, promising to forgive him if after a pilgrimage the rebel returned penitent to his feet — a promise which was faithfully kept by Gregory, while Cencius rewarded his clemency by ravaging his lands and supporting his enemies. At his release the Pope was carried back in triumph to St. Maria, where he finished the Mass which had been interrupted the day before. The conspiracy of Cencius hastened on the final struggle, and lent new bitterness to Gregory's mental attitude towards his enemies. Whether or no the enterprise was inspired or stimulated by Henry IV. is uncertain ; it was, however, the immediate prelude of the great personal duel which forms the climax of the papal-imperial struggle. Henry IV. now threw off the last semblance of caution. Hig victory of Hohenburg had revived his eelf-confidence, and the 118 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY reception which was generally accorded to the Investiture Edict led him to under-estimate Gregory's position in Europe. Henry consequently recalled the counsellors whom Gregory had in- duced him to banish, he sold benefices, confirmed Tedald in the Archbishopric of Milan, and generally broke all the promises which he had made in his first letter to the Pope in 1073. Gregory would let nothing pass : he wrote a private letter demanding the King's instant repentance, to which the testimony of German Bishops was required. He compared Henry to Saul, ofi'ering him excommunication as the only alternative to sub- mission. He dwelt on the scandals of the King's private life, founding his accusations on vague rumours which stung Henry at a vulnerable point. Henry in lury expelled the legates from his court, and summoned a council at Worms, which, under the presidency of Siegfried of Mainz, pronounced the deposition of the Pope. Only the madness of blind rage could account for so inpolitic and indefensible a retaliation. The tone of the King's letter is the best clue to his amazing indiscretion. " Henry, not by usurpation but by God's holy will King, to Hildebrand, not Pope, but false monk. " This salutation hast thou deserved, upraiser of strife, thou who art cursed instead of blessed by every order in the Church. Let me be brief: the Archbishops, Bishops, and Priests thou hast trodden under thy feet as slaves devoid of will. Thou boldest them all as ignorant, thyself alone as wise. We suffer all from reverence for the seat of the Apostle ; thou heldest reverence for fear, thou resistedst the royal power itself which God has conferred on us, and threatenedst to depose us, as if rule and empire stood not in God's hands but in thine. Christ has called us to the empire, but not thee to the Papacy. Thou ac- quiredst it by craft and fraud ; in scorn of thy monastic cowl thou obtainedst favour by gold, by favour arms, by arms the throne of peace, from which thou hast destroyed peace, for thou armedst the subjects against the powers that be and preachest treason against the Bishops called by God, to depose and con- demn whom thou even givest power to the laity. Wilt thou depose me, a blameless king, who am judged by God alone, since the Bishops left judgment over even an Apostate Julian to God. Does not Peter, the true Pope, say : ' Fear God, honour the King ' ? Because thou fearest not God, thou knowest not me, whom he has appointed. The curse of St. Paul touches thee, the judgment of all our Bishops condemns thee, and says to thee : ' Descend from the Apostolic throne which thou hast THE PAPACY UNDEK HILDEBKAND 119 usurped, that another may take it, who will not do violence to religion but teach the true doctrine of Peter'. I, Henry, by God's grace King, with all our Bishops call on thee : — Descend, descenei ! " The deposition had not even the semblance of legality to give it force, but it was enthusiastically ratified on its way to Rome by the Bishops of North Italy. Roland, a deacon of Parma, presented it to Gregory in the midst of the Lateran Council on February 22. The Prefect of the City drew his sword against the intrepid envoy, who was, however, protected from injury by the interference of Gregory himself. The Council rose as one man to defend the Pope, and even Henry's own mother, the dowager-Empress Agnes, attempted no protest in favour of her son. To Hildebrand it was the crucial moment of his career, and the profound religiousness underlying his energy came to the surface in his counter-reply. " Holy Peter, chief of the Apostles, incline I pray thee thine ear to me, hear me, thy servant, whom thou hast nourished from childhood, and hast saved to this day out of the hand of the enemies who have hated and still hate me because I serve thee in truth. Thou art my witness . . . that I counted it not robbery to ascend to thy chair, and that rather would I end my days in foreign lands than snatch at thy seat by worldly in- trigues. Of thy free grace, not because of my works, did it please thee that the Christian people entrusted to my care should obey me as thy delegate, and for thy sake has the power been granted me to bind and to loose in heaven and on earth. Being full of this confidence for the honour and protection of thy Church, in the name of Almighty God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, by virtue of thy authority, I deprive King Henry, son of the Emperor Henry, who with unexampled pride has risen against thy Church, of the government of the whole Empire of Germany and Italy, I release all Christians from the oath which they have made, or yet may make to him, and hereby forbid any man to serve him as king. For it is meet that whosoever strives to diminish the honour of thy Chiirch should himself lose the honour which he seems to have. And because he scorns to obey like a Christian, and returns not to the Lord, whom he has renounced by fellowship with the excommunicated, by divers evil deeds, by despising my admonitions administered for his salvation, and by separating himself from the Church, I do bind him in thy name with the bonds of anathema, that the nations may know and confess that thou art Peter, and that 120 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY upon this rock the Son of the living God has built His Church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it." ^ The words sound across the ages with the vibration which mere eloquence has never created. The splendour of the Hilde- brandine ideal, the dramatic intensity of the crisis, even the outstanding wonder of the personality of the Pope — these are insufficient to account for the effect of Gregory's anathema. The source of its unique significance in history, the secret of its immediate result, the hidden force which stunned his enemies and thrilled his adherents, was the inspiration of the Rock. Powerless against the spiritual challenge, Henry waited for the weakness of his position to be revealed. He looked round for his allies, and found them in the enemy's camp. Two-thirds of Germany were his feudal enemies, personal rivals such as Welf of Bavaria, Rudolf of Swabia and Berthold of Carinthia, who were in close intrigue with the legates. The Bishops who had signed the unfortunate edict of deposition against Gregory now hastened to make their submission, undertaking to hold no dealings with the excommunicated King. Henry called diets at Worms and at Mainz, but the results were fatal to his ebbing courage. His enemies meanwhile assembled themselves at Tribur in the autumn of 1076. Henry, from Oppenheim, tried to treat with the presiding princes, but the Council unanimously turned a deaf ear, and demanded his instant reconciliation with the Pope. Finally, the King's deposition was pronounced, and Henry was obliged to retire to Speyer as a private individual, to await the coming of his chief adversary, who was to pass judgment on him at a proposed Council to be held at Augsburg in February. The situation was desperate enough, and to add to it the King's spirit was broken. The isolation of his position became intolerable, and secretly, in mid-winter, he set out across the Mont Cenis, accompanied by his wife and child, and the few faithful courtiers who clung to him in pity. In Italy, the tide had turned against the Pope, and had the King come in a different guise he might have counted on the support of the North, But the fugitive pilgrim stirred the contempt of the proud Lombards, who turned their backs as he passed on his way to Canossa. Here Gregory had fixed his headquarters as the guest of the loyal Matilda, whose lands and forces were now as always at his dis- posal. For three days the German king waited in the outer Court craving with tears and prayers the privilege of humbling 1 From the translation given by G. Kruger in " The Papacy : its Idea and Ex- ponents". (Fisher Un win,) THE PAPACY UNDER HILDEBRAND 121 himself before the Pope. Daily the German bishops passed in before him to make their submission, scornfully pitying the royal suppliant as he knelt in the snow. At last the heart of Matilda was moved to compassion and her pleading won for Henry the privilege of a penitent. On January 28 Gregory absolved him, and received his crown into his hands until the Council should have acquitted him, and he should have sworn obedience to the papal will as the condition for again receiving it. The closing scene of the drama is the unconfirmed but probably authentic account of the Mass at Canossa. Gregory is reported to have solemnly cleared himself by oath, with the Host in his hand, from all the charges brought against him by his enemies. He then challenged the penitent King to follow his example, but Henry is said to have shrunk in guilt from the terrible test and confessed himself afraid. The victory of Canossa bafiles analysis. It raises Hildebrand above the level of other heroes of action; Caesar and Napoleon pale before him in the glow which encircles the battle of ideas, for whereas they fought their way with their legions at their back, Hildebrand strove single-handed with the weapons of the spirit. Caesar's campaigns can be compared with other mOitary successes, and the battle of Lodi is not without a parallel outside the career of Napoleon ; but Canossa stands alone. Hildebrand's triumph was too complete, and the reaction was inevitable. As Henry retraced his steps, the disgust which his craven submission had aroused vented itself in anger against the Pope. The German princes had required the King to reconcile himself with Gregory, but they had not bargained for this. They refused to identify themselves with the humiliating treaty of Canossa, and disowning the King who had lost in their eyes his self-respect, they elected Rudolf of Swabia to succeed him. Henry was thus finally stung beyond endurance, and his moral recovery was signalised in his alliance with the Lombards. Gregory, on his side, collected his allies. Besides the forces of Matilda, he thought he co\iId count on the support of the Normans, and the impression was confirmed by the tardy homage of Robert Guis- card, which was now rendered to him. Thus encouraged, Gregory tendered the same oath to William of England, but he was met with a flat refusal from the Conqueror, who had already imbibed the independent spirit of his adopted kingdom. It was in 1080 that the first symptom of decline in the papal fortunes made itself felt. Gregory realised that he could not count on Italy : the Normans, absorbed in their own concerns, showed signs of cooling ofi', and it became necessary to look once more to 122 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY Germany. Up to this point, Gregory had treated both the parties in Germany as his antagonists. Henry had openly declared hostihty, and banished the papal legates. The princes, on the other hand, had broken the papal treaty by electing Rudolf of Swabia as king. The Pope, however, decided to overlook the lesser offence for the more effective punishment of the greater, and con- sequently agreed to recognise Rudolf and ally himself with the German princes. He cursed Henry's arms, reiterating the poignant phrases of the earlier excommunication ; but repetition weakened the effect of the spiritual onset. Henry in reply created as anti-pope Wilbert of Ravenna — young, impetuous and ambitious — and with him prepared to march against Rome. At the same moment, Rudolf of Swabia died, and his successor Hermann of Luxemburg, was not influential enough to hold the interests of the opposition united. The four years' campaign forms a weary sequel to the earlier phase of the struggle, and its chief interest lies in the extra- ordinary display of energy on the part of Henry IV. From his encampment on the Neronian field, he set to work to revive all the old Imperial factions. He sought out the remnants of the Cadalus-Benzo party, he attracted the Tusculan interest, and revived the pretensions of the extinct Senate. He espoused the cause of anti-reform wherever he found an opportunity : every obsolete battle-cry found an echo in his camp. He fanned the republican spark in the dominions of Matilda, and sanctioned the revolts of Pisa, Lucca, and Genoa — three of her most valuable towns — which accepted the freedom of Imperial cities at the hands of the German King. To Ravenna, where Henry fixed his winter-quarters, the Eastern Emperor sent a request for his alliance against the Normans. In spite of the turn of the tide, Henry was repulsed in 1082 in an attempt on Rome, and had to fall back on the Campagna. The attraction of the superman still clung about his rival, and showed itself in the tenacious loyalty of Matilda and the dogged fidelity of fickle Rome. Only after three years' resistance — in June, 1083 — did the populace waver in its enthusiasm. Gregory's friends implored him to make peace, but he refused to hear of compromise "unless the King lay down his crown, and make satisfaction to the Church". Henry's reply was to rush the Leonina, and establish himself in the newer half of the city. In February, 1084, the anti-pope Wilbert was crowned in St. Peter's as Clement III. ; he instantly proceeded to the coronation of Henry as Holy Roman Emperor. Gregory began to see that his days in Rome were numbered, and reluctantly fell back on THE PAPACY UNDER HILDEBRAND 123 his emergency policy. He issued a compelling summons to Robert Guiscard. knowing that it meant the sacrifice of Rome for the honour of St. Peter. Robert Guiscard came, and at his back a wild horde of fighting-men, composed of Saracens, Greeks, and Normans. The desperate off-scourings of Southern Europe were let loose in the streets of Rome. They made short work of Henry and his Germans, but they also struck the hero of Rome from his pedestal. Gregory had counted the cost. As he took his way southward, escorted by Robert, he knew that he could never show his face again in the city which had idolised him, which had saved his life in the conspiracy of Cencius, and stood by him in the hour of defeat — which in the last resort had made on his behalf the ultimate sacrifice. Still he did not flinch, and he was never more imperious than in this, the darkest hour. Was it the desperate courage of a hero in mis- fortune, determined to die worthily ; or did he see through the semblance of failure to the reality of victory ? At Monte Cassino he was received with affectionate honour by his friend, the Abbot Desiderius ; at Salerno he lived for a year as the guest of Robert Guiscard. In May, 1085, he called his followers to his side, and informed them that he had only eight days more to live. He faced death as he had encountered the crises of life, with the simplicity of entire devotedness. A statesman to the last, he made provision for the future, suggesting four possible successors, and among them his friend, Desiderius. Then, turning away from politics, which had never wearied him because he made them his highest self-expression, he pro- nounced his own epitaph : " I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity : therefore, I die in exile ". A contemporary of Gregory's — Cardinal Deusdedit — sum- marised the ideal which he lived to vindicate in twenty-seven propositions, expressed in the spirit, probably in the language, of Gregory himself. "The Roman Church," he writes, "has been founded by God alone. Only the Pope has the right to issue new laws, to found new sees, to depose bishops without the sentence of a synod. He alone has the right to make use of the imperial insignia. He alone offers his foot to be kissed by princes. His name alone is invoked in all Churches. His name Pope is unique in the world. He has the right to depose emperors. He can release subjects from their allegiance to unjust rulers. Without his authority no chapter, no book, is canonical. His decision is unimpeachable. He can be judged by no one. The Roman Church has never erred, and never will err throughout eternity, as the Holy Scriptures prove. 124 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY If the Roman Pope has been canonically elected, he becomes holy by the merits of S. Peter, He only is Catholic who is in unity with the Roman Church ". In revolutionary courage, this ideal has never been equalled, but it owed its realisation — as far as it was realised — to the stamp of authority with which it seemed to be sealed. No one guessed at the extent of the innovation ; many there were who were not quite sure whether it was new at all. This was Hildebrand's secret, and its discovery was the greatest of his achievements. He looked back through the mists of the past, and claimed to draw aside the veil. He caught at the vague terminology of the " spiritualia," and gave it the force of a political logic. He applied the loose metaphors of the canonists to the existing conditions and pressed them to their ultimate conclusion. He found the Papacy a delegacy of the German kingdom ; he left it an independent and militant Empire. PART III THE MIDDLE AGES CHAPTER XIII THE INVESTITURE WAR, a.d. 1085-1122 GREGORY'S magnificent career had ended in exile and apparent defeat, but his victory was still unconsum- mated and his achievement far from complete. The clue to the reality of his triumph is to be found in the epoch of which he is the founder, rather than in his own genera- tion. It requires the perspective of history to do justice to an idea of such immense significance as that of the Hilde- brandine Papacy. The followers who stood round the grave of the Pope at Salerno mourned for his ideals as those without hope, bewailing the colossal energy spent in vain, and the heroic toil so tragically unrequited. Many of them lived to see their pessimism disproved, for, sombre and despairing, they stood in the cheerless half-light which ushers in the splendour of dawn. The figure of Hildebrand stands midway between the old order and the new. Behind him lay the " Dark Ages " of chaos and anarchy, and before him stretch the " Middle Ages " of chivalry. For the period which is dominated by his memory is the era of the Crusades — of monastic revival in its noblest expression, and of mediaeval thought at its richest and best. Romance throughout the ages, and Romanticists from Mallory to Tennyson, have delighted to idealise and embellish its institutions, and to portray with unerring historical instinct the child-like sincerity of the most religious of all ages. At the head of the new Europe — at once the pivot on which the system turned, and the highest expression of the spirit of the age — stood the new Papacy, strong in the strength of its moral regeneration, and lifted high above the clouds of political idealism. Never before or after has the great papal idea approached so nearly to its fulfilment, and never was the mag- nificence of its conception more strikingly revealed. Hildebrand had died in exile, but the Hildebrandine ideal shone triumphant out of the darkness, and through the mists of apparent failure rose steadily to its zenith. For the moment, the outlook was dark enough. The little 127 128 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY group of friends who had followed Gregory to Salerno cowered before the on-coming storm, and sought in vain to replace the lost leader. For two years, Desiderius of Monte Casino fought to avoid the pontificate, which the Hildebrandine party, acting on the impulse of obedience to the memory of their hero, sought to thrust on his unwilling shoulders. Desiderius was a man of blameless life, and an able diplomatist, but he lacked the force of character to deal successfully with a crisis. Gregory had chosen him as his successor chiefly because he was on the spot, and because it was necessary that there should be no delay in pushing forward the campaign against Henry IV. Finally, the Roman populace forced Desiderius to acquiesce and assume the title of Victor III. The death of Robert Guiscard, however, and the defection of his son, Roger, made his position in Rome very critical, and his half-hearted efiforts brought him defeat and expulsion at the hands of the Imperial Prefect. Then it was that the Gregorian party began to consider the advisability of electing another Pope, which had the effect of goading Desiderius to activity. From March, 1087, to the fol- lowing September, Victor III. and the anti-pope, Clement, fought face to face in and about the city of Rome. Victor's death interrupted the campaign, and made room for an abler man — the political lieutenant and the intellectual successor of Gregory VII. Urban 11.^ was a French nobleman, with the characteristic grace and agility of his nation and his class. As Abbot of Cluny he had served his apprenticeship as an ecclesiastical ruler, and as legate in Germany he had studied the policy and the prin- ciples of the hierarchical party. He came to Rome in 1088, escorted by a Norman army, and announced his intention of following in the footsteps of Hildebrand. Hurling defiance across the Tiber at his rival, Clement III., he set to work instantly to restore the fortunes of his demoral- ised party. The waning loyalty of the great Countess of Tus- cany was revived by an unsuitable marriage with the boy-heir of the House of Gwelf, which introduced for the first time a name hereafter to be linked inseparably with the political fortunes of the Papacy. The Gwelfs of Bavaria now played the part which Godfrey of Lotharingia had filled in the preceding generation, as the arch-rebels of the Imperial throne. Hence the alliance between the Houses of Bavaria and Tuscany served for the moment to infuse new strength into the Hildebrandine party, 1 1088-99. THE INVESTITURE WAR 129 In 1090, Henry IV. found it necessary to come back to Italy to oppose this new alliance. Rome, weary of strife, turned to the Emperor as to a deliverer, and welcomed his decree of banish- ment directed against both the Popes. His recall of Clement III. in the following year, and the subsequent fall of Mantua, the centre of Matilda's resistance, created a panic in the papal party, and led to one of the most deplorable of their counter- moves. They turned to Conrad, the weak and discontented son of Henry IV., and incited him to revolt against his father. They encouraged his priggish disapproval of Henry, and threatened him with spiritual and temporal disasters if he continued in his opposition to Urban II. The disloyal and pliable youth was easily won : a Lombard league was formed in his name, and he was crowned anti-king at Milan, When, in 1093, Henry's second wife joined the rebels, his impetuous spirit was broken. The fortunes of Urban revived; he returned to Rome in 1094, under the protection of the Frangipani, his debts were paid by Godfrey of Vendome, and the constructive aspect of his pontijQcate was in sight. Urban saw that the struggle between the Papacy and the Em- pire had loomed too large on the horizon since Canossa; Christen- dom was tired of it, and demanded something else to think about. The panacea which he offered was not an original one, but in its production at this particular moment we detect a genuine flash of political inspiration. The capture of Jerusalem by the Turks, in 1076, had brought a flock of outraged pilgrims to Rome, with tales of sacrilege and atrocity, which had moved their hearers to the kindred mediaeval passions of pity and ferocity. Hildebrand took up the cause as warmly as his politi- cal pre-occupations would admit, and Robert Guiscard had al- ready responded to the appeal. But it was reserved for Urban II. to give the movement its pan-European setting, and to assitin to it its importance in history. In March, 1095, Urban preached the first Crusade at the Council of Piacenza. The response which greeted his appeal justified him in calling a second and more general assembly at Clermont in the following November. Peter the Hermit carried the tidings over the Alps, and urged all sinners to win unconditional forgiveness by means of the Holy War. The congenial penance of fighting and pillage was offered as a substitute for the wearisome pilgrimage or the humiliating personal chastisement. What wonder that Urban was greeted at Clermont by a crowd which committed him irre- vocably to the Crusading enterprise, on a scale which exceeded all anticipation ? 9 130 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY Among the crowd of saints and sinners which mobilised under the Crusading banner, there was no lack of pure en- thusiasm for the Holy Sepulchre to be set ablaze by the eloquence of the Pope. But it was to the rough hearts' of the warrior -penitents that his words were more urgently directed. " Rise, turn your weapons, dripping with the blood of your brothers, against the enemy of the Christian faith. You, oppressors of orphans and widows ; you, murderers and violators of Churches ; you, robbers of the property of others ; you, who accept money to shed the blood of Christians ; you, who like vultures are drawn by the scent of the battle-field, hasten, as you love your souls, under your Captain Christ to the rescue of Jerusalem. All you who are guilty of such sins as exclude you from the kingdom of God, ransom yourselves at this price, for such is the will of God ". The shout of " Dieu le veult" sealed the words of the Pope with the assent of Christendom, and for better or worse the first Crusade was launched. The devout Normans of Italy, under their hero-leaders Tancred and Boemund, were the first to re- spond ; their brothers of France and England, under Robert of Flanders, Robert of Normandy, and Stephen of Blois, and the royal forces of France under the king's brother, Hugh of Verman- dois, followed in course of time. The Pope blessed the forces at Lucca, and pronounced the plenary absolution on the just and the unjust among them. As they passed through Rome and knelt before the shrine of the Apostles, the partisans of the powerless anti-pope threw missiles from the roof of St. Peter's on to the heads of the kneeling warriors, thus proving by their petty demonstration their recognition of Urban's triumph. The Emperor alone had held aloof from the first Crusade, and in so doing missed the greatest opportunity of his life. The defection of Henry IV. enabled the Popes thereafter to claim, as originators of the idea, to have efi"ected the results which ensued. And in this assumption they were undoubtedly justified. The leadership of Europe was at stake ; the Emperor, absorbed in his own concerns, let the opportunity pass, and the Pope, as so often before, stepped into the breach. Urban did not long survive his great enterprise, and his death in 1099 marks the passing of Hildebrand's generation. He was soon followed to the grave by his rival, Clement III., in whose harassed life all recognised that of a hero, and some that of a saint. The miracles worked at his grave caused some difficulty to the successor of Urban, who was obliged in self-defence to throw his bones into the Tiber. In 1101, young Conrad — the THE INVESTITURE WAR 131 hope of the hierarchical party — alec died, and, five years later, the death of his father brought the epilogue of the Canossa drama to an end. Henry IV. died, excommunicated and deposed, but not altogether inglorious. Throughout his ad- venturous life he had never vs^anted a small band of faithful adherents, ready to serve him to the death, and at the close, when it was too late to be of any assistance, he won back the support of the young Gwelf, who had quarrelled with Matilda and broken with the Gregorian party. Henry had failed because, unlike Gregory, his aims had been too diffuse, and his energy too spasmodic. The absence of any consistent object in his policy threw him always on the defensive, and the man who fights with his back to the wall has not much scope for initiative. For this reason, Henry was always seen at his best after defeat ; his volatile nature made him as quick to recover from a blow as to be quelled by it. The recovery of the penitent of Canossa after his humiliation is only less remarkable than the victory of Gregory, and it is not in every generation that an Emperor has such an adversary to face. The troubled reign of Paschalis II. — a Cluniac monk of saintly character and insufficient political force — ushers in the new generation. The first six years of his pontificate were monopolised by petty wars with the barons, who in the absence of Imperial authority were eager to assert their feudal indepen- dence in repeated attacks on the Papacy. The great House of Colonna offered territorial opposition in Latium. The Corsi defied Paschalis in Rome and, assisted by the Margrave Werner, supported Maginulf as anti-pope, and forced Paschalis to flee to the Tiber island for refuge. A breathing-space in 1106 gave an opening for the real business of the pontificate — the solution of the Investiture problem. Everyone longed for peace, but no one was willing to pay the price. The compromise proposed by Paschalis at the Diet of Guastalla was, moreover, inadequate and impossible. His suggestion was that the Investiture Edict should be enforced but that the schismatic Bishops appointed by Clement III. should be recognised. The settlement was to be concluded the following Christmas at Augsburg. The sole result was the increase of the general discontent on both sides. Paschalis in despair set out for France, but in his absence the baronial revolt broke out afresh, and the Pope was obliged to force his way back to Rome with the assistance of a Norman escort. Such was the state of aff'airs when, in 1110, Henry V. came to claim the Imperial Crown which the distracted Pope had 132 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY promised to bestow on him in return for a vague oath of reverence to the Church. The Emperor-designate was the least attractive of the interesting series of Imperial candidates who found their way across the Alps in the Middle Ages. Cold and calculating, he compels our admiration by his very relentless- ness in the pursuance of his immediate end. While Paschalis hid his fears behind bold words and reissued the Investiture Edict, while he summoned the Normans to protect him, Henry pressed on through Lombardy with 30,000 troops at his back. The Lombards, proud of their new independence, tried to oppose him, but Henry burnt every fortress which ofifered resistance, and even Matilda was forced to submit and take the oath of vassalage. Paschalis sent his envoys to Henry at Turin, where the Pope's second peace proposition was laid before him. The new scheme, which looks at first sight like a quixotic sacrifice on the part of the Pope, was, in reality, the last resort of an exhausted combatant. Paschalis proposed that the Bishops should sur- render their temporal fiefs and live on their tithes, while the Emperor on his side was to renounce the right of investiture. The Church was to be poor, but free : in return for the political advantage of their new status, the Bishops were to embrace the Apostolic condition of personal poverty. But the Papacy, on the other hand, was to retain its Dominium intact, and the Bishops were not slow to seize upon the inconsistency underlying this aspect of the settlement. The attitude which Henry adopted does more credit to his astuteness than to his sincerity. He perused the treaty, saw through it, and beyond it, to the havoc which it would create, and finally adopted it. Relentless and inscrutable, he pressed on to Rome, concealing under a mask of passive disdain the passions of an avenger of Canossa. He took no pains to ingratiate himself with the crowd which assembled at Monte Mario to do him honour ; he answered their flowery Latin orations in rough German, and laughed at the solemn greetings of the scholae. It was not until the decree of Paschalis was read in St. Peter's that the attitude of Henry was finally revealed. A storm of indignation from the dispossessed Bishops greeted the Pope's well-meaning manifesto. Henry, by a bold volte-face, dissociated himself from the treaty, lent his sympathy to the Bishops, and fanned the general discontent which the papal action had excited. Surrounded by German swords and menaced by episcopal threats, Paschalis found himself at the mercy of the Emperor. The populace of Rome tried to come to THE INVESTITURE WAR 133 the rescue, and nearly succeeded ; the battle of the Leonina is a marked instance of what an unarmed mob of loyal ruffians can do against a trained force of paid warriors. But the Emperor eluded the Romans by escaping to the Sabina by night, taking with him the Pope and the whole papal Curia. Hounded in droves along the marshy roads, the Cardinals learnt the methods of German warfare. For 61 days, they were insulted and oppressed in the Emperor's tents, while the Emperor sought in vain to extort from Paschalis a promise of unconditional surrender on the Investiture question. At last, the pleading of the Cardinals and the threats of massacring all the prisoners which Henry put forward, reduced the Pope to submission. Paschalis did not lack personal courage, but he was vanquished because his heart was not proof against the misery of war. He yielded with dignity and good faith. " I tender this oath in order that you may fulfil yours," he said, when Henry con- fronted him with the charter of surrender. The verbal definition of division of authority was designed to conceal, as far as possible, the humiliation of the Pope. "Thou shalt impart Investiture with ring and stafi" to the Bishops and Abbots of thine Empire, who shall be elected with- out force and simony ; after their canonical installation they shall receive consecration from the Bishop whose duty it is to give it. . . . Shall any spiritual or secular power or person dare to despise or subvert this our privilegium, he shall be entangled within the chains of our anathema and be deprived of all honours. May the divine mercy protect all who respect it, and grant thy Majesty a happy Empire." The Coronation, which was hurried through in April, 1111, sealed the one-sided peace. It was not the fault of the Pope that the settlement was not final. Paschalis' sincerity is quite indisputable, both at the time, and subsequently. "May he who attempts to violate this treaty be thus severed from the kingdom of God," he said, as he solemnly broke the Host before his enemies. But he had reckoned without the Gregorian party, which was still the dominant force in papal politics. No sooner was the Pope's submission known than a synod of protest was summoned to condemn both himself and his charter. The counter-decrees of Urban and Gregory were revived, and the new Privilegium was annulled. He was only saved from personal condemnation through the championship of Ivo of Chartres. who procured his acquittal on the ground that he had acted under compulsion. Paschalis was not ready at first to shelter himself behind the plea of weakness : he resented the 134 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY tone of the hierarchs, and he still meant to keep faith with Henry. But he was attempting the impossible in trying to harmonise two irreconcilable principles, and, before long, he was obliged to reopen the whole contest. The Lateran Council of 1112, summoned by Paschalis to decide the fate of the Privi- legium, acquitted the Pope on the grounds brought forward by Ivo of Chartres, but annulled his Charter, and, as a matter of form, sent the counter-decrees to the Emperor for ratification, which was, of course, refused. Once more Paschalis' efforts to put an end to the Investiture contest had broken down. He had tried to cry peace where there was no peace, to slur over discord, and to throw dust in the eyes of both parties. It is, however, difficult to condemn him for shrinking from the alternative course which Hildebrand might have adopted. Paschalis had taken the weak line deliberately, because his desire for immediate peace outweighed all other considerations, and because he was not prepared to trust his cause to the fortune of war. From the point of view of high papal policy, he was the wrong man in the wrong place, but this does not prevent us from paying the tribute of respect to his unusual grace of character. The sincere humility of his confession of failure before the Council, combined with his refusal to retaliate against Henry either by word or deed, forms a picture in which" his political inadequacy is mitigated by his moral generosity. The Investiture problem was as far from a logical solution as ever, but when Henry left Italy, after the Lateran Council, its importance paled for a time before the rise of a newer and more practical contest. In July, 1115, the great Countess of Tuscany died at the age of seventy, leaving her possessions to the Papacy with a grand and lavish vagueness which introduced a new phase of the great mediaeval controversy. Both sides were, in a sense, prepared for it : Hildebrand had known of Matilda's intention, and the scheme was the real cause of her quarrel with the young Gwelf. But the indefinite wording of the donation, and the reasonable disputes which arose as to what she actually had meant, produced a four-sided struggle which took Italy entirely by surprise. The claim of the Papacy to inherit the whole of Matilda's dominions was disputed in three directions, and in each case with some semblance of validity. Gwelf V. claimed that at least her allodial lands belonged to him of right as her wedded lord. The Emperor set out to seize her imperial fiefs, and also brought forward a further claim to the allodial lands as a member of the House of Lorraine, and consequent THE INVESTITURE WAR 135 heir to the claims of Matilda's first husband, Godfrey. Still more formidable than the personal rivals of the Papal heritage were the republican constitutions of the cities which had success- fully attained freedom in the lifetime of Matilda. Against some of these new and vigorous democracies, the Popes recognised at once that it was hopeless to protest : Pisa, Lucca, Siena, Flor- ence and Arezzo were never even claimed. But Modena, Reggio, Mantua and Parma were intermittently subjugated, while Ferrara submitted at once as an actual fief. The importance of Matilda's donation is best seen in the immense alteration which it produced in the position of the Papacy. Hildebrand had laboured that the Church might be free ; Matilda gave it the wherewithal of freedom. In the struggle to realise the bequest, and the clash of interests which was involved, the Popes were not merely acting as mercenary and misguided agents of ambition. It should not be forgotten that real principles of statesmanship were at stake — principles which are open both to political criticism and to moral censure from the modern point of view, but which to the average mediaeval churchman were both ethically and logically inviol- able. It is true that the principle of temporal power was not allowed to pass unchallenged, and that the controversy was carried very soon into the region of ideas. But the contests of the schoolmen are only mediaeval on the one side : Abelard and Arnold of Brescia, however much they seem to belong to the Middle Ages in their methods, their language, and their manner of thinking, are in reality the precursors of Wyclif and of Luther — of Protestantism and — untechnically speaking — of modernism. But not so the Emperor Henry V., who set out for Rome in 1116, with the twofold object of claiming Matilda's lands for the Empire, and punishing the Pope for his retraction of the Privi- legium of Investiture. He could not have timed his arrival in Rome better for his purposes. Paschalis had foolishly embroiled himself with the populace over a question of electing the Prefect, He was obliged to flee from the city, leaving Ptolemy of Tusculum in charge of the ecclesiastical property in his absence. Never did emperor receive a warmer welcome in the city. The popu- lace greeted him with joy, and listened respectfully to his bom- bastic speech in the market-place, forgetful of his former insolence towards them. He confirmed the young Prefect Peter, whose election the Pope had opposed. He won over Ptolemy of Tusculum by giving him his illegitimate daughter in marriage, and caused the legate Burdinus to perform the 136 A SHOBT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY customary repetition of the coronation ceremony on Easter Day. Only the higher clergy turned their backs on him, and rejected his overtures, but their defection finally turned the scale. Unaccountably as ever, Rome soon wearied of Henry, and, incited by the Cardinals, rallied once more to the Papal standard. But the final efi"ort, by which the Pope re- gained the city, killed him. Paschalis was old, and life had put to a severe test his limited powers. Few Popes have had a more unfortunate career, but he died in the hour of victory. His successor, John of Gaeta, was elected, by a majority of Cardinals, in secret, in accordance with the decree of Nicholas II. Old and infirm, he struggled against the dignity, and submitted only to compulsion. Immediately after the election occurred one of the curious cases of repetition which are not infrequent among the dramatic episodes of history. Cencius Frangipani, with a mob of furious citizens at his back, rushed into the con- clave, bound the Cardinals, and trod the old Pope under foot. John of Gaeta, newly-elected Gelasius II., was carried ofi" and imprisoned in the Frangipani castle, whence he was finally re- leased, like a second Hildebrand, by the Roman people. Hardly had he regained his liberty when Henry V. swept down on Rome to retrieve his fortunes. In the time of Paschalis, Gelasius had already undergone captivity at the hands of the Emperor, and he was unwilling to repeat the experience. He therefore fled to Gaeta, where to his surprise he was welcomed by a readily-equipped host of loyal Normans, eager to do him homage. History again repeats itself in the scene which followed. We find Gelasius, deserted by the Normans, and opposed in Rome by Burdinus, now raised by Henry to fill the role of anti-pope. The deluge of anathemas and mutual recriminations which thunder across the city recall the days of Benzo and Damiani. An attack on Gelasius at Mass in the Church of San Prassede led to his escape from Rome and honourable reception in France, where he ended his troubled pontificate in 1119. He was succeeded by one of the most fortunate Popes of the period, whose appointment is a testimony to the wisdom of his generation. Guido of Vienne was the chief Bishop of France ; he was related both to the King of France and to the Emperor, and, beyond his royal lineage, he had exceptional talents and an attractive manner to recommend him. He at once took a de- cided line on the Investiture question. At Rheims, on his way to Rome, he reissued the Investiture Edict of Hildebrand, and THE INVESTITURE WAR 137 he was supported by four hundred and twenty -four Bishops, who threw down their tapers as a signal of defiance to the Emperor. Results justified his determination, for it was based on the pro- foundest desire for unity. The magnificence of the new Pope's reception in Rome and the enthusiasm of the populace annihil- ated the enfeebled party of Burdinus, who surrendered after a show of resistance at Sutri. Meanwhile Guido, who took the name of Calixtus II., had come to an understanding with his cousin the Emperor, and a series of German Diets undertook the onus of preparing a treaty. The results of their deliberations were embodied in the Concordat of Worms, which was put for- ward by the Council in September, 1122. The Pope deputed Lambert of Ostia, a trained canonist, to act for him, and he could not have chosen a more competent representative. Two short treaties comprised the gist. of the settlement, which put an end to half a century of conflict. "I, Henry, for the love of God, the Holy Roman Church, and of the Lord Pope Calixtus, and for the salvation of my soul, abandon to God, the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and to the Holy Catholic Church, all investiture by the ring and the staff, and I grant that in all the churches of my Empire there be freedom of election and free consecration. I will restore all the possessions and jurisdictions of St. Peter which have been taken away since the beginning of this quarrel. I will give true peace to the Lord Pope Calixtus and to the Holy Roman Church, and I will faithfully help the Holy Roman Church whenever she in- vokes my aid." " I, Calixtus, the Bishop, grant to Henry, Emperor of the Romans, that the election of bishops and abbots shall take place in thy presence without simony or violence, so that if any dis- cord arise, thou mayest grant thy approbation and support to the most worthy candidate, after the counsel of the Metropolitan and his suffragans. Let the Prelate-elect receive from thee thy sceptre, the property and immunities of his office, and let him fulfil his obligations to thee arising from these. In other parts of the Empire let the Prelate receive his regalia six months after his consecration and fulfil the duties arising from them. I grant true peace to thee and all who have been of thy party during the times of discord." These two treaties, duly signed by Henry and Calixtus respectively, effected the only compromise possible on the question which lay at the root of the conflict between the Papacy and the Emperor. Neither side capitulated, and neither could boast any decisive victory. The settlement was carefully 138 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY designed to conceal any semblance of humiliation on the one hand or of triumph on the other. If either side seemed to have scored in the immediate question at issue, it was the Pope: if either side had actually gained any substantial advantage, it was the Emperor. But the honours of war were shadowy and indecisive ; sheer weariness had brought both sides to an under- standing, and only a sense of the futility of strife prevented a revival of the Investiture struggle. It was only one phase of a larger antagonism : it was past and gone, and Europe rejoiced to see the last of it, but the deeper issues remained as far from solution as ever. Calixtus had the good fortune to die while the world was still under the impression that the Papacy had won a complete and decisive victory. His successor, Honorius II. (1124-1130), although he was elected for his conspicious abilities, had neither the personality nor the prestige to carry on his work. He was the same Lambert of (Jstia whom Calixtus had chosen to represent him at Worms, but the skilled lawyer had not the makings of an equally successful Pope. Moreover, he started at a disadvantage, owing to the revival of factions among the Roman nobility, with unprecedented bitterness and competitive strife. Honorius was the candidate of the Frangipani, and against him was arrayed the might of the Pierleoni. The Frangipani were old and aristocratic ; the Pierleoni were parvenus of Jewish origin with democratic sympathies. The death of the childless Emperor Henry Y. in 1125 carried the politics of papal Rome into Germany. Honorius and the Frangipani faction favoured the middle-aged and orthodox Lothair of Supplinburg against his young and magnificent rival Frederick Hohenstaufen, who, with his brother Conrad, repre- sented the family of Weiblingen. The personal strife between the rival claimants of the Imperial throne holds a fictitious importance in history as the peg on which a contest of principles was hung by later ages. Long after the quarrel between Lothair and Frederick was forgotten, the war-cries of Gwelf and Ghibelline resounded in the streets of the Italian cities, and rallied the partisans of causes as yet unborn. But in the time of Honorius, the duel was a personal one, which indirectly involved the Pope, but in which no clash of principles can be traced, except a vague antagonism between the clericalism of Lothair and the sturdy independence of Frederick. Before Honorius died, he was forced reluctantly to sanction the formation of the kingdom of Naples by Roger of Sicily, who had succeeded in making himself Duke of Apulia in spite of the THE INVESTITUKE WAR 139 persistent opposition of the Pope. The sheerest necessity had brought Honorius to the recognition of the Neapolitan monarchy, for he realised the danger to the Papacy which it threatened, and his successors had frequent cause to regret the sanction which established a rival power in South Italy and a natural foe at their gates. On the death of Honorius in 1130, the dualism which had grown up during his reign broke out into schism. The Gwelf candidate, Peter Pierleoni, stood face to face with a Ghibelline rival, Gregory of St. Angelo. Peter Pierleoni, who took the name of Anaclete IL, was a remarkable person, and he deserved a better chance of success. He had been trained for the Papacy by his father, and he showed his astuteness by the pains which he took to secure the alliance of the Frangipani, whose adhesion meant ascendancy in Rome. But his Jewish origin was against him : anti-Semitic feeling was less strong in Italy than elsewhere, but it gave to his opponent an overwhelming ascendancy in Europe. Besides, Gregory had on his side the advantage of priority of election, and in Bernard of Clairvaux he found a champion whose personal influence alone outweighed any claims which could be advanced by Anaclete. To complete the drawbacks which threw Anaclete at the outset on to the losing side, the Gwelfic faction of the Normans deserted him, and thus threw him on to the mercy of Roger of Sicily. Accordingly, at the Council of Rheims, where Anaclete was excommunicated by Innocent IL, England, France, and Spain signified their assent through the agency of Bernard of Clair- vaux. The schism was the ostensible pretext of two expeditions into Italy by the Emperor Lothair, in both of which he showed his incompetence, and in neither did he eflFect any solution of the crisis. In the earlier expedition of 1132 he threw away a magnificent opportunity by rejecting the petition of Anaclete for an impartial synod, in which Lothair might have played the part which Henry HI. played at Sutri. Instead of acting as arbiter in the struggle, Lothair identified himself with the interests of Innocent II. , allowed the Frangipani to betray Rome into his hands, and in 1133 had himself crowned by the Ghibelline Pope in St. Peter's. But the power of Anaclete in the south made it impossible for the Emperor to stay in Italy, and soon after his return, he was followed in flight by the Pope who had crowned him. The second expedition of Lothair in 1137 was less abortive than the first. In the interval, circumstances had changed in 140 A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY his favour. He had become reconciled with the Hohenstaufen brothers in Germany, while in Italy the genius of Bernard of Clairvaux had been at work with striking results. Pisa, Milan, and North Italy threw themselves unreservedly on to the side of Innocent, and Roger of Apulia alone remained loyal to Anaclete. Incited by Bernard's invocation, Lothair descended on Bene- vento, and subdued it in the name of the Holy Roman Empire. Leaving St. Bernard to convert Rome from its allegiance to Anaclete, he pressed on towards the South and drove Roger out of Apulia. At this juncture Anaclete died, and the schism practically came to an end. When, in 1139, the Lateran Council announced its close, Roger of Sicily and the Pierleoni were the only exceptions to the general unanimity in favour of Innocent II. Roger elected Victor IX. to carry on the opposition of Anaclete, but the victorious Ghibellines treated him as negligible, and excommunicated his patron. The Pierleoni were ignominiously bought oflF, but the Normans ofifered battle. The episode which followed was characteristic of the history of the Italian Normans. Roger's son took Innocent prisoner; then knelt before his captive to impose upon him the terms of a conqueror. Roger required his instant release from the spiritual ban, and his confirmation of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The proud submission of the Pope and the deferential dictatorship of the King were the recurring incidents of a drama which repeats itself intermittently throughout medieeval history. But the occasion was unique ; that which the Popes had dreaded ever since the first coming of the Normans had come to pass. Their ascendancy in South Italy was no longer unrivalled, and Benevento alone remained to them of the rich dominions which had been the pride of their forefathers. But a deeper calamity was at hand, and, in the face of more deadly misfortunes, the Popes had little leisure to mourn the loss of their ascendancy in the South. Two years after the pact with Roger, Innocent was faced with an insignificant disturbance, which produced one of the most momentous crises of Papal history. A small provincial dispute with the offending city of Tivoli, and the temperate action of Innocent in razing the walls of the little town instead of destroying it altogether, led to an attack of the Roman populace on the Pope. The revolt grew to alarming proportions, and reached its height in September, 1143, when the death of Innocent diverted it into a new channel. But hitherto there had been nothing very dis- tinctive or particularly ominous about the rebellion, which had many a parallel in past history, and showed no peculiar THE INVESTITUBE WAR 141 features to distinguish it from others of the same kind. But after the death of the Pope, new forces joined themselves to the old, and the time-honoured lawlessness of Rome found a fresh outlet in the new intellectual democratic movement which emanated from the schools of Paris. CHAPTER XIV THE REPUBLICAN MOVEMENT, a.d. 1122-1179 MENTAL activity has never found a wider range, or met with a readier enthusiasm, than in the twelfth cen- tury. Thanks to the regeneration of the Papacy, Europe was spiritually awake as it had never been before, and any appeal to the higher nature of man could be sure of a unique opportunity. " There are diversities of gifts but the same spirit." The same fervour which sent Raymond of Toulouse to the Crusades sent Robert of Moleme into the wilds to found the first Cister- cian monastery. The extravagant ecclesiasticism of Bernard of Clairvaux has its counterpart in the revolutionary daring of Abelard. Mysticism and speculation sprang from the same root ; the ardour of faith was one with the ardour of criticism. The universal quickening brought to the surface all the con- tradictions which underlay the structure of mediaeval society : in the relentless light of the new appeal to reason, half of the world found itself at enmity with the other half, and principles which had hitherto not seemed inconsistent suddenly displayed themselves in the sharpest antagonism. It was only to be expected that the new spirit of inquiry should turn its sword inwards. The Papacy, from which it largely emanated, became the object of its attack. In creating an efficient clergy, Hildebrand had unintentionally armed a body of critics, and in placing ecclesiastical affairs in the fore- front of European interest, he laid the new Papacy open to the full brunt of attack. The stronghold of the new movement in its intellectual aspect was Paris, where scholars of all nations and every degree came together to enjoy the practice of the dialectic method, which had been revived by the first of the illustrious professors of Paris, William of Champeaux, and his disciple Abelard. The freedom and unrestraint which characterised the informal discussions of the schools of Paris naturally evoked the opposition of conservative Churchmen, 142 Zy^.r MAPI. ITALY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. during the Wars belween the Empire and the Papacy :C 1155-1274) THE REPUBLICAN MOVEMENT 143 who hated the new questioning spirit, and suspected the whole tenor of secular learning. Foremost among them was Bernard of Clairvaux — the " oracle of Europe " — whose individual piety and unusual gift of personality made him the supreme influence in Europe. It was he who had put an end to the schism of 1130, and one Pope at least owed his pontificate entirely to the fact that he was his friend. He stood for everything which Abelard lived to oppose — tradition, orthodoxy, and the extreme limit of sacerdotal power. He was the foremost representative of a large class of humanity for whom speculation has no charm, and free discussion no attraction. If there was anyone whom he hated worse than Abelard it was his ardent young pupil, Arnold of Brescia, who was destined to become the political exponent of his master's views. It was Arnold who carried the contests of the schools into the region of facts ; his career forms the immediate link between Paris and Rome. In Italy, the intellectual movement took another form, and the philosophical contests of Paris were supplanted by the legal controversies of Bologna. The renaissance of Roman Law began even earlier than the philosophical movement, and the schools of Pavia and Bologna were organised in the eleventh century, before the schools of Paris had grouped themselves round their teachers. Throughout the Dark Ages the study of Roman law had survived side by side with the early development of ecclesiastical Canon law. There was at first no rivalry between the two systems ; in the contest of the eleventh century between the Papacy and the Empire, both sides alike ransacked the texts of ancient Rome for legal weapons. Irnerius, the famous exponent of Justinian, began his career as the protege of the Countess Matilda ; but he found no difficulty in afterwards obtaining the patronage of her opponent, Henry V. His lectures at Bologna showed at first neither Gwelf nor Ghibelline colour, and it was not until 1118, when he took up the cause of the anti-pope, that his politics became identified with the school of law which he professed. From that moment the civil jurists be^an to interpret Roman law in the interests of the Empire, while the Canonists became openly hostile. The legal contest became merged in the great European duel, and it introduced new combatants ; it sharpened the points of the weapons which on both sides had become blunted with long usage. The continual encounters of the two systems increased the vigour of buth. The civil law was not allowed to outstrip its rival, and even in their texts the Canonists recognised no defeat. The "Glossaries" of the civilians were confronted first with the 144 A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY "Codes" of Ivo of Chartres, and later by the famous "Decretum" of Gratian which appeared about 1142. The revival of Roman Jaw, in addition to the support which it gave to the Imperial principle, had a further effect of immense importance in the history of papal Rome. It brought the past once more into vivid contact with the present. The study of the codes led men back to the study of the civic life of ancient Rome. The extension of the Caesarean ideal produced a re- action in favour of the republican principle. The Romans had watched with jealous interest the acquisition of freedom by the cities of North Italy during the Investiture war : why should Pisa and Genoa be free while Rome was in bondage? Which of the Northern cities could base their claim to republican liberty on such a past as that of Rome ? The disturbances connected with Tivoli grew into a civic revolution. How it happened — at what moment the new republican cry began to blend with the familiar shouts of rival factions — is unknown to us, owing to the obscurity of the annals. All that is recorded is, that at a given moment the indignant Romans hastened to the Capitol and revived the Senate. The peculiar social conditions of civic Rome were mainly responsible for the unique character of the republican movement. For, unlike the Tuscan and Lombard cities, the burgher class had hitherto been entirely insignificant in Rome. All the civic power, as well as the delegated authority of the Pope, was in the hands of the aristocracy, the consuls of the city, and the capitani of the campagna. The ordinary citizen had no political status other than that which he derived from his place in the military organisation. The disabilities of the burgher class were shared by the lesser nobility, and, as in England, the two classes, socially distinct, came more and more to amalgamate their political interests. Just at the moment of crisis, in September 1143, Pope Innocent died, and was succeeded by a pupil of Abelard, Celestine II., who reigned only a few months. His successor, Lucius II., tried in vain, with the help of Roger of Sicily, to stem the tide of Republicanism. He appealed to the uncrowned Emperor Conrad of Franconia, who had succeeded his rival, Lothair, in 1138, but the response was non-committal and unsatisfactory. Conrad sympathised with Lucius, but he had no time or energy to spare for Italy at the moment. In spite of his lukewarmness, Lucius laid siege to the Capitol, but a blow on the head from a falling stone cut short his enterprising career, and left his cause in *the hands of a weak and saintly disciple of Bernard of Clairvaux. The election of the monk THE REPUBLICAN MOVEMENT 145 Eugenius III. (1145-1153) was the unaccountable eflfect of St. Bernard's influence, but even his patron trembled for his cause when he heard of his appointment. Eugenius was consecrated at Farfa, where he collected a contingent of vassals to march against Rome. But he was half-hearted, and after excommunicating Jordan Pierleoni, who had been elected Patricius of the Senate, the popular party brought him to terms. At Christmas, 1145, he signed a treaty which pledged him to recognise the constitution, on condition that the Patricius was removed and the Prefect replaced. The Senate was to receive investiture from the Pope, and to rule in accordance with the constitution recently drawn up. As far as a paper constitution can go, the scheme of 1145 was not without its merits, and it seeme I as if a modus vivendi for the Pope and the Senate had been found. But the situation was really im- possible, for Papal and Communal government were not merely co-ordinate systems ; they were also antagonistic, and it was inconceivable that they could coexist while neither proposed to give place to the other. The old and unworthy jealousy of Rome for the town of Tivoli still smouldered, and Eugenius failed to satisfy it by the destruction of the city walls. On the other hand, the partisans of the Pope, the nobles and the clergy, hated the Senate, and jeered at the forms of republican government. Eugenius was ultimately driven to escape to France. At the same moment, Arnold of Brescia appeared in Rome, and began to preach his version of the doctrines of Abelard. The moment was felicitous : his preaching caught the ear of Rome, and his words were quoted as oracles. Among his enemies Arnold was already a marked man. He had been condemned by the Lateran Synod of 1139 for inciting the opposition to the Bishop of his own city. He had won notoriety by supporting Abelard at Sens in his scholastic tournament against the world- famed Bernard. From that moment the hostility of the saint of Clairvaux dogged the impetuous Arnold with relentless per- sistence. He was first confined to a monastery, and on his release he was expelled from Paris. He was hunted out of Zurich which for a time gave him refuge, and Cardinal Guido of Bohemia was warned against him in the strongest terms. " Arnold of Brescia,, whose speech is honey but whose teaching is poison, who bears the head of a dove but the sting of a serpent, whom Brescia drove forth, who is abhorred by Rome, banished by France, denounced by Germany, and whom Italy refuses to receive, is, it is said, with you ; take care that he 10 146 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY does not injure the respect due to your office: to favour him means opposition to the commands of the Pope and of God. This is St. Bernard's description of the refugee, who appeared in Rome with dramatic suddenness as the apostle of the re- publican movement. In spite of a certain semblance of order and machinery, the Roman democracy, as he found it, was chaotic and disunited, pressing bhndly towards an unforeseen goal, and entirely lacking in consistency and organisation. It was fore- doomed to failure by its association with the dead past : founded on a ruin, and shaped on an imaginary prototype, it was at the best a fantastic castle in the air. Arnold of Brescia laid his finger on the sentimentality which underlay the movement and diverted it into the definite channel of his own particular creed. He seized upon the popular resentment of the papal policy, and used it as a brief against the Gregorian hierarchy. He preached against temporal power in all its forms : the clergy were all to be poor— all to be equal ; the Church was to divest herself both of territorial and of poUtical rights and interests. In 1148 Eugenius came back to Italy and excommunicated Arnold. In retaUation, the Romans, turning a deaf ear to St. Bernards exhortations, appealed to Conrad, but they were no more successful in that quarter than the Pope had been. Conrad was not statesm-an enough to realise that, as arbiter between the two parties, he was master of the situation. He allowed him- self to be detained in Germany till 1151, when his death saved him the trouble of making up his mind. He was succeeded by his greater brother, Frederick, whose accession was hailed with delight by the Commune. But the Romans were doomed to dis- appointment. With a strange mental confusicn between the catchwords of Csesarean despotism and civic democracy, they informed Frederick that he was the fountain of law and the supreme lawgiver, but he must be careful not to overlook the fact that his power emanated from the Roman people and their representative, the Senate. Frederick, in reply, laughed at the pretensions of the Senate and made a treaty with Eugenius, promising to maintain the Dominium Temporale in return for his Imperial Coronation. In the same year (1153) Eugenius III. died at Tivoli, leaving the pontificate to Anastasius IV., who lived peaceably with the Senate for a few months, then followed his predecessor to the grave. The pontificate which followed restored to papal history the lustre and distinction which the preceding generation had lacked. In Hadrian IV. we have a master-mind once more at the head of afi'airs. England has every reason to be proud of the solitaiy THE REPUBLICAN MOVEMENT 147 English Pope : his sanity, his inborn ruling instinct, and his robust methods in diplomacy stamp him as the traditional Englishman of the best type. And yet, as an individual, Hadrian owed very little to his native land. The son of a poor priest at St. Albans, Nicholas Breakspere left home in his boy- hood, and begged his way to France, where he eventually became Prior of St. Rufus' near Aries. He is described as attractive, cultured, and eloquent, evidently one born for success without much struggle in attaining it. As Pope, Hadrian abandoned the policy of compromise with the Senate. He saw at once that the hollow friendship between irreconcilables was not worth the cost of preserving it. He therefore appealed to Frederick for the expulsion of Arnold of Brescia, not as a suppliant, but as one who claimed the fulfil- ment of an undisputed obligation. The Commune, in retalia- tion, appealed to William of Sicily, who ravaged Benevento and Latium in the name of the anti-clerical party. The assassina- tion of a Cardinal in the Via Sacra gave Hadrian the opportunity ior which he had been waiting. He suddenly paralysed the forces of democracy by laying the city under an interdict. Easter was approaching, and the suspension of the Sacraments produced a panic which swept the Republican movement away. When the fourth day of the Holy Week passed without Mass, the people rose against the Senate in a frenzy of religious hatred. Hadrian refused to move until they went one step further, and only after the banishment of Arnold of Brescia, after nine years of leadership in the city, was the dreaded interdict removed. Thus, in 1155, when Frederick Hohenstaufen set out for his first expedition to Rome, Hadrian IV. seemed to be in a strong position. It was well for the Papacy that it was so, for the situation showed clear signs of trouble to come. Frederick Barbarossa, the hero of German history, was the strongest of the great Emperors. His vision of the Empire was as lofty as Hilde- brand's conception of the Papacy : he was mighty in war and preeminent in leadership. His first meeting with Hadrian in- dicated the attitude which he intended to adopt towards the Papacy. He came to Nepi, swearing to keep the peace newly ratified at Constance. He surrendered Arnold of Brescia who had fled to him for protection. But he withheld the customary act of homage which his predecessors had never failed to yield ; he would confer benefits on the Pope, but he would not hold his stirrup ; he would embrace him as Father in God, but he would not serve him as his man. The consternation which 148 A SHOET HISTOBY OF THE PAPACY this attitude produced among his followers obliged him after- wards to submit, but the incident does not lose its significance thereby. Pit, uv At Sutri Frederick was met by the envoys of the Republic, which was determined to die hard. The Emperor received their loyal protests with cold contempt, and answered their pompous eloquence with curt commonsense. Otto of Freising gives the substance of Frederick's speech: "Wilt thou know where the ancient glory of thy Rome, the dignified severity of thy Senate the valiant chastity of knighthood, the tactics of the camp and invincible military courage have gone? All are now found among us Germans ; all have been transmitted to us with the Empire. We are thy consuls, with us is thy Senate ; thy legions are here." It needed only Frederick's occupation of the Leonma and his Coronation in June of the same year to revive the dying flame of the democratic movement. Roused to fury by their exclusion from the ceremony in St. Peter's, the Roman mob attacked the Imperial camp, possibly with the hope of releasing their hero Arnold from the Emperor's custody. All day long the struggle lasted on the bridge of St. Angelo, and the vigour of the Republic requires no stronger proof than is afforded by its spirited defence, which finally forced Frederick to retire without so much as entering the city proper. The victory had not been won without cost. A thousand Romans had been killed or drowned, and two hundred more were prisoners in the Imperial camp. The Pope pleaded for their release, but their fellow- citizens refused to abandon the struggle. Victory cost them also the life of Arnold of Brescia. His execution darkens the career of Frederick Barbarossa, but it is neither remarkable nor without justification. While Arnold lived the spirit of Roman democracy had its expression in his winged words, and gained impetus from the force of his personality. With him died the Roman Republic, with all its pathetic aspirations, its ludicrLUS pretension, and its genuine seeking after progress. An estimate of Arnold of Brescia must necessarily be compara- tive He is the first of the series of hero-rebels who have sacrificed their lives for the freedom of Italy. As such he forms a connecting link between the old and the new— not, like Hilde- brand, between the two eras of the Middle Ages, but between the ancient and modern world. In one aspect, he is the pro- duct of the Investiture struggle— the opponent of hierarchical power— and in another, he is the forerunner of modern Italy. In many respects he compares favourably with those who took up the cause in later generations. He was more sane than Savona- THE EEPUBLICAN MOVEMENT 149 rola, more patriotic than Rienzi, and broader and clearer in his aims than Porcaro. There was real ground for the instinct which coupled his name with the liberal movement of 1862 — Viva il papa, non re ! Viva Arnoldo da Brescia, Viva il Clero liberale ! ' By the death of its leading spirit the Roman Republic waB crushed, never to be revived with the same loftiness of purpose or the same purity of aim. Before long Frederick had reason to repent of his victory : in the spirit of Roman freedom he had overthrown the enemy of the Pope rather than his own. He had been fighting the battles of the Papacy as surely as Pepin or Charles, with much less advantage to himself. Moreover, his campaign in Italy had been peculiarly abortive : after wander- ing aimlessly in the south, reclaiming the allegiance of the Campagna, the ravages of fever caused him to hurry north, without striking a blow against Sicily or retaliating on Rome. He took leave of Hadrian at Tivoli, leaving the Roman prisoners in his hands, with the understanding that the Pope should com- plete the campaign in their joint interests against William of Sicily. But Hadrian was not the man to sacrifice the Papacy in the interests of the Empire, and as soon as Frederick was out of sight, he showed his intention to play his own hand. After a vain endeavour to stir up a revolt against William in Apulia, he first ofi'ended Frederick by allying himself with the Greeks, in contradiction of the terms of the Treaty of Constance ; he then further roused the Imperial indignation by coming to terms with the Duke of Sicily, and investing him with Sicily, Apulia and Capua as fiefs of the Papacy. The alliance with William was the stepping-stone to peace with Rome : what remained of the Republican party was won over by the gold and the threats of Sicily — a further cause of irritation to Frederick, who resented his own exclusion from the terms of the peace. There were further causes which contributed to the accumu- lation of grievances. The various points at issue concerning Matilda's legacy were still unsettled : the Investiture contest had left many debatealile problems behind it. The alliance with Sicily ba I infringed Imperial rights : the peace with Rome was, in some unknown particulars one-sided. There was, moreover, the eternal and inevitable antagonism between a strong Emperor and a strong Pope, and the conflicting absolutism of the two ^ Greg., vol. iv., part ij. 150 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY theories which they represented. But the immediate cause of dispute was a verbal indiscretion in a letter of protest from Hadrian, occasioned by the robbery of a Swedish Bishop by some Burgundian knights. The Pope wrote a strong document, reminding Frederick that he owed his Empire to the Papacy, and making use in an unguarded moment of the technical word, "Beneficium," or fief, to define the position in which the Em- pire stood to the Papacy. The Cardinal legates, who bore the document, narrowly escaped death, and Cardinal Roland — the future Alexander III. — fearlessly undertook its defence, asking with poignant logic " If not from the Pope, from whom does he (the Emperor) hold his Empire? " The answer, expressed in an indignant Imperial manifesto, was — " From God alone our king- dom and Empire emanates ". The German party among the Cardinals forced Hadrian to apologise, and a subsequent letter explained that the word " Beneficium " had been used in a general and not a legal sense. But it was too late, for Fred- erick had meanwhile prepared an expedition against Italy, and Milan had already surrendered. At the Diet of Roncaglia in 1158 the jurists of Bologna defined the Imperial power in terms of Justinian absolutism, which caused the towns and the Popes to draw together in resistance. Their alliance was still further cemented by the attempt of Frederick to put juridical theory into practice in demanding feudal dues from the whole of Italy. Loud was the outcry throughout the land, and loudest was the remonstrance of the Pope, who pleaded for ecclesiastical liberty in all secular as well as religious things. Hadrian realised that all the results of Hildebrand's efi"orts were at stake, and his un- compromising attitude of resistance does credit to his character and statesmanship. But in focussing the quarrel on the ques- tion of temporal power, he unconsciously suggested an alliance between the Imperial party and the survivors of the Republican movement. Now was the moment for Frederick to regret the execution of the great republican, and when he sought for counter-arguments to hurl against the papal protest, he found them in the words of Arnold of Brescia. When he announced that all Church property was the gift of kings, and that Bishops owed feudal obligations like other vassals, the Arnoldists ap- plauded him. In answer to the Pope's claim to have sole authority in the city of Rome, Frederick replied : " Since by the will of God, I am and call myself Roman Emperor, I should only bear an unmeaning title did I allow the sovereignty over the city of Rome to pass out of my hands ". His answer found an eoho in the Senate, which sprang to life again at the revival of THE EEPUBLICAN MOVEMENT 151 its doctrines. Consequently, the year 1159 saw an alliance between the Emperor and the Romans, who had stood face to face in implacable hostility, across the dead body of Arnold, less than four years before. Hadrian was spared the necessity of confronting the new situation, for he died soon after the alliance was formed. His failure to complete the destruction of the Senate testifies rather to the surprising stability of the Republican movement than to the inadequacy of his methods. He had steered the papal for- tunes faithfully and skilfully through a crisis, and unlike other men who won their way to the Papacy from the lowest rank of society he spent himself as Pope in disinterested self-sacrifice. In fortifying papal cities and in patronising the provincial no- bility he had laboured for the future, and his plaint, which is recorded by his fellow-Englishman, John of Salisbury, is a genuine piece of autobiography : " Oh that I had never left my native land England, or the convent of St. Rufus. Is there else- where in the world a man so miserable as the Pope ? I have found so much hardship on the papal throne that all the bitter- ness of my past life seems sweet in comparison." The death of Hadrian was followed by a schism, with its usual undinnified accompaniments. The first Pope to be pro- claimed was Roland of Sienna, who as Alexander III. stands out among mediaeval Popes as one of the gro^ip upon whom the mantle of Gregory VII. had fallen. The pontifical robe was literally torn from his shoulders by Cardinal Octavian, who was in turn divested of it by a supporter of Roland's. Another mantle was, however, produced by Octavian 's chaplain, and the would-be Pope hurriedly decked himself with it, spoiling its solemn effect, however, by putting it on inside out. Cardinal Octavian, of the House of Crescentius, was the head of the German party in Rome, and therefore sure of Frederick's support. Moreover, he was good-looking, generous, and popular with the lower clergy and the democracy. But he was over- shadowed by the higher qualities of his rival, who had on his siue the allegiance of the higher clergy, and the alliance of the Lombard towns and of Sicily. Roland was consecrated Alexander III. at Ninfa in September, 1159, and in October, Octavian took the name of Victor IV. at the adjacent monastery of Farfa. In 1160, Frederick, as it was expected, confirmed Victor IV. at the Council of Pavia. Alexander, from his headquarters at Anagni, declared war in the traditional manner by excommunicating both the Emperor and the Pope of his choice. But neither Frederick nor Victor was seriously affected by 152 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY the fulmination. The Emperor was engaged in his momentous campaign against the Lombard cities, and his prot6g6 was with him. In their absence Alexander managed to gain a strong position in the south and the elements of a party in Rorne. But Frederick's victories of 1161 turned the tide, and in January, 1162, Alexander was obliged to turn to the last resort of a harassed pontiff— flight to France. Frederick meanwhile com- pleted his Lombard conquests by the destruction of Milan, and carried Victor IV. with him to Germany. But Victor was a failure in Germany, his southern graces failed to charm the Teutonic people or to compensate for the weakness of his case. Finding him useless, Frederick sent him back to Italy with Rainold of Cologne as an escort. Soon after his return, he died and was succeeded as anti-pope by Paschalis HI., the nominee of Rainold. The part of anti-pope was a difficult one to play, and it was very seldom filled conspicuously. The career of Paschalis HI. was as abortive as that of his predecessor Victor and his successor Callixtus. The energy of Alexander stands out in sharp contrast to the ineSiciency of his rivals. Rome gradually veered round again, and in 1165 the position of Alexander seemed assured. But early in the next year, the news of a great German victory at Monte Porzio revived the consternation in the city. This time it was no dilatory skirmish, but a serious German invasion. At the news of Frederick's advance on the city, the Pope wept and took refuge in the Colosseum. A successful attack on St. Peter's brought the Romans to terms with Frederick. The Senate had not forgotten the Emperor's former goodwill towards the republican party and thankfully accepted Imperial investiture. Alexander, finding himself faced by the same combination which had overwhelmed Hadrian, fled for his life. He was last seen at Circe in the disguise of a pilgrim, whence he fled to Benevento and after- wards to Tusculum. Everything seemed to lie at the mercy of Barbarossa, but with dramatic suddenness, which is characteristic of the times, the situation was reversed by an epidemic of malaria. The heroes of the invincible army were struck down with terrible rapidity, and Rome itself was decimated. Thomas of Canterbury, now the foremost man in England, wrote to congratulate Alexander on "the destruction of Sennacherib's host". But with wonderful tenacity, Frederick resolutely prolonged his campaign in the north. In spite of the Emperor's successes against the cities, the wisdom of Alexander held fast to the S|,lliance of the Papacy with the spirit of civic freedom. It wag THE REPUBLICAN MOVEMENT 163 a sure path to victory, for it was based on the principle to which, more than to any other, the Papacy has owed its stabiHty. Emancipation was the keynote of the new age — the idea in the air, with the inevitable sanction of the future. To identify it with the papal fortunes — to capture it, and adapt it to the papal idea — was the policy of Alexander, in which he was followed by all the successful Popes of all the ages. It often demanded an infinity of patience, for the forces of established custom die hard, and the new idea wins its way very slowly. Alexander had to watch the hero-Emperor win his cycle of victories before the great defeat of Legnano assured for ever the freedom of the Lombard cities. Meanwhile, Alexander had wandered from place to place in the south, reaping some advantages, but on the whole playing an apparently losing game. For the first time since the days of St. Gregory, affairs connected with England appear in the fore- front of papal policy. The quarrel between Henry II. and Thomas Becket was now at its height, and the gold of the royal coffers was poured into Rome in the vain hope of conciliating the Pope. Harassed as he was on all sides, Alexander refused for a moment to lower his standard to meet Henry's convenience. He recognised in the English King an antagonist who could conceiv- ably be crushed at a blow, but never bent from his purpose by conciliatory methods. When in 1170 he was at Tusculum, hard pressed by the Emperor's vicegerent. Christian of Mainz, he heard of the murder of Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. The effect of the English King's act of sacrilege grew more sharply defined when the next phase of the contest began. At the moment, Alexander bewailed the loss of a trusty servant without realising that the influence of Thomas of Canterbury was greater in his " martyrdom " than in his life. Every pilgrim who took the road through the Kentish byways, " the holy blissful martyr for to seek," in the course of the next three hundred years, recalled the iniquity and the humiliation of the English King who had dared to oppose the will of St. Peter. The victory of Legnano was sealed by the peace of Venice. The final settlement was, however, preceded by a secret treaty, framed at Anagni, between the Pope and the Emperor, in which the Emperor undertook to concede all the privileges which he had denied to Hadrian in return for the removal of the ban. The allied cities had good reason to suspect treachery, but Alexander kept faith with them at Venice, where the envoys of the cities appeared for the first time beside the Pope and the Emperor, at the first international Congress of European history. But the 154 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY Peace of Venice was, of course, the triumph of Alexander. Calixtus was deposed, and the Patrimony restored. Frederick's claims were recognised in Spoleto, Ancona, and Romagna, and the cities were granted a six years' truce, during which their future inde- pendence was granted. What had become of the Roman Republic? A clause in the treaty, of little apparent importance, gave it its coup de grace. Frederick abandoned his claim to appoint the city Prefect and thus left the Pope without a rival in his sovereignty in the city. The Senate could not stand alone ; its independent power had fallen with Arnold of Brc scia ; after the peace of Venice it ceased to be more than one of the elements of disorder of which the life of civic Rome was composed. We are reminded of its existence in the survival of strange decorative offices in the pageantry of the Renaissance, and twice again the cry of liberty is heard above the chants of the clergy and the war-cries of the noble factions, though never with the same ring of sincerity and strength. Roman democracy was a lost ideal and civic freedom was never attained ; but the Papacy lost as much as it gained from its vic- tory ill the struggle against a spirit which once was real and a cause which was not ignoble. CHAPTER XV CONSOLIDATION OF PAPAL MONARCHY: THE EPOCH OF INNOCENT IIL, a.d. 1179-1217 IN spite of the Peace of Venice, the Papacy was still weak during the last years of Alexander III. The Rome to which he returned in triumph in 1179 showed a bewildering contempt for the settlement of the Emperor, the Pope, and the cities. The Landgraves of Viterbo refused to abide by the Emperor's decision, and created a new anti-pope in spite of him. The Lateran Council of 1179 confirmed the freedom of the Church, but until his death in 1181, Alexander was absorbed in petty wars in the ecclesiastical territory. His death did not improve matters. He was succeeded by three insignificant Popes, who lived and died in exile. Lucius III. (1181-1185) endured the hostility of the Romans, and called in Christian of Mainz to deliver Tusculum, which was the object of attack. The warrior-Archbishop died like a hero before the walls of Tusculum, and Lucius fled to Frederick at Verona. This, how- ever, did not mend his fortunes, for he quarrelled with Barbarossa over the question of his son's coronation, and died in the hostile Emperor's camp. Urban III. (1185-1187) was equally unfor- tunate; he stayed at Verona, and continued to quarrel with Frederick — a quarrel which gained added bitterness when the Emperor married his son Henry to Constance, the heiress of Sicily. This was an intolerable blow to the Papacy, for the popes had grown accustomed to using Sicily as a buffer between the Papacy and the Empire. Urban therefore refused to crown Henry, who was promptly sent against Rome by his father. In 1187 came the news of the recapture of Jerusalem, which ha 1 been liberated by the first Crusaders under Urban II. At the same moment. Urban III. died and was succeeded by the old and equable Gregory VIII. From that moment the eyes of Christendom turned once more towards the East. Gregory VIII. thoiieht of nothing else than the recapture of Jerusalem, and with that end in view he patched up a peace with Henry. His successor, Clement III., broke through the fatal spell of weakness 155 156 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY by which the Papacy had been overcast. He was a man of energy and decision ; he saw that the sacrifice of Tusculum was necessary to the restoration of peace with Rome, and he did not hesitate to carry it through, together with the surrender of many papal privileges which weaker Popes had struggled to retain. The rest of his energies were devoted to the new crusade, which was planned on a larger and more splendid scale than the two earlier expeditions. It was the heyday of chivalry and at the head of the enterprise were three of the most conspicuous of mediseval heroes, Frederick Barbarossa, Richard Coeur de Lion, and Philip Augustus. But the prestige of the Papacy was far less marked than in the time of Urban IL Richard of England, during his six months' visit to Tancred of Sicily, refused to visit Rome on the ground that there was nothing to be found there but avarice and corruption. In June, 1190, came the news of the death of Frederick on his way to Palestine. The hero-Emperor had been hated in Italy as enthusiastically as he was idolised in Germany. And yet Italian history owes more to his hostility than to the benefits conferred by friendly Emperors, for his wars against the Northern cities had stimulated their freedom and endowed them with a stability which is unparalleled in European history. The son of Frederick was a lesser man than his father, ex- celling him in" barbarity and obstinacy, and substituting a cold and cruel daring for the splendid military qualities of Barbarossa. Immediately on his accession^ Henry set out for Rome, but between him and the new Pope strained relations had already arisen. Celestine III., who succeeded Clement in 1191, proved no match for the cunning of the Emperor-elect. More- over, he had given Henry a grievance by confirming the usurper Tancred in the kingdom of Sicily, to which Henry's wife was the legitimate claimant. Celestine, therefore, awaited in trepi- dation Henry's arrival in Rome, and delayed his own consecra- tion in the hope of postponing the coronation until a more favourable moment. This manoeuvre was, however, frustrated by Henry's skill in ingratiating himself with the Roman people, at the expense of the scapegoat city of Tusculum. Urged by the Senate, the Pope was obliged to hurry on both the ceremonies ; two days after Henry's consecration, Tusculum, the home of the Catos, and the cradle of the Theophylacts, was razed to the ground. The reign of Henry VI. was fraught with evil for the Papacy. The Emperor's successes against Tancred revived the night- mare of union between Germany and Sicily. Things were no CONSOLIDATION OF PAPAL MONABCHY 157 better within the Patrimony. Henry sprinkled his German officials throughout Italy and carved duchies for his followers without scruple or regard for the Pope. In Rome itself, two quasi-popular revolutions in 1191 and 1197 changed the form of the Senate tir^t into a Presidency under a Summus Senator, and afterwards into an oligarchy composed of fifty- six captains. Celestine was old and weary, and Henry's barbarous Sicilian victories in 1196 closed his days in tragedy. The most unat- tractive of mediEeval Emperors died in 1197, followed to the grave within a few months by the Pope whom he had many times wronged. With the death of Celestine III. papal history enters on its second brilliant epoch of ascendancy through the dominating qualities of an outstanding personality. The talents of Innocent III. are only surpassed among the makers of the Papacy by the genius of Gregory VII., and judged by the standard of actual achievement the pontificate of Innocent stands alone. He found the Papacy in 1198 weak and despised, with nothing but a magnificent tradition and the memory of great moments in the past to recall the enthusiasm of Christendom for the unity of the spiritual Empire. By the end of his pontificate he had restored the papal power to its utmost limits, and he left it organised, legalised, controlling and controlled, to endure until a third great name should stand like a sentinel between its culmination and decline. Innocent was thirty-seven years old when as Cardinal Lothar he became a candidate for the Papacy. He belonged to the im- portant family of the Dei Conti, and inherited, in addition to the influence of an ancient ruling family, the feuds and tradi- tions characteristic of the Roman nobility. He had been brought up under the influence of the great legal revival, and his education in Paris and Bologna had given him the best possible preparation for the special work which it was his as Pope to accomplish. He started with three qualities in common with Hildebrand, with whom it is natural to compare him : his ambition, his energy, and his faith in his ideal. The cause of his greater immediate success, and also of the inferior place which he holds in world-history, was his more limited vision. His theories were not less absolute than those of Hildebrand, but he showed more prudence and diplomacy in working them out. He could not help detecting the pitfalls and ambushes which Hildebrand's self-confidence would have overridden ; his activities were therefore more circumscribed. When he entered on his great task, he was ardent with the disciplined enthusiasm 158 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY of a man at his best age. He began by setting his house in order ; he made the city Prefect subject to himself, and thus extin- guished what remained of the Imperial power in Rome. He proceeded to deal with the Senate, persuading the existing Summus Senator to retire, and arrogating to himself the power of choosing a new one by means of a self-chosen elector. Not satisfied with this, he took away one of its most important functions, the appointment of the judges, whom he replaced by papal delegates. Beyond the confines of Rome lay the vague and rather elastic patrimony which Henry VI. had feudalised and carved up into German dukedoms. In the recovery of the papal terri- tories, national instinct collaborated with Innocent's efi'orts. On Henry's death, many of them fell back, naturally, to their former overlord. Tuscany, Ancona and Ravenna, which had been monopolised by Henry's brother Philip and his lieutenant Markwald, surrendered themselves instantly, and a Tuscan Federation supported him in the reduction of the rest. Thus, in two years, Innocent had restored the patrimony to the limits of Pepin's donation, and the only temporal problem which still re- mained unsolved was that of Rome itself. Although Rome and the idea of Rome is the keynote of mediaevalism, the city itself was conspicuously free from the spirit of the Middle Ages. As the nominal capital of Christen- dom, Rome plays the smallest possible part in the movements which convulsed mediaeval Europe. She contributed little or nothing to the Crusades, though she reaped from them a harvest of profit which practically she seems hardly to have earned. It is impossible to trace any definite line of development or any steadfastness of aim in the history of mediaeval Rome, because she has no civic ideal except that with which the past supplies her, and no reconstructive force with which to revivify the old order to which she clings. It is this peculiar aimlessness which exposed Rome to the ravages of so many political epidemics, and which accounts for the prevalence of family feuds — the particular evil which confronted Innocent III. The Orsini re- lations of the late Pope were hostile to the Conti, the family of Innocent III. Innocent was accused of nepotism because he made over to his brother Richard a fortress which he had taken from the Orsini, and the Poll came forward to oppose him. The feud was taken up by the populace, which in spite of the move- ments of the twelfth century still retained its character as the " rabble of plebs.". A new popular Senate was formed under the title of the "Good men of the Commune". Towers were raised CONSOLIDATION OF PAPAL MONAKCHY 159 and projectiles flew ; Innocent fled, returned again, and finally gained by bribery the victory which a three years' struggle had failed to secure. Meanwhile, in Sicily, events had occurred of the greatest importance to the future of the Empire. A rebellion against Constance and her infant son h d to an offer of protection from Innocent, at the cost of the investiture of the kingdom. Soon after, in 1198, Constance died, leaving the four-year-old Frederick in the guardianship of the Pope. Innocent accepted the re- sponsibilities of the Regency without counting the cost, and finding vhe turbulence of his ward's subjects too difficult a problem to be dealt with at a distance, he accepted the services of the adventurer. Walter of Brienne. Walter was a knight errant of a type which was prevalent in the thirteenth century. He had married Tancred's daughter, and was thus able to put forward a claim to Sicily through the old Norman line. Innocent, in admitting his claim, certainly overlooked the in- terests of Frederick, but he may have foreseen the greater destiny in store for the boy, in which the lesser dignity was bound to be merged. At the time, however, Frederick remained unthought-ot in papal tutelage while the great imperial contest which was to bring him to his own surged round Otto the Gwelph and Philip the Ghibelline. Otto of Bavaria was supported by his wife's uncle Richard Coeur de Lion, but the majority of the German princes swore allegiance to Philip of Swabia, the brother of Henry VI., who had the advantages of the Hohenstaufen territories and the friendship of Philip Augustus of France. Between these two men, Innocent had to choose, and in 1201, he formally ratified the election of Otto. The reasons for his choice rested on the balance of advantages to the Papacy. The Papacy was naturally anti-Hohenstaufen, for the Hohenstaufen aim was to create an hereditary monarchy by means of the re- duction of Italy. Moreover, by supporting the weaker candidate he was prolonging the contest, and schism in the Empire meant advantage to the Papacy. The personalities of the two candi- dates inclined Innocent in the same direction. Philip was strong and defiant : Otto was weak and submissive. The Capitu- lation of Neuss illustrates the supreme importance of papal re- cognition to Otto. He was prepared to surrender all right to the Exarchate, Pentapolis, Ancona, Spoleto, Matilda's inheri- tance, and "all other adjacent territories defined in Privilegia since Lewis ". Inoocent's next step is difficult to account for : Otto was more than compliant, and Philip actively hostile, and 160 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY yet the papal policy undoubtedly begins to veer round. A pro- pitiatory letter from Philip was received, and in January, 1206, Innocent upbraids John of England for not supporting his kinsman Otto. In the same year Otto was defeated at Cologne, and negotiations were openly carried on between Innocent and Philip. In 1207, Philip submitted to the Pope's terms and was released from the ban. In 1208 he was King of the Romans, and victory seemed all but in his grasp, when he was murdered at Bamberg by Otto of Wittelsbach, to whom he had refused his daughter in marriage. The tragedy of Philip's death threw Innocent back on his previous policy, and in 1209 Otto V. re- newed the Treaty of Neuss at Speyer, In this second phase Innocent began to make use of his prot^g^ as a means of extort- ing further concessions, and the future hostility of the boy Frederick hung like a sword over the head of Otto. In October, 1209, Otto came to Rome for his coronation, but his subjection to the Pope did not increase his popularity in Italy, since it made bribery unnecessary, and the coronation battle was fiercer than ever in consequence. The coronation itself was barren in meaning and abortive in result. Otto had signed away all that made the imperium worth striving for, and no sooner had he attained it than he realised the anomaly of his position. He therefore took the only way of escape, broke the treaty, and declared himself a Ghibelline. Jt was an audacious volte-face, but his perjury was thrust upon him with the Empire. The Pope on his side had to acknowledge the severity of the blow, and in a letter to Philip Augustus the tone in which he tells of the events is unusually humble : " It is not without shame that I impart to you my fears, for you have often warned me ". The time was now ripe for the production of Frederick II. Otto's position was fairly well established in Italy, but in Ger- many he was fast losing ground. At the head of a small force Frederick made his way to Germany, where Innocent's emis- saries had gone before him to prepare a party. At Bouvines, in 1214, he met and defeated Otto's army, with Philip Augustus on his side and the English against him. In this, his first, enter- prise, Frederick was recognised by the world as a young man of great promise and energy. In his golden bull of 1213 he pro- mised obedience to the Church, liberty of ecclesiastical elections, and the right of appeal to Rome, "in consideration for the immense and innumerable benefits of his protector and bene- factor, Pope Innocent ". He undertook further to cut off Sicily in the name of his son as soon as his own coronation was CONSOLIDATION OF PAPAL MONARCHY 161 eflfected. So far all was well for Innocent and the Papacy ; Frederick's attitude was correct and unimpeachable ; he was the dutiful son of the Pope in more than name, and the seal of success was upon him. But Frederick, the victor of Bouvines, had yet to reveal himself as Frederick, the wonder of the world. The effect on the Papacy of Innocent's interference in the contest for the Empire was to extend and confirm, on the one hand, the tradition of the spiritual imperium, and diminish, on the other hand, its popularity in Europe. The poems of Walther von der Vogelweide, in all their bitterness and sarcasm, indicate the feelings of the average German towards the policy of Inno- cent. The theory upon which Innocent's policy was grounded is still more significant. The new metaphor of the two swords supplants the older and less extravagant symbol of the two lights in heaven. In the time of Gregory, the Papacy and the Empire were said to coexist as distinct powers, the one greater and the other less. In the time of Innocent, we read that "the Pope has two swords ; he keeps for himself the spiritual sword, and gives to the Emperor the temporal one : when he rides his white palfrey the Emperor is compelled to hold his stirrup ". The Empire, which Innocent regarded as emanating from the Papacy, was still in theory world-Avide. The temporal sword of St. Peter stretched far beyond Italy and Germany to the limits of Christendom, and the spiritual relationship in its political interpretation implied the vassalage of Europe to the See of Rome. Sicily, Denmark, and Sweden had already fallen in. Sancho of Portugal renewed to Innocent the homage first ren- dered in 1144. Peter of Aragon, in 1204, placed his crown on the High Altar of St. Peter's, and received it back attached to the condition of tribute. Three years later Poland did the same, and three Oriental princes of Armenia, Bulgaria, and Servia fol- lowed. In all these cases it is important not to overlook the voluntary character of the profi'ered submission. Emphasis is too often laid on Innocent's ambitious exactions, obscuring the fact that the nations which submitted gained in return privileges, spiritual and political, which amply requited them, in their own estimation, for the sacrifice of their independence. The com- pliance of the nations was indeed a misfortune in disguise to the Papacy ; there is no department of Innocent's policy more im- mediately successful and ultimately disastrous than his relations with England. Originating in a question of ecclesiastical etiquette, the comparative rights of two bands of monks to elect an English Archbishop, a great personal duel emerged between Innocent 11 162 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY and the worst-hated of English kings. The incidents of the struggle, and still more, the conditions of its conclusion — too familiar to recapitulate here — alienated the heart of a nation for ever from its allegiance to the Papacy. England had until now retained a singularly pure and loyal attitude towards the papal ideal. Mindful of the debt which she owed to Gregory the Great, she submitted dutifully to the supremacy, in the belief that the regeneration of the world was still its animating impulse. Protestantism was never a part of the English char- acter. The hostility to papal exactions, which is henceforth typical of our history, had its origin in the shock of contrast between the Catholic ideal, as it was possible to conceive it in a remote island kingdom, and the temporal policy which the mediaeval popes found it necessary to pursue. Thus England had eagerly taken up the cause of reform, and the English kings had been among the first to respond to the appeal of the Crusades, both of which movements had emanated from the Papacy. Innocent's great mistake was that he failed to read the English character or to take the measure of King John. The appoint- ment of Stephen Langton, excellent in itself, was dearly bought by the Interdict. John's submission and humiliation in 1213 was a still more questionable victory. In pronouncing England to be a fief of the Papacy, Innocent ignored the constitutional progress which the nation had made under the Norman kings ; he forgot that the privileges which Henry II. had taught the nation to cherish had placed England on a different footing from Poland and Armenia. Thus, Innocent was soon to discover that the humiliation of King John had not brought England low. At Runnymede, as at Canossa, the nobility, representing the nation, recoiled from the abasement of the King, and dissociated itself from the consequences of it. The essence of the tragedy, from the papal point of view, lay in the fact that in the great consti- tutional drama of Magna Carta, the Pope stood side by side with John and his tyranny in the face of the charter of liberties, with the first great patriot Churchman at its head. Or, in the words of Matthew Paris, " The sovereign Pontiff, who ought to be the source of sanctity, the mirror of piety, the guardian of justice, the defender of truth, protects such a man ! Why does he take his part? To engulf the riches of England in the coffers of Roman avarice." Something of the same lack of imagination characterised Innocent's dealings with France. If he had over-estimated King John, he certainly under-rated his rival, Philip Augustus. But on thp whole, he was more successful in his relations with CONSOLIDATION OF PAPAL MONAKCHY 163 the greater than with the meaner monarch. In punishing the adultery of Philip with the Interdict, Innocent was certainly within his rights. Moreover, he succeeded in eflfecting a re- conciliation between the King and his repudiated wife. But in affairs of policy, Philip was more resolute than in the moral sphere. When Innocent tried to interfere in the first phase of his quarrel with King John, he was told to mind his own business, for -'the Pope has nothing to do with an affair which rests be- tween kings". Philip's letter of protest against the Pope's alliance with Otto of Brunswick is still more high-handed. " I am astonished at your persistence in protecting a prince whose family interests make him the enemy of your kingdom. As your Holiness knows well, I regard the elevation of this prince to whom you attach yourself in so inconsiderate a manner, as a disgrace for all Christian kings. If you persist, I shall know how to take necessary steps." The implied threat may or may not have had something to do with Innocent's change of front in 1207, but it was undoubtedly the "warning" to which Innocent subsequently referred in his appeal for Philip's assistance against Otto. The ultimate object of Innocent's foreign policy, beyond the extension of the prerogative, was the hope of viniting Europe in a new Crusade. The project was, however, a failure, the only result of which was the conquest of the Eastern Empire, and the indefinite postponement of unity between the Eastern and Western Churches. Innocent's zeal for the Catholic faith mili- tant was not confined to the East. Nearer home the growth of heresy was a symptom of a new danger which threatened Catholic unity. Against the Albigensian sect of southern France the feudal forces of the orthodox north were urged forward by papal appeals. The brutality and the terror of the Albigensian war burdens the reign of Innocent with an awful responsibility. He had called out the passionate force of hatred between north and south which reveals itself unexpectedly now and again in French history, and he himself recoiled from the consequences. The appeal from doctrine to arms was characteristic of Innocent. His mind was essentially practical : he chose to vindicate the truth on the battle-field rather than in council; where others might have used persuasion, Innocent enacted laws. The result of this natural bias of his mind, coinciding as it did with the epoch of extreme papal accretion, was a tendency to define and to increase in defining the theory of spiritual power in all its departments. We have seen how this affected the political relations of the Papacy towards other powers. Since 164 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY the Pope had established his claim to be paramount in Europe, there could be no more question of the Emperor's right to elect him. Since the time of Hildebrand, the Emperor had entirely- dropped out of elections, and the Cardinals, to whom the right had fallen, had become more and more important. The great difficulty of the twelfth century was to secure unanimity among them, the lack of which produced serious schisms, such as that of Alexander III. and Victor IV., which had lasted 18 years. The third Lateran Council of 1179 decided that the unanimity of the Cardinals was necessary to election, a canon which pro- tracted the elections to an inconceivable length, until the forma- tion of the conclave at the Council of Lyons in 1274. Supported by the Cardinalate the Papacy was safe from any attempt to dispute its independence. Strong at the centre, it could diffuse strength in every radius. The methods by which the Papacy maintained its sovereignty throughout the world owe their origin peculiarly to Innocent the Great. His masterly wisdom in promoting the system of central- isation and avoiding the dangers of suzerainty was his greatest achievement. By innumerable small threads of legislation, Rome kept in touch with the farthest provinces of Christendom. There was penitentiary reservation for extreme sins : for certain offences absolution had to be sought in Rome. The right of canonisation was reserved for the Pope under Alexander III. ; Innocent extended this to the power of authenticating relics. In the time of the Crusades, vows were apt to be made im- pulsively and the Cross taken without due thought : exemptions and dispensations could only be given by the Pope himself. The Pope alone could convoke and dissolve oecumenical councils. Appeals to Rome in questions of jurisdiction increased under Innocent's encouragement, and became a reproach owing to their number and informality. Under Hadrian IV. the right was acquired of conferring benefices in foreign countries. It was only after a time that this last privilege became an abuse : its immediate result was to bring forward good men who would otherwise have remained in obscurity, and to counteract the influence of the local landlord. In 1245, however, the English Bishops complained of the number of Italian clergy in England, and ten years later the abuse was removed by Alexander IV. who restricted the number of papal benefices to four in each chapter. It had already become the custom for a newly con- secrated Bishop to make a special journey to Rome, and in the time of Innocent these voyages " ad limina " became a fixed rule. Nothing could exceed the importance of these personal CONSOLIDATION OF PAPAL MONAKCHY 165 interviews in holding the loyalty of national churches to the Papacy. It cannot be denied that these provisions dealt a severe blow at the power of the Metropolitans, whose authority they tended to circumscribe. But the idea of Innocent and the other Popes who promoted the policy was in no way hostile ; their desire was merely to associate themselves with the national authority, and to encourage the Archbishops to regard them- selves also as part and parcel of the great world system. This they never succeeded in doing. The career of Stephen Langton shows how a great Archbishop ranged himself naturally on the side of nationality, in the struggle against John, regardless of Innocent's championship of the King. The framework of the Catholic Church was thus completed, and put together by the great lawyer Pope. The spiritual do- minion became a perfect legal system. But Innocent's achieve- ment did not end here. His work of definition was carried into the innermost sanctities of religion. The hidden mysteries of the Catholic faitti were brought out into the hard daylight, and its most transcendental doctrines were defined in the crude ter- minology of thirteenth-century reasoning. The word " Tran- substantiation" was brought into use for the first time, and Communion was no longer given in both kinds. Public penance had fallen into disuse, and in its place, Private Confession be- came a matter of fixed rule. The Sacraments were expressed as rigidly as the Canon law, and the ritual in which they were veiled became richer and more mystical, gaining in ceremonial dignity what it lost in spontaneity. The danger of all this was that it tended towards excessive formality at the expense of reality in religion. It is an open question how far defini- tion really simplifies the truth, and it is probable that one re- sult of Innocent's influence on Catholic doctrine was to take away much of that organic vitality which belonged to earlier ages. The emphasis laid on sacramental teaching by Innocent naturally strengthened the principle of authority within the Church. It was inevitable that it should go still further. The power of the keys had no disciplinary force beyond the pale of orthodoxy, and some new method had to be devised for the sal- vation of the rebel. One of the principal objects of Innocent's great Lateran Council of 1215, at which representatives from all the European powers were present, was to provide a remedy for the prevention of heresy. The result was that a code of penalties was drawn up by Innocent, and the power of enforcing it was entrusted to the bishops and their delegates. This is said to be 166 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY the origin of the Inquisition, but it would be unfair to ascribe to the very moderate code of Innocent the responsibility for the excesses of the Holy Office in later ages. If the reforms of Innocent tended to ignore the claims of the individual, the process was largely counteracted by the new development of monasticism, which centres round the names of Francis and Dominic. The two saints, animated by a passion of human pity, the one for the conscious spiritual needs of the world, the other for its unconscious peril of ignorance, gave an ideal to their generation which has never faded. The simplicity of St. Francis of Assisi pierced beyond the outward splendour of the great Church militant, and felt the reproach of the suffering and sorrow which it left untouched. The clergy had done what they could, but the regulars were aloof and austere, the seculars were worldly and rich, and neither of them had much time or thought to spare for the individual needs of the poor. It was not until the " Poor little man of Assisi " came amongst them as ia brother that the claims of the defenceless were recognised, apart from their function as channels for the virtue of alms-giving. What the distress of the poor was to St. Francis, the growth of heresy meant to St. Dominic. In his Spanish home he saw men hounded and persecuted for error without the opportunity of knowing the truth, which the clergy were too ignorant to teach, or too mystical to make intelligible to the simple. The founda- tion of the Franciscans, in 1209, and of the Dominicans, in 1215, sealed the golden age of the mediaeval Church. It is not the least of Innocent's titles to greatness that he recognised the power of the love of Francis, and the wisdom of Dominic, and the need of the world for both. CHAPTER XVI THE CONTEST WITH FREDERICK STUPOR MUNDI « r I ^HE right and power of examining the person elected to I the kingdom and pretending to the Empire belongs," "^ says Innocent, " to ourselves, who anoint, consecrate, and crown him." The assertion is made with the assm'ance of absolute power to establish his claim and to accomplish its results. Gregory IX. incorporates the words in his digest of canon law, grounding it on the historical theory of the translation of the Empire, for which Innocent is also responsihle. The assertion is that the Pope originally took away the Empire from the Greek Emperors and gave it to Charles the Frank, and that the authority then exercised by Leo the Great was vested in his successors for ever. This theory of the Translatio was hardly formulated before it was challenged by the most remarkable of the champions of the Empire. The Papacy had already confronted Emperors who were mightier than Frederick II., but none who were more formidable. The great Emperors of mediaeval tradition were simple and heroic, violent men like Charlemagne, and rugged like Barbarossa. But the character of Frederick II. baffled the men of his own day as it astonishes the historians of ours. He stands outside the cen- turies and defies the categories of type. Every paradox of psychology seems to be found in his personality : astoundingly modern, and yet superstitious and intolerant ; subtle and cruel, but charming and lovable, a despot and a troubadour, a philoso- pher and a sensualist. And yet, the whole is something more than a medley of inconsistent qualities ; hardly a great man, and emphatically not a successful one, the verdict of posterity places him beyond the pale of history — essentially Stupor Mundi, the Wonder of the World. Temperament, dynasty, and political philosophy foredoomed Frederick as the last champion of the great mediaeval Empire against the Papacy. The struggle did not end with him, but the last phase is merely the aftermath of Frederick's contest — the epilogue by which the tragedy dies into pathos. Three Popes 167 168 A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY spent their energies in opposing him, two of whom were consum- mate statesmen. To regret that so much energy and power should have been expended in a cause which was mainly tem- poral is to regret that the thirteenth century Church was mediaeval. The Popes fought against Frederick for the theory of supremacy, and for the means to enforce it : sometimes exaggera- ted into arrogance, and sometimes distorted into greed, the theory itself was the indispensable adjunct of mediaeval Catholicism. The successor of Innocent was Honorius III., a member of the noble House of Savelli, and a man beloved in Rome for his goodness. One object and one only lay near to his heart, his zeal for the Crusade. Frederick had taken the Cross, but he showed no corresponding zeal to fulfil his vow. The truth was that the crusading ideal represented the spirit of an age which was passing away, and Europe had grown a little tired of it. Frederick, moreover, had pressing duties to keep him at home. His Sicilian kingdom had fallen into a state of chaos during his minority, and the great Hohenstaufen scheme of erecting a strong Italian monarchy was already uppermost in his mind. Of this monarchy Sicily was to be the base, and the Empire the pretext of acquisition. The gentleness of Honorius was already ruffled by Frederick's delay in carrying out his vow : he was still further irritated by Frederick's importunacy in petitioning for his corona- tion, and for the "adoption of his son, already King of Sicily, as heir to the Empire. Frederick soothed the Pope by a large grant of privileges, and renewed the promise that Sicily and Germany should never be permanently united. At the same moment, how- ever, he secured his son's election to the Empire and wrung from Honorius a sanction for his life-possession of Sicily. The Pope was not in a position to stand out, owing to the turbulence of Rome, and Frederick gracefully atoned by a tactful mediation between Honorius and the Romans, which enabled the Pope to return with honour to the city. The coronation of Frederick and Constance immediately followed, in 1220, "amid universal re- joicings," and Frederick renewed his crusading vow for the following August. Honorius meanwhile was reaping the usual efifects of a strong pontificate in a series of rebellions in the Patrimony. Troubles arose in Spoleto and Ancona, and a more serious outbreak of Roman hostility in 1221 centred round the town of Viterbo, which Honorius endeavoured to protect from the hostility of the Roman Commune. The Pope's suppression of a democratic rising in Perugia further enflamed Republican sentiment, and a rebellion under Richard Conti drove Honorius once more to CONTEST WITH FREDEKICK STUPOR MUNDI 169 flight. Whether with or without reason, Honorins kept a suspicious eye on Frederick and his constructive work in Sicily, and laid many of his troubles at the Emperor's door. But before long Frederick gave him real cause for alarm. Having com- pleted his work in Sicily, he asserted claims over the cities of North Italy, and, goaded further by their resistance, announced his determination to claim the whole of Italy as his " inherit- ance ". In answer to this challenge, the Lombard League sprang to life again in March, 1226. At the same moment John of Brienne, the titular King of Jerusalem, appeared before Honorius as a plaintiff. The Pope had encouraged the Emperor to marry as his second wife John's daughter, Yolande, hoping thereby to increase his interest in the fate of Jerusalem. John of Brienne now complained with some justification that his son-in-law had usurped his title. The last straw was the clash between mon- archical and ecclesiastical rights in connection with episcopal investiture in Sicily. Honorius, the lover of peace, committed himself to war : on a pretext of arbitration he threw in his lot with the cities, and by a fortuitous combination of interests the papal fortunes were once more united with the forces of independence. The death of Honorius III. in March, 1227, saved him from the uncongenial enterprise which circumstances had thrust upon him. The accession of Gregory IX. hurried events forward with sudden rapidity. He was a relation — probably a nephew — of Innocent III., brought up under his influence and imbued with his tradition. As Cardinal Hugolinus of Ostia he had watched with growing irritation the patience and long-suffering of Honorius towards the delinquencies of Frederick. His own energy swept the situation like a whirlwind after a period of sullen stillness. He ordered Frederick instantly to start on his Crusade. Frederick was startled into obedience, and set out from Brindisi ; but hardly had the Te Deum of his host died away than he was back again, pleading the ravages of an epidemic, and alleging that he himself had been taken ill at sea. Gregory saw through the pretext, which was real, to the professions of regret, which were unreal. He recalled the Emperor's action with regard to the Lombard cities and the Sicilian bishoprics, and throwing off the semblance of a peace from which the substance had long since vanished, he excommunicated Frederick at Anagni on September 29, 1227. Frederick accepted the papal denunciation in the spirit in which it was meant, and took up the gage of battle. Among his many talents was a masterly power of pleading his own cause. His exculpation, addressed to the kings of Europe, justified his 170 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY return from the Crusade and impeached the absolutism of the Pope. Frederick's manifesto was widely advertised, and it was hailed with joy on the Capitol. All the factions of anarchy — nobles, republicans, and heretics — claimed it as their brief against Gregory, whose attempts to establish strong government had already made him unpopular. During his absence, a mock pope was allowed to sell dispensations to the crusaders on their way back from Brindisi. Scandals such as this caused Gregory to repeat the anathema in Rome, but he was interrupted by Ghibelline insults, and obliged to take refuge at Viterbo. Fred- erick's next move was a master-stroke of ingenuity : excom- municated as he was, he set out again for the Crusade, and thus took the wind out of Gregory's sails. To the astonishment of Christendom, Gregory placed every obstacle in his way, and finding himself powerless to prevent the expedition, followed it out to Jerusalem with his curse. The Knights Templars and Hospitallers held aloof from Frederick's Crusade, but the new order of Teutonic Knights had followed him. It was unfortun- ate for Gregory's position that the expedition was a brilliant success. While the Pope was preaching a holy war against him in Europe, Frederick reconquered the Holy Land and crowned himself King of Jerusalem. He returned and tried to make peace ; failing, he turned soon and tried again. Finally, in 1230, a flood in Rome, which brought the population in terror to the feet of the Pope, made Gregory more amenable, and a one-sided peace was vouchsafed to Frederick at San Germano. The Crusade of Frederick II. had alienated the world from the papal cause. Contemporary authors of England and France seemed to think that his excommunication was unjust, and that Gregory's action in opposing a Crusade, even if it was under- taken by a sinner, was inconsistent with a belief in the expiatory power of the Holy Wars. But the real issue at stake between Gregory and Frederick was one which could not be realised from a distance. The Hohenstaufen ideal of Italian monarchy would undoubtedly have enslaved the Papacy and undone the work of Hildebrand. The struggle of the Papacy against the Emperors, in spite of the unworthiness of many of its incidents, gains in dignity and importance when we recall the dangers of the alter- native. Had Frederick's ideal been realised, the spiritual power would have succumbed; subject Popes would have once more ruled the universal Church, and all efforts at reform and re- generation would have been dependent on the goodwill of the Emperors. The peace of San Germano lasted about six years, during CONTEST WITH FEEDEBICK STUPOK MUNDI 171 which the activities of Gregory were monoplised by the troubles with Rome. The Popes were always vacillating between severity and indulgence in their dealings with the ungrateful city, which could neither prosper with nor without them. Gregory first bought his way back with doles, and then made himself felt by a reign of terror. He was the warm champion of the new mendicant orders, and with their assistance he waged relentless war on the heretics, who had increased and multiplied during his absence. The inquisition proper, with its terrors and its fanaticism, originated in the age of Gregory IX., and in Rome no clear line was drawn between doctrinal and political heresy. A serious rebellion of the Romans in 1234 attracted the attention of Europe for the first time to the home government and do- mestic difficulties of the Papacy. The centre of attack was Viterbo, the Pope's harbour of refuge, and the leader of the populace was Luca Savelli of the urban nobility. The country nobles were generally loyal to Gregory, and the Emperor, glad of an opportunity to improve his relations with him, came to his aid. The rebellion of Frederick's eldest son in Lombardy was another reason for his anxiety to befriend the Pope. At his bidding the princes of Europe looked on the enterprise as a Crusade. Raymond of Toulouse and other warriors flocked to the papal standard and defeated the Romans at Viterbo. The Emperor formed a peace, according to which the Romans lost all the privileges they had fought for. The Roman rebellion gave Frederick the time which he wanted to prepare for the project on which he had staked his career, the conquest of Lombardy. He paid a short visit to Germany, subdued his son, and married Isobel of England. Then he returned to Italy, and on a pretext of punishing the Lombard cities for supporting Henry, he prepared an expedition for the conquest of Italy, relying mainly for his support on the feudal nobles — the " tyrants " of the cities who were the natural enemies of the democratic movement. Gregory from the first threw himself unreservedly on to the side of the cities. The opponent of democratic liberties in Rome became the ardent champion of the rights of the free cities against Hohenstaufen aggression. He bought his return to Rome for .£10,000 in 1237, and in November following, he heard of Frederick's great victory at Cortenuova. The " Wonder of the World " entered Cremona with the pomp of an Oriental victor, parading the Carroccio of Milan, drawn by his famous white elephant through the streets, with the captive Podest^ of the city bound to its mast. The Carroccio, or wagon of Milan, 172 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY was the paladium of the cities, and what remained of it at the end of the revels Frederick characteristically sent to Rome, as a dehcate insult to the Pope. Gregory did not fail to. read 'the message. He encouraged the cities to stand out against Fred- erick's demand for unconditional surrender, and actively joined in by organising a maritime league. In 1239 he proceeded to ex- communicate Frederick, on the groundless pretext that he had incited the Romans to revolt. Frederick cleared himself in a brilliant speech, which his able chancellor, Peter della Vigna, delivered before the Parliament at Padua. He appealed especi- ally to the Romans, touching skilfully the chords of flattery which never failed to move them. Gregory's vigorous answer shows something more than political resentment : " A beast rose from the sea filled with names of blasphemy, furnished with the claws of the bear, the jaws of a lion, and in body resembling a panther". His indictment contains the first definite impeach- ment of Frederick's orthodoxy, and raises a question which has exercised the minds of all the biographers of this astonishing Emperor. Frederick certainly showed a breadth of outlook which was far in advance of anything that the thirteenth century could conceive. Instead of exterminating his Saracen enemies after the capture of Jerusalem, he had made peace with them. In Sicily he had not only tolerated a Saracen settlement at Lucera, but he had surrounded himself with a Saracen body-guard and encouraged Arabic professors in his new University of Palermo. The " blasphemies " of Frederick, in some cases obviously mis-recorded by ecclesiastical enemies and in others liable to double interpretation, give the general impression of a man who has outgrown the expression of the faith of his age. He is neither irreligious nor defiant, but he is goaded into opposition by a sense of the injustice and lack of comprehension of his contemporaries. His interest in his Saracen subjects, his adoption of their morals, and his meta- physical bent were quite enough to give colour to the Pope's charge of atheism, which is chiefly important because of its efi'ect on the Christian world. The sympathies of Europe particularly of England, according to Matthew Paris— went at first with Frederick; other monarchs had been excommuni- cated for political causes, and the impression was that Fred- erick had sufi"ered unjustly. But the early sympathy for his cause was neutralised by the horror of his opinions, and there were many who read Gregory's encyclical, believed it, and changed their minds. In 1240, Frederick definitely set to work to destroy the CONTEST WITH FREDERICK STUPOR MUNDI 173 States of the Church, and his son Enzio, the King of Sardinia, was his ablest collaborator. While Ancona and the Maritima submitted to Enzio, Frederick marched on Rome and halted at Viterbo. The state of things in Rome was a remarkable testimony to the courage and splendour of Gregory IX. Under- mined with Ghibelline plots and in deadly peril, the city rallied round the aged Pope in the moment of crisis : his courage recalled their pride, and his dignity inspired their awe. A Pope who could calmly organise a procession to St. Peter's with the enemy at his gates — who, even at the eleventh hour, when his friends were deserting, refused with scorn the overtures of peace — was worthy of the loyalty of the city, which hailed him as another Leo the Great. Frederick, distant only a two days' march, and daily welcoming renegade Gwelfs to his camp — among them John Colonna, the mighty Cardinal of San Prassede — laughed at the defenceless exposure of Rome. But even he realised the change of feeling in Rome as the crisis drew nearer. " Ye saints defend Rome, whom the Romans would betray," prayed Gregory as he roused the ebbing courage of the Roman crusaders. Meanwhile, Europe made an effort to come to the rescue by a great council of arbitration, which met with the approval of the Pope. Frederick, who feared the consequences of delay, opposed it with all his might, and wrote strongly dissuasive letters to the Bishops, endeavouring to discourage them with dismal stories of the hygienic conditions of Rome. A hundred intrepid priests, among them the abbots of Cluny, Citeaux, and Clairvaux, embarked at Genoa in spite of the Imperial warning. With outragous indiscretion, Frederick's admiral sailed against them, defeated them ofif Monte Christo, and after being kept at sea for three weeks under terrible privation, they were " heaped together like pigs " in prison. The capture of the priests was not merely an ecclesiastical enormity ; it was also a political blunder, for it outraged the feelings of every Churchman in Europe. Frederick's " sacrilege " confirmed the worst impressions which Gregory's encyclical had made. His refusal to suspend hostilities, in response to the Pope's appeal for a Crusade against the Tartars, still further incriminated him. Gregory pleaded for the deliverance of Russia from this sudden and terrible scourge, which swept down with a shock of fury, recalling the apparition of the Huns. But Frederick insisted on pursuing the war. He saw his enemy within his grasp, and he was not inclined to lose his hold. Gregory was very old — over a hundred, according to the chron- iclers — and the terrible excitement of Frederick's approach 174 A SHOBT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY overwhelmed him. He died in the August of 1241, gladdened by the stolid fidelity of his city, with the renegade Cardinal victorious at its gates. Frederick instantly ceased all hostilities in order to show that his quarrel was with Gregory IX. and not with the Papacy as such or with the Romans. The old and decrepid Celestine IV. reigned for seventeen days and died, leaving a vacancy of nearly two years before the next Pope was elected. The Cardinals forsook Rome, and the Senator Matthew Rubeus assumed the leadership in the interval. Frederick made no attempt to attack Rome, but the Romans took the initiative against him by attacking Tivoli and assaulting the Imperialist Cardinals. Frederick retaliated by besieging Rome, but in 1243 he returned to Sicily. In the same year the Genoese Innocent IV. was elected to the Papacy. " I have lost a good friend among the Cardinals," Frederick is reported to have said, "since no Pope can be a Ghibelline ". The forecast was truer than he realised, for the honest and high-handed opposition of Gregory IX. was replaced by the duplicity and craft of a man of many wiles. A rebellion of imperial Viterbo, which was surreptitiously encouraged by Innocent, led to a renewal of hostilities, and the severe defeat of Frederick's forces led him to sue for peace. The terms which Innocent imposed were extremely humiliating. Frederick was to restore the entire state of the Church, to recognise the absolute spiritual power over princes, and to grant an amnesty to the Pope's adherents. The treaty, duly signed and sanctioned, was sold about Rome as a popular pamphlet, in proof of the papal victory. Meanwhile, Innocent had a deeper plan in reserve behind his negotiations with the Emperor. He first strengthened the Curia with ten new Gwelfic Cardinals. He then opened private communications with Genoa, his native city. At a convenient moment he contrived to receive a report of the approach of fictitious Imperial cavalry, which gave him a pretext for flight. Innocent now became once more the warrior Count of his earlier career. He rode full pace for Civita Vecchia, leaving his exhausted train of Cardinals to follow at a less extravagant pace behind. At Civita Vecchia a Genoese fleet met the quasi-refugees, and carried them to Genoa where they were hailed with delight. They disembarked with almost hilarious self-congratulation, singing as they passed through the streets, " Our soul is escaped from the snare of the fowler, the net is broken and we are free ". The words of the psalmist could not have been more felicitously CONTEST WITH FKEDEEICK STUPOK MUNDI 175 chosen, for they conveyed exactly the impression which Innocent had intended. The flight of the Pope argued that the Emperor was in pursuit ; Innocent had fled before the aggression of Frederick, and Europe applauded the energy and spirit of his night ride, without detecting the masquerade. From Genoa, Innocent went to Lyons, where he summoned an oecumenical council for the summer of 1245. Only 141 priests — mostly French — obeyed the summons, but these were held to be sufficient to carry through the papal agenda. Of the "Five troubles" which Innocent brought forward, the last was the one which absorbed the assembly, the condemnation of the Emperor. Frederick had been invited to attend, but he preferred to send Thaddeus of Suessa, one of his ablest friends, to represent him. His condemnation was, however, a foregone conclusion, and it was carried through in July, after a short and inadequate respite which was granted in response to Frederick's request. Frederick was excommunicated and deposed, and his advocate beat his breast and retired. The decree of Lyons is, after Canossa, the greatest landmark in mediaeval history. From the Imperial standpoint it was far more ominous, for it marked the downfall of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, which gave to the Empire its strongest rulers and its most ambitious aim. The brilliant attempt of Frederick II. to realise his dream of Italian monarchy was a last desperate effort to bring the soaring Papacy to earth. With the decree of Lyons ended all reasonable prospect of success. Frederick did not, of course, submit without a protest, and his second and more famous manifesto is a masterly summary of the whole situation from the Ghibelline standpoint. He points to his personal grievances as a warning to all princes — "I am not the first, nor shall I be the last, whom the abuse of sacerdotal power seeks to hurl from the throne ". He pleads the illegality of his trial, and expresses, perhaps with ex- aggerated emphasis, his disregard of the curse. " Do not believe, however, that the sentence of the Pope can bend my lofty spirit. My conscience is clean ; God is with me. I call Him to witness : it has always been my desire to lead back the priests of every class, especially those in high position, to the humility of Our Lord and to the system of the pure primitive Church." This brings him to his positive position, the outcry for reform. The counter-manifesto of Innocent is equally inclusive and fundamental. He states clearly and unhesitatingly the theory of spiritual power, according to Hildebrand and Innocent III., without attempting to gloss over or minimise the most extreme 176 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY pretensions upon which the quarrel with Frederick had turned. His reply to Frederick's accusation of worldliness is striking : he acknowledges that " poverty of spirit is difficult to preserve in the superabundance of wealth," but he protests that "not the use, but the abuse, of wealth is sinful ". Unlike the contest between Gregory VH. and Henry IV., the condemnation of Lyons made a profound impression on Europe at large. Opinions were loudly expressed on both sides. One man alone tried to mediate, and he was a saint. If anything is needed to convince us that right was not wholly on one side, nor justice confined to either cause, the attempt of Louis IX. to arbitrate supplies the proof. Innocent IV. met him at Cluny, and Frederick expressed to him his willingness to submit him- self to examination for heresy before the Archbishop of Palermo. But things had already gone too far : to imagine that peace could be restored between two such combatants by the solution of a metaphysical problem was the suggestion of a saint rather than that of a diplomatist. The cause of Frederick won a certain amount of sympathy in England and in France. A letter of complaint from England to the Council and an anti-clerical league of nobles in France gave evidence of sympathy with the Emperor's views on reform. But he had utterly failed to persuade the kings that his cause was their own. The Papacy was more real to the world at large than the Empire : to the Popes the National Churches largely owed their original existence, and the idea of Catholic unity was still a power and an inspiration. Political conditions were also in favour of the Papacy. Frederick had alienated Germany long ago by his concentration on the afi'airs of Italy. England was ruled by the weak and priest-ridden Henry III., and the King of France was a typical Catholic saint. The struggle which followed the edict was unworthy of both sides. Innocent employed all the artifices of diplomacy against Frederick. He encouraged the revolt of his subjects, and even tried to seduce his son Conrad from his allegiance. He preached a Crusade against him, emphasising his Saracen leanings and disregarding the profession of faith which Frederick had sent him He united the forces of discontent in Sicily, and allowed his legate to conspire with a handful of nobles against the Emperor's life. Frederick, on his side, burned the bearers of papal bulls in Sicily, and condemned as heretics all who denied his own absolute supremacy over the Church. He claimed to be the Vicar of Chirist, the lay-pope, worthy of adoration like the emperors of old. Meanwhile his son Enzio, and Eccelin, the CONTEST WITH FEEDEEICK STUPOE MUNDI 177 tyrant of the House of Romano, were crushing out the Gwelfs in North Italy. Encouraged by these Ghibelline successes, Fred- erick made up his mind to march on Lyons and prove his right in pitched battle before the world. But, on his way, he turned aside to punish Parma, which offered a vigorous resistance, and detained him, to his surprise, for the whole winter. Still more unexpectedly, a sudden sortie from the town destroyed the Emperor's camp and completely defeated him. One disaster followed another. In May, 1249, his faithful and chivalrous young son, Enzio, fell into the hands of his enemies and lan- guished for twenty-two years in prison. Thaddeus of Suessa had already been killed at Parma; finally, Peter della Vigna fell, like Boethius, a victiiii to his master's own suspicion. The death of Peter may be an indication of the inner fear of the papal con- demnation, which Frederick could not altogether throw off, or it may be accounted for by the sudden moral collapse of lost hope. In either case, it stains a career otherwise honourable in friend- ship, and sadly and disappointingly closes it. Frederick died in December, 1250, at Fiorentino — in peace, according to the more friendly chroniclers, clothed in a Cistercian habit and absolved by his devoted friend, the Archbishop of Palermo. Never did such brilliant gifts achieve so little and yet stand for such supreme negative importance. With him fell the Holy Roman Empire in the splendour of its world-wide power. It rose again under different conditions, but it is henceforth an anachronism, deriving its vigour from the Teutonic monarchy which superseded it, and whose interests were, if not antagonistic, at least incompatible with its fullest development. A sym- pathetic modern character sketch of Frederick gives two main reasons why, with all his powers of mind and personality, he failed to affect his age except as an undermining influence. The first was his lack of nationality. " There was no national or local cause of which he could be looked on as the champion. There was no nation, no province, no city which could claim him as its own peculiar hero." Deeper still was his lack of mental contemporaries. " A man who showed no condescension to the feelings of his age, whether good or evil, could not directly influence that age. . . . Direct influence on the world of his own age he had none. He may have undermined a stately edifice which was still to survive for ages ; but he simply under- mined. He left no traces of himself in the character of a founder ; he left as few in the character of an open and avowed destroyer." 12 CHAPTER XVII THE LAST STRUGGLE WITH THE HOHENSTAUFEN AND THE COMING OF THE FRENCH, a.d. 1251-1276 FOR four more years Innocent carried on the quarrel with the two sons to whom Frederick had bequeathed his cause, Manfred, the bastard Prince of Taranto, and Conrad, the legitimate heir to the kingdom. Manfred, the hero of chivalry and romance, inherited his father's talent and charm, together with his ill-fortune. Conrad was hardly more than a boy and his career was too short to show more than promise. A series of victories in 1252 enabled him to enter his capital victorious in 1253. In 1254, Innocent excommunicated him and offered liis crown to the infant son of Henry III. of England. The Pope had traded on the credulity of Henry, re- presenting the King of Sicily as a prodigy of vice, and extorting large sums from the English exchequer for the expenses of the Sicilian wars. But in May, Conrad died, leaving his crown to his infant son Conradin, whom he optimistically placed in the guardianship of the Pope. The regency was entrusted to Ber- thold of Regensburg, but he soon relinquished it with relief to Manfred, who was the obvious person to protect the rights of his nephew. Manfred found himself obliged to take an oath of vassalage to Innocent, "without prejudice to the rights of the child Conradin," and to follow up the homage by conducting Innocent in state into the kingdom. But Manfred and Innocent understood one another perfectly. The Pope knew that Manfred's submission was merely a means of tiding over an awkward moment, and Manfred realised that Innocent was still negotiat- ing with England. The episode terminated in the sudden flight of Manfred and his defeat of the papal forces at Lucera. In the last month of the year Innocent IV. died at Naples, exhausted by his long struggle against Frederick and his House. His energy was phenomenal, and his power of overriding obstacles made him an even more formidable antagonist than Gregory IX. And yet, in the history of the relations of the Papacy 178 LAST STRUGGLE WITH THE HOHENSTAUFEN 179 with the national Churches, the pontificate of Innocent IV. is singularly unfortunate. It marks the beginning of the period when oppression supplants impression. The war with the Hohenstaufens made money the first object of papal policy, and the exactions of Innocent had not the justification of serving a great aim. The so-called Pragmatic Sanction of St. Louis, although it is a forgery of fifteenth century Protestantism, is not altogether groundless, and it indicates the critical attitude with which the most devoted of Churchmen regarded the abuses of the political Papacy. The opposition of Robert Grostete gives a corresponding illustration of the attitude of the English Church. The outcry against clerical abuses comes no longer from the Papacy itself, as in the time of Innocent III., but from indepen- dent Churchmen, supported by national sentiment. The protest against papal exactions is included in the programme of reform, and the union of the two forces is the foundation of Protes- tantism. In England an unfortunate coincidence between the interests of the Crown and the Papacy, in connection with Sicily, joined the movements of ecclesiastical reform and papal re- sistance to the third and more vital cause of nationality against incompetent monarchy. The policy of Innocent IV. gave to the English rebellion of 1258 a definitely anti-papal character, and henceforth the English national attitude to the Papacy is habitu- ally defensive and intermittently hostile. The successor of Innocent IV. was almost a complete con- trast to his predecessor. Matthew Paris, the English chronicler, describes him as " kindly and pious, assiduous in prayer and strenuously ascetic, but easily moved by flatterers and inclined to avarice ". From other sources we learn that Alexander IV. was fat, good-humoured, and easy-going. The character sketches of mediaeval chroniclers often tell us more by what they leave out than by the qualities which they enumerate. The most obvious characteristic of Alexander was his lack of intellect ; he was a simple, unpretentious soul, who tried to follow in the steps of his predecessor and utterly failed to manipulate the delicate weapons which he found ready for his use. His chief aim was to keep on gooi terms with everyone. He made overtures to Manfred, and announced his benevolent intentions to Conradin's guardians ; he confirmed Edmund of England's enfeoffment at the same time, and translated Henry III.'s crusading vow into the duty of conquering Sicily. He merely succeeded in loosen- ing the whole diplomatic system which Innocent IV. had woven round the Papacy. The only result of the Pope's flabby duplicity was to irritate 180 A 8H0ET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY Manfred into decisive action. In 1258, he crowned himself King of Sicily, in deliberate disregard of the rights of Conradin. If ever usurpation was justifiable, it was so in this case, for the struggle to keep an absent child on the throne of Sicily was hopeless from the first. But the kingship of the Sicilies was only the stepping-stone to Manfred's larger ambition. He openly announced his intention of conquering the whole of Italy and uniting it in his own person. The Tuscan county had already submitted to him and his victory of Arbia gave him Florence. But his strongest allies were the Arab forces of the Mohammedan colony at Lucera, whose devotion and stability were a legacy from Frederick the Wonderful. Against these invaluable servants of the Hohenstaufen — said by Matthew Paris to have numbered 60,000 fighting men — all the efforts of the last three Popes had failed. Excommunications, persecutions, and mendicant missions left them perfectly unmoved, and Alexander IV. 's efforts to expel them from Italy were equally unavailing. They remained firmly rooted in the land, and finally contributed to the racial homogeneity of southern Italy. Meanwhile the German crown was being tossed about among foreign princes, among whom Richard of Cornwall and Alfonso of Castile were the only serious competitors. No one took the child Conradin into consideration except the Pope, who saw in his weakness the chief hope of regaining unrivalled supremacy in Italy. Alexander therefore instigated the Florentine Gwelfs to appeal to Conradin's guardians, and formed in the boy's name an Umbrian league in opposition to the Tuscan league of Man- fred. Before, however, he could carry this policy forward, Alexander died at Viterbo in May, 1261. Inconspicuous as it was in Italian policy, the pontificate of Alexander was an epoch in the city of Rome. During the absence of his predecessor from the city, the great Bolognese Brancaleone d'Andolo had at last planted in Rome the seeds of industrial organisation on the lines laid down by successful communes. Alexander returned, in 1255, to a new Rome, swept and garnished by the wisdom of Brancaleone, but, as Pope, he cordially disapproved of the change. His stay in the city was stormy and brief. He was almost a cypher in the hands of the Gwelfic nobility, who instantly compassed the fall and banish- ment of Brancaleone, but were unable to prevent his return on the tide of reaction two years later. On his restoration to power the great popular leader made an alliance in the name of the Romans with Manfred. Alexander tried his spiritual weapons, but the Ghibelhnes rendered these powerless by threatening to LAST STRUGGLE WITH THE HOHENSTAUFEN 181 destroy papal Anagni unless the ban was removed from their hero. The death of Brancaleone in 1258 left Rome to fall back into the state of industrial chaos from which he had partially rescued it. There is no aspect of Papal history more unhappy than the relations between the Popes and the city of Rome, and there is nothing which it is harder to forgive the great political Popes than their relentless Buppreesion of every poor effort to- wards freedom which the city ever made. The old fallacy by which tyranny always tries to justify itself — that those who are oppressed are incapable of freedom — is the only apology which it is possible to bring forward, and its inadequacy was never more pitifully made clear. The Monk of Padua, writing under Alexander's pontificate, gives a terrible picture of the suflfering which the Hohenstaufen struggle had brought on Italy. " My soul shudders to describe the sufferings of the time, for it is now twenty years since the blood of Italy flowed like a stream on account of the discord between Church and Empire." The thirteenth century was essentially an age of contrast, of high lights and dark shadows, and at this particular moment the shadows were the more con- spicuous. The fall of the tyrant house of Romano gives a strange and bizarre impression, which is not uncharacteristic. Ezzelino, the son-in-law of ^Frederick and the bulwark of the Ghibelline cause in Central Italy, was the Nero of his times. His fantastic cruelty, amounting to madness, was expiated in captivity in his castle at Soneiro, where the people gazed at him " as at an owl " through the bars of his dungeon, with hatred tinged with awe for his monstrous wickedness. His brother Alberic was dragged to death by wild horses after seeing his sons strangled in his arms. We shudder at the terrible working of the mediaeval con- science, which demanded retribution to the uttermost farthing, and carried the principle of " an eye for an eye " to such an ap- paling conclusion. Simultaneously with the fall of the House of Romano one of the strangest phenomena of the Middle Ages made its appearance in Italy. A sudden outburst of asceticism, the product of acute distress, found expression in the rise of the Flagellants. Crowds of priests and friars, knights and burghers, men, women, and children, scourged themselves through the streets of the cities of Umbria crying : " Peace, peace ! Lord, give us peace ! " In its origin, a pure and touching and very mediaeval appeal to penitence, as the one hope of the desolate, the movement spread with extraordinary rapidity, lost its sin- cerity, and by the time it reached Rome, in 1260, degenerated ijito mad fanaticism. The contemporary chroniclers speak of 182 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY the Flagellant movement with amazement and later ones with ridicule ; it remains for history a pathetic expression of national misery, and a striking testimony to the nearness of religion to daily life in the thirteenth century. The new Pope, Urban IV., ^ was the son of a French shoe- maker, an astute man of petty ideals and of common-place mind. He saw at once the fruitlessness of the attempt of his predecessors to draw England into Italian politics. We had already established our reputation as an insular nation. More- over, the Crown had been thoroughly weakened by the Provisions of Oxford, and the country was already up in arms against ad- ditional taxation. So Urban turned to France, his own country, and inaugurated the philo-Frankish policy, which was to bring the Papacy to such deep abasement in the next generation. He invited Charles of Anjou, the brother of St. Louis, to come and re-enact the part of Charles the Great, and deliver the Papacy from its enemies. Louis IX. was relieved to find an outlet for the superabundant energies of his younger brother. Accord- ingly, Charles prepared for an Italian expedition, and became Senator of Rome in 1263. Urban meanwhile remained at Orvieto on bad terms with Rome and filled with anxiety as to the issue of his policy. Had he merely introduced another competitor into the overcrowded arena ? The best thing to hope for was that Charles and Man- fred, brilliant and knightly warriors both, should exhaust each other in the struggle and leave the spoils to the Pope. After fruitless attempts to negotiate with Urban, Manfred sent an ex- pedition to Rome under one of his best generals, Peter of Vico. It failed, owing to the strength of the Gwelfs in the city, although Urban's position was decidedly hazardous. In 1264 the French Pope died at Orvieto, never having once entered the Holy City. His work, such as it was, had been thoroughly accomplished. He had entirely Gallicanised the Papal Court. He sur- rounded himself with French officials, and created several French Cardinals. If his motives were political, they were justified by their results. The French Bishops whom Urban gathered round him were almost all men of conspicuous emi- nence, and the great Churchmen who were drawn from the France of St, Louis were men who would raise the standard of any hierarchy. Among them, none was held in higher esteem than Guy Foulquois, Bishop of Puy and Archbishop of Narbonne. The successor of Urban IV., elected after four months' nm-H, LAST STKUGGLE WITH THE HOHENSTAUFEN 183 vacancy, was a man of stainless character and commanding personality. Guy Foulquois had spent the greater part of his life as a lawyer and a layman. He had been a councillor of Louis IX., who valued him so highly that he dissuaded him from becoming a monk after his wife's death. He was how- ever ordained, and lived for a time according to the Carthusian rule. His life in the world left no stain of ambition on his pastoral career. He became Bishop of Puy in obedience to a strong sense of duty, accepted a Cardinalate under pressure, and wept when he was made Pope. He was elected during his absence in England, where he had been sent, as a man renowned for his integrity, to arbitrate between the Crown and the baron- age. There is a story that he travelled in disguise as a mendi- cant as far as Perugia, where the Curia met him and conducted him in pomp to Viterbo. Guy Foulquois took the name of Clement IV. His pontificate restores one's faith in the inherent possibilities of the mediaeval Papacy. No trace of avarice or nepotism spoils the perfection of his self-devotion. 'A man, stern to himself and gentle to others," is the pleasing verdict of a contemporary. And yet he pursued the quarrel with Manfred with the same vigour as his more worldly predecessors. He taxed Europe for the Sicilian war. and urged Charles of Anjou to hasten his preparations for the French expedition. The character of Clement — perfectly sincere, disinterested, and dutiful — convinces us of the inevita- bility of the Hohenstaufen struggle. Other Popes may have been carried away by personal ambition, by passionate hostility, or the fascinations of intrigue, but Guy Foulquois was above these things ; nothing but a belief that the supremacy of the Papacy in Italy was indispensable to the highest good of Catholic unity would have induced him to prolong the troubles of Italy. Clement IV. very soon grasped one important point in the education of a Pope. His letter to Charles of Anjou shows how well he understood the Roman character. " The Romans demand from their Rector," he says, "an imposing appearance, sonorous speeches, and formidable actions, asserting that such are due to the sovereignty of the world." The difficulty which Charles found in taking the Pope's advice arose from his lack of funds. "An imposing appearance" was a very expensive thing to achieve in the thirteenth century, especially since Frederick Stupor Mundi, with his elephants and his Saracens, had raised the standard of pageantry to such an extravagant limit. " Son- orous speeches " were cheap enough, but " formidable actions " 184 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY were a serious problem to the penurious prince, and Charles had to rob the Lateran to pay his way. Even then the Gwelfs remained dissatisfied, and the Ghibellines daily accumulated in the city. Prompt action was the only hope for the French ex- pedition, and in urging Charles to come quickly, Clement knew he could count on his compliance. Charles came, and was greeted in Rome in May, 1265, with a tournament, a war-dance, and outbursts of Gwelfic loyalty. He took up his abode in the Lateran, whence Clement was impelled tactfully to remove him : the Pope did not allow his personal humility to countenance any indignity to the papal Office. In June a commission of Cardin- als invested Charles with the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and in the following January he was crowned, together with his wife, Beatrix, in St. Peter's. It was only a paper sovereignty, and it was given grudgingly by the Pope, who began to question the sagacity of the French policy, now that Charles, the firebrand, was actually his guest. Had he merely pledged himself to sup- port one master against another, and was Charles any less dangerous than Manfred when it came to a question of corona- tion ? Anyhow, it was too late to draw back. Charles was in Rome with his army : Manfred was openly flaunting his inten- tion of capturing not only Italy, but the Imperial Crown. For a moment Manfred- had hopes of winning over Clement, but the coronation of Charles dismissed them. One last appeal was rejected with the ominous answer, "Let Manfred know that the time for grace is past. Everything has its time, but time has not everything. The hero in arms has already issued from the gate : the axe is already laid to the roots." The reason why the hero had already issued from the gates was that penury had driven him forth. The army of Provence had arrived, and there was no money to maintain it. With his usual impetuosity, Charles set out at once to conquer the king- dom. He drew up his weary forces on the hills above Benevento, overlooking the plains where Manfred's army lay encamped. On February 26, 1266, the battle of Benevento summarised in one great epic the long struggle between the Papacy and the Hohen- staufen. It was one of those brilliant scenes which seem to live in history to remind us that the ages of chivalry, known to us in legend and song, are no mere poet's dream — a fitting setting for the legends of Arthur and the Round Table — but an historical fact. The details of the battle have been too often described to need re-telling. Manfred's strength lay in his Saracen archers, who successfully repulsed the Provencal infantry. But the ultimate victory, rested with the invincible cavalry of France. The LAST STRUGGLE WITH THE HOHENSTAUFEN 185 valiant German knights stood their ground with sturdy heroism, but they were no match for Charles's picked legion, which rode through them with the battle-cry of " Montjoie," and put to flight the Apulian forces in the rear. Charles wrote that evening to inform the Pope of his victory : " 1 inform your Holiness of this great victory in order that you may thank the Almighty, Who has granted it, and Who fights for the cause of the Church by my army ". Two days after the battle, the captive counts, who were taken at Benevento, were led across the battlefield in chains to identify the body of Manfred. The gallant Jordan of Anglano hid his face and wept. " my King ! " he cried in anguish as he gazed on the form of the idolised leader. By his side lay the faithful Theobald Anibaldi, his brother-in-arms, who had followed him to the death. The two had plunged into the thick of the fight, de- termined to die in honour rather than to live in shame. Man- fred was the type of hero for whom men are willing to die. Priests and troubadours fought over his reputation, the priests loading him with the guilt of crimes which he never committed, and the troubadors extolling him in exaggerated and fulsome praise. His true greatness was recognised by the soldiers who fought against him at Benevento, and saw him die. He was honourably buried, but, of course, without ecclesiastical rites, by order of Charles of Anjou, and the French soldiers, passing the place where his body lay, paid a spontaneous tribute to the " preux chevalier " by each placing a stone on his grave, leaving thus an immense monument to mark it. Charles of Anjou sullied the glory of his victory by the carnage whicli followed it. Clement IV. was appalled at the thoroughness with which his work had been done. " Such," he cried in horror, " is the re- venge of which I approved the beginning." Moreover, the brutality of Charles in the hour of victory did much to alienate Italy from his cause. '-Where are my Ghibellines, on whom I had placed my hopes?" Manfred had cried in bitterness in the hour of defeat. Now that Manfred was dead and his infant sons in captivity, the Ghibellines came out of hiding, and looked round for a new leader. In Rome they were strong enough to conduct a popular rebellion, and to force the Pope to recognise as Senator Don Arrigo of Castile, brother to Alfonso, titular King of the Romans. In Sicily, the oppressions of the Angevin King made the rule of Manfred seem mild. In Tuscany, the fugitive remnant of Manfred's party gathered together and plotted with true Italian ingenuity. Beyond the Alps, in a Swabian castle, the last of the 186 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY Hohenstaufen was growing up in a world of dreams, surrounded by minstrels who sang to him of the past glories of his house, and thrilled his young soul with stories of the two Fredericks. To Conradin, in his fifteenth year, envoys came from the Ghibelline cities, summoning him to the fatal Hohenstaufen mission. The enchantment worked with terrible rapidity. In vain his mother tried to hold him back ; her wisdom was dismissed as womanly weakness and hardly weighed in the balance against the encouragement of the boy's uncles. Conradin heard the call of the siren land and rushed headlong to his fate. Clement watched his preparations half in pity and half in irritation. He opened proceedings against him with weary unconcern, as a matter of course, threatening his adherents with excommunication. " I do not lay much stress on the envoys whom the Ghibillines have sent to their idol, the boy Conradin, I am too well acquainted with his position," Clement writes; "it is so pitiable that he can do nothing, either for himself or his adherents ". It was tiresome to have the peace of Italy postponed by a headstrong boy, and Clement's language becomes more exasperated as the cause of the young Hohen- staufen gains strength in Italy. In September, 1267, Conradin set out for Italy with his uncle Duke Lewis and- other German nobles. Young Frederick of Austria, like Conradin, an orphan of a fallen dynasty, accom- panied the heir of the Hohenstaufen as his sworn brother. The bond was a reality in these days of high adventure. Manfred's uncle, Galvan Lancia, had gone before Conradin to Rome, and against his reception there, Clement hurled an indignant protest. But a Ghibelline league between Tuscany and Rome held the city faithful to the Hohenstaufen cause. Conradin was mean- while received with rapture at Pisa and Siena, and the victory of his army at Ponte a Valle left the road to Rome open to him. From Monte Mario he looked across in ecstasy to the arena of Frederick II. and Manfred. His magnificent reception in Rome still further dazzled the romantic boy. Amid draperies and jewels and dancing he was led to the Capitol and acclaimed Emperor of Rome. In August, 1268, he set out with a well- equipped army to conquer Sicily. At Tagliacozzo he met the forces of Charles, and the order of the events of the battle of Benevento repeated itself with remarkable consistency. Conradin was victorious with the first two divisions of his army, but was overtaken in the midst of his exultations by the third and strongest contingent of the French. Don Arrigo, who with his Spaniards was the flower of Conradin's army, had pursued the LAST STKUGGLE WITH THE HOHENSTAUFEN 187 retreating Angevins too far. He returned to rejoin, as he thought, Conradins victorious troops, and found himself surrounded by the cry of "Montjoie" and the banners of the lilies. Charles announced his victory once more to Clement, in practically the same words as he had used two years before. The pathetic story of Conradin's flight is too pitiable to dwell upon ; how the Romans turned their backs on the fugitive boy, whom only a fortnight before they had loaded with honours ; how he fled in disguise to the sea, and was captured by John Frangipani ; how he was delivered into the hands of Charles and executed at Naples — this is the epilogue of the Hohenstaufen drama. The youth and innocence of Conradin could not save him from the ill-fortune which dogged his House. Child as he was, he died like his fathers with courage and dignity, appealing to the mercy of Heaven to mitigate the Church's condemnation. The Hohenstaufen cause was dead. The worst danger which the political Papacy ever had to face lay conquered at its feet. The work of conquest had been accomplished at tremendous cost, and the concentration of its energies, at the zenith of its power, for more than a century, on a temporal struggle was a disaster from which the Papacy never recovered. But neither the political exhaustion nor the moral deterioration made itself felt immediately, for the work of Gregory VII. and Innocent III. took long to undermine. All the elements out of which the Reformation was formed were traceable at the close of the thirteenth century, but they had hardly come to light, and they lacked every vestige of cohesion. Within a month of Conradin's death, Clement IV. died at Viterbo. We cannot help wishing that he had tried to save Conradin. He was great enough to have justified the hope that he would rise above his age and be pitiful to so defenceless an enemy. It took three years to elect his successor, and the Cardinals were only brought to the point by the solicitations of St. Bonaventura. In 1271, Gregory X., of the famous House of Visconti, was elected during his absence in the East, where he was crusading with Edward, the heir of England. He was exactly the right man for the work which lay before him. He was before all things a peace-maker, but on the model of Honorius III. rather than of Alexander IV. The chief work of his pontificate was the restoration of the Empire, which he realised to be essential to the order of the Christian world. The candidate put forward by the Germans was Rudolf of Hapsburg, a humble supporter of the Hohenstaufen, whose insignificance was his 188 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY chief qualification in the eyes of his electors. The Pope would hardly have chosen a Ghibelline Emperor, but Gregory resolved to make the best of it, and get as good terms as he could. Rudolf is described as a "serious, unimaginative, commonplace man," and he was unlikely to cause the Popes much anxiety. He addressed Gregory in terms of becoming submission : " I fix my hopes on thee and fall at the feet of thy Holiness, humbly entreating thee to uphold me in the duty which I have under- taken ". Gregory was as brave as he was pacific. The last two Popes had never ventured to set foot in Rome in the whole course of their pontificate. Gregory went straight to the city and did what he could to patronise the Gwelf and Ghibelline factions which rent it asunder. He was not very successful, either in Rome, where fac- tion fighting was endemic, or in Florence, where it had temporarily fired the imagination of the city. But the effect of his pacific policy on Europe in restoring the ideal of peace was incalculable. The central event of his pontificate was the great Council of Lyons in 1275. Here the restoration of the Empire was confirmed in the person of Rudolf, and Alfonso of Castile was persuaded to forego his claims. Polite speeches passed between the envoys of Rudolf and Gregory, and the old and impossible relationship between the " twin powers " was restored in all its elaboration of meaningless metaphor. Rudolf naturally could not afi'ord to be difficult. He expressed his willingness to surrender the sovereignty of Sicily, and the imperial claims in Rome and the Patrimony. The Council of Lyons carried through one other important piece of business — it drew up and passed the law of Conclave. Taught by the exigencies of his own election, Gregory ordained that in the future the Cardinal-electors should be shut up " with one key " during the election of a Pope, and submitted to a course of increasing privations until they could come to a decision. It was hoped that the discomfort of the Cardinals would urge them to brevity, and that their enclosure would cut them ofi" from outer influences. How far it succeeded in secur- ing these objects, subsequent history shows : repealed from time to time, and modified from its first severity, it still survives as an essential adjunct of papal administration. A third incident of the Council had a merely temporary importance, while it seemed to the world at large a momentous event. This was the formal union with the Greek Church, which was brought about by St. Bonaventura. It was not des- tined to last, but it confirmed the impression which the reign of LAST STRUGGLE WITH THE HOHENSTAUFEN 189 Gregory had already created as an era of peace. In 1276, on his way back from the Council, Gregory X. died at Arezzo, old and full of honour, surrounded by the praises of the peace which he had made. The object which lay nearest his heart remained, however, unfulfilled. He was before all things a crusader, and the underlying motive of the good which he had wrought as Pope was his zeal for the Holy War. The peace of Europe was to him a means and not an end. Christendom received the gift of peace and praised the giver, but the only payment which he asked, it was unprepared to yield. CHAPTER XVIII THE FALL OF THE MEDIEVAL PAPACY: BONIFACE VHI., A.D. 1276-1303 THE death of Gregory X. was followed by an interlude of short pontificates and growing unrest. Of the three Popes who reigned during the year 1276, the third alone made any impression on his age. Innocent V. and Hadrian V. died before they had used their powers. The Portuguese John XXI was an eccentric character, whom some of his contem- poraries regarded as a magician and others as a lunatic. He seems to have been a mathematician of real ability, whom Gregory X. had esteemed for his learning ; but as Pope he was undoubtedly a failure. He was killed within a year of his accession by a falling ceiling in his new palace at Viterbo — an end which he was believed to have brought upon himself by his concourse with the powers of evil. In 1277 a series of aristocratic Roman Popes began in the accession of Nicholas III. (the son of Matthew Rubeus of the noble house of Orsini). His rule was secular and able, and his chief object was to establish the papal constitution on a more satisfactory basis in the states of the Church. He ransacked the archives and produced deeds of gift to prove his rights in Romag- na and Pentapolis. He stifled the first hint of resistance from the Emperor Rudolf by promising him the rights formerly exer- cised by Charles of Anjou in Tuscany. The so-called " tyrants " of the Romagna did homage to Nicholas, and the great names of Malatesta, Polentani, and Guido of Montefeltro are heard in harmony with those of the Pope and his family. Even Bologna came into the orbit of peace which surrounded Nicholas. Finally, Nicholas succeeded in combining the Senatorship with the papal power. He could not personally hold the office, but he gave it to his brother and so paved the way for later popes to go further and unite the two offices in one. His last act of pacifi- cation brought Charles and Rudolf to terms with one another, and so left Europe free for the time being from an Imperial struggle. Nicholas died in 1280, leaving a singularly complete record behind him. His aims and his interests were frankly 190 THE FALL OF THE MEDIAEVAL PAPACY 191 secular, and he has often been arraigned as the founder of nepotism. But what he did, he did thoroughly, and his peace policy was more beneficial to Italy than many a more idealistic effort. The reign of Martin IV., a Frenchman of low birth (1281-1285), was a reversion to the French domination. French influence once more pervaded and governed the Curia, with deplorable consequences for the Papacy. The hostility to the French, which had long been smouldering in Sicily, broke out in 1282 in the eruption named the Sicilian Vespers. The assassina- tion of the whole French population of the island evoked an outcry of vengeance from Charles, which found an echo in his faithful servant the Pope. A Ghibelline reaction in Italy and a rising in Rome crippled Martin's power of action. Before Charles could put his threats into effect he died, leaving his son and heir a prisoner in the hands of Peter of Aragon, who had taken advantage of the general unrest to seize the Sicilian crown. In the same year Martin followed his master to the grave. Under Honorius IV. of the SaveUi family (1285-1287), the House of Aragon maintained itself in Sicily in spite of papal denunciation. Under Nicholas IV. (1288-1292), Charles II. was crowned, but he was king by ceremony alone. In 1292, the fall of Acre brought the epoch of the Crusades to a close. The death of Rudolf of Hapsburg was another landmark. From this point the Popes ceased to regard themselves definitely as the leaders of Christian chivalry against the heathen world ; from this point also the struggle between the keys and the Im- perium becomes submerged in the under-current of rising forces which was sweeping on towards the evolution of the new world. The danger to the Papacy was the same as that which threatens an individual who pins his faith to the temporary and inessential expression of his ideal. The Popes had for so long been satisfied and absorbed in their two great mediaeval enterprises that they had forgotten to read the signs of the times. Europe was making new wine, and the Papacy had nothing but old bottles to receive it. It was possibly some unconscious apprehension of this which led to the strange and inexplicable events of the year 1294. Two years had passed since the death of Nicholas IV. and the Cardi- nals assembled at Perugia in July were unable to come to any decision as to his successor. Name after name had been suggested and thrown out, when, more it seems by chance than by design, someone mentioned Peter Murrone, the hermit of Sulmona. The result was the election to the distracted Papacy 192 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY of a simple saint. The experiment was a failure, and the story of " San Celestino " remains as a monument for the humiliation of his successors. The infinite pathos of his six months' pontifi- cate, the confusion which his simplicity wrought among his friends and enemies alike, and the incongruity of his spiritual graces with the demands of the Vatican are as great an arraign- ment of the political Papacy as the vices of his least worthy successor. From a political point of view, the election of a tired and holy old man at such a crisis was, of course, an absurdity. From the first Celestine V. surrendered to the domination of the master-mind of Cardinal Gaetani. From the little cell which he built himself in a corner of the Vatican he shed all the graces of his holiness on the unworthy world about him — with disas- trous results. Offices were given away many times over because the Pope could not deny the importunate. Advantage was taken on all sides of his humility, his gentleness, and his utter ignor- ance. He was, however, capable of firmness where to him the way seemed clear. In his resolute self-deposition he withstood the prayers of the whole curia and the tears of Gaetani himself. " St. Peter's ship is wrecking, with me at its helm," he said, and asking pardon of the princes of the Church, he passed out through their midst. Behind the sanctity of Celestine, plots and intrigues had screened themselves so efl'ectually that it is impossible to dis- entangle the events which actually occurred from the fictions which subsequently enfolded them. On his retirement, the election of Gaetani was inevitable, but it could hardly be called popular. He was accused by his enemies of persuading Celestine to abdicate by unlawful means. It remained an open question whether such an abdication was morally valid or legally possible. It was therefore a political necessity to keep Celestine in custody, and his sudden death in the Castle of Fumore in 1296 gave some colour to the rumour of foul play. It is unlikely that Boniface VIII. was guilty of Celestine's death. Consummate statesman as he was, he must have foreseen the inevitable consequences of such a crime, and the opposition of the Celestine party which dogged him throughout his pontificate far outweighed any pos- sible advantages in the death of the gentle and innocuous saint. Benedict Gaetani was seventy-six years old when he became Pope in 1295. He had been admirably trained as a lawyer and a legate in diplomatic art. He had a magnificent presence and the spirit of a Caesar. He had "played much at the game of the world," and his attitude towards it was contemptuous and in- tolerant. His coronation festival was an index of his reign. THE FALL OF THE MEDIiEVAL PAPACY 193 Dressed in full pontificals he rode on a white palfrey through the festive streets, while two kings, Charles of Naples and Charles Martel of Hungary, held his bridle. The Papacy of humility had wrought havoc and disaster which the reign of magnificence tried to repair. The policy which he pursued in Italy was far- sighted and vigorous. Instead of curbing the democratic growth of the rising cities, he turned it to his own account by securing the magisterial power in his own person. City after city elected him as Podesta, and even Rome itself allowed him to choose its senators. In these oflices his own nephews were very useful. The Gaetani were a comparatively unknown family until Boniface became a Cardinal, but in his orbit his nephews rose to undreamt-of splendour. One, Francesco, became a Cardinal ; another, Peter, Count Palatine and Rector of Tuscany. Peter'p sons. Benedict and Lotfred, added still further dignities to the family connection. Their rise brought them, however, first into competition and afterwards into collision with the older and more aristocratic Colonna family, and the quarrels which followed led directly to the downfall of the Pope. But it was the imperial, rather than the monarchical, aspect of his office which principally attracted Boniface. Since the Interregnum the Holy Roman Empire had undoubtedly been a negligible quantity, and Boniface made no pretence at acknow- ledging it except when occasionally it suited his diplomacy to do so. " I am Csesar : I am Emperor," he exclaimed on one occa- sion when the ambassadors of the de facto Emperor Albert came before him. The Popes had long since discarded the theory of the twin powers : Boniface left no place in his scheme for any " imperium " at all, other than his own. When, however, in 1303, the Papacy needed an ally in the face of the defiance of England and France, Boniface pardoned Albert, " the one-eyed sinner," and acknowledged him as Emperor on conditions of slavish obedience. Boniface took advantage of the opening of the new century to proclaim his ideal in the famous jubilee of 1300. Crowds of pilgrims from the ends of the earth thronged the streets of Rome and fought their way to the altar of St. Peter to deposit their gifts. Streets were widened and bridges thrown out to accommo- date their progress. The pilgrims were almost entirely humble people, and very few nobles and only one king swelled their ranks. The piety and self-sacrifice which they showed was a touching and impressive tribute to the greatness of the mediaeval Papacy. In this last pageant of her golden age, the Roman Church reached the climax of her outward splendour. Among the crowds who thronged the streets were many who drew from 13 194 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY the great festival the inspiration of a masterpiece. Dante began his poem as from Easter in the same year. The young Giotto, at work in Rome for the Pope's nephew, paused to paint the opening of the festival on the walls of the Lateran. Giovanni Villani, the Florentine historian, " also found himself in that blessed pilgrimage to the holy city of Rome," and returned to his native town inspired by the spell of antiquity to enrich posterity with his attractive chronicle. The triumph, which seemed so complete, had in it an element of tragedy in the face of what followed. The fall of Boniface was already signalled by the opening of his quarrel with the King of France, and his humilia- tion was only a prelude to the degradation of the Papacy. Only five years separate the glorious jubilee from the " Babylonish captivity ". No abler statesman than Boniface ever wore the papal tiara, but he had the misfortune to live in an age of great men. Hilde- brand had gained his victory over the profligate Henry IV. ; Innocent III. had no more formidable antagonist than the con- temptible King John ; Gregory IX. and Innocent IV. each fought their round with Frederick II., the misunderstood anachronism. Boniface was probably the intellectual equal of these his ablest predecessors, but none of these had been faced at one moment by two such foes as Philip le Bel of France and Edward I. of England. Hostilities with England of a passive kind had begun at the opening of Boniface's reign. He had sent two legates to England to demand that the war between England and France should cease. Edward turned a deaf ear to the Pope's requirements and continued to tax the clergy to pay his military expenses. Boni- face was actuated by two motives : he wanted to establish the peace of Europe, and he disliked the drain on ecclesiastical resources which royal taxation created. Edward's obduracy led to the thunderbolt of " Clericis laicos ". The Bull asserted the complete immunity of clerical bodies from every kind of lay taxa- tion ; the laity were forbidden to receive and the clergy to pay on penalty of excommunication. It was an epitome of papal pretension — the translation of high papal theory into terms of finance. The clergy were ready enough at first to follow the lead of Boniface. They were tired of paying for wars in which they were little concerned, and Edward's demands had certainly been exacting. The Dean of St. Paul's had fallen dead of fright at Edward's feet in the middle of an expostulation in 1294. His place as the champion of resistance was taken by the dauntless Archbishop Winchelsea, who refused the subsidy in the name of THE FALL OF THE MEDIAEVAL PAPACY 195 the clergy at the Parliament of Bury in 1295. Edward in retalia- tion locked the ecclesiastical barns with the royal seal. Win- chelsea then ordered the papal Bull to be read in all the cathedrals, and urged the clergy to stand by their holy father in his defence of their liberties. Edward hurled back their defiance with an edict of outlawry, which effectually broke the back of their resistance. Denied the King's justice and bereft of the King's protection, desperation bred disunion, and the clerical party split into two camps. The Archbishop of York submitted with a compromise, and the friars at his back preached com- pliance. Winchelsea stood out to the last, and with him the holy Bishop of Grosteste. Their lands were seized and they were driven out of the kingdom. Edward, however, in one of his impetuous moments of half-sincere and half-dramatic reaction pardoned the Archbishop and restored him with every demonstra- tion of affection. Winchelsea used the moment to wring from the King a Confirmation of the Charters, thus turning an ecclesiastical crisis into a constitutional landmark. The quarrel with England was merely the prelude to the more serious contest in France. It had its origin in the same cause — the exactions of the Crown and the jealousy of the papal treasury. While Edward had been severe, Philip was extor- tionate : Edward wanted money to pay his way ; Philip demanded it to gratify a lust. ^Moreover, Philip's tone towards Boniface was arrogant and offensive from the beginning. The Pope's attempt to arbitrate in Philip's quarrel with the Count of Flanders was met by a lofty rebuke for interference. " Clericis laicos " was answered by an Ordinance forbidding the export of goods of value without the permission of the King — a clever device to provide against the outflow of wealth from France to Rome. Boniface, however, waived the point with unwonted leniency. He issued a Bull exempting France from the unpopular measure, as an appendix to the greater national compliment of the canonisation of St. Louis. The mildness of the Pope was due to the pressure of the Colonnas upon his political position : the great jubilee restored his normal temper. The last pilgrims had not left the streets of Rome before the forces began to gather against Boniface. The Fraticelli, the fanatical left wing of the Franciscans, and the remnant of the Celestinian party made common cause against him, and their mouthpiece, Jacopone, wrote telling satires at his expense. One greater than Jacopone was alienated from the papal cause by the old and ineffectual expedient of employing a foreign cham- pion to oppose an indigenous movement. Awakened by the 196 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY noise of the Colonna scandals to the weakness of his position, Boniface summoned Charles of Valois, the French King's brother, to crush the Ghibellines of Tuscany. The Pope's "treachery" cost him the esteem of Dante, who went over to the cause of the oppressed, and gave to the " Divina Commedia " the character of a Ghibelline apologetic. A further cause of the weakness of Boniface was a political blunder into which his obstinate high- handedness had led him. In the course of 1297, he was called in to arbitrate in his private capacity, i.e. as Benedict Gaetani, between England and France. It was expressly understood that the papal office was in no way to obtrude itself in the proceed- ings. Boniface was, however, foolish enough to spoil a great opportunity by a display of official vanity. He published the arbitration terms in the form of a papal Bull, and thus drew down on himself the fury of the two kings whose confidence he had violated. A subsequent attempt to mediate between Eng- land and Scotland was consequently rejected with a curt petition to the Pope to confine himself to his own concerns. There was no longer any restraining force to hold Boniface and Philip back from the contest which every one must have known to be inevitable. The French clergy were already pour- ing their grievances against the King into the sympathetic ear of the Pope. The exiled Colonnas were fanning the flame in exactly the same way at the French court. Boniface exhorted Philip to repair the evil he had wrought. Philip's only reply was to enter into an open alliance with Albert of Austria, their bond of union being their mutual antagonism to Boniface. It is not necessary to look further for the causes of quarrel between two inflexible characters, who happen to be also the exponents of utterly incompatible principles. The mission of Bernard Saisset, Bishop of Pamiers, the object of which is un- known, brought the tension to breaking-point. The papal envoy was a tactless and turbulent person, who had already made him- self unpopular at the French court, and the Pope's choice of a representative seems too deplorable to be entirely accidental. Animosity broke out in a warfare of phrases, hurled at each other by the Pope's envoy and the King's lawyer, which ended in the arraignment of Saisset for treason. He was accused of using contemptuous language about Philip ; he had called him a bastard, a handsome image, and an issuer of bad money. Philip sent Peter Flotte to report his ill-doings to his master, who heard of them with equanimity. Peter drove the lesson home with characteristic audacity. Confronted by the Pope's assertions of the supremacy of the spiritual over the secular THE FALL OF THE MEDIAEVAL PAPACY 197 power, he boldly defined the situation in the reply, " Your power in temporal things is a power in word, that of the King my master in deed ". Boniface ordered Saisset to be released and sent to Rome ; he annulled the special privileges which Philip had secured in regard to Clericis Laicos, and he sum- moned the clergy of France to appear in Rome to accuse the King. A crude and oflfensive Bull was circulated widely in France to excite indignation, but the complaint of Boniface that fictitious documents were spread about in his name seems to have been well-founded. At anyrate it gave Philip an opportunity to write an answer, in which he could let himself go in an orgy of abuse and discourtesy. " Philip by the grace of God King of France, to Boniface, who assumes to be Chief Pontiff, little or no greeting. Let your fatuity know that in temporals we are subordinate to none. The collation to vacant benefices and prebends belongs to us by royal right ; the fruits are ours. We will maintain all collations made and to be made by us, and their possessors. All who believe otherwise we hold to be fools or madmen." The undisputed Greater Bull, known as AuBCulta Fill, contains the formal indictment of Philip's offences under all their different heads. It was expressed in the old courteous, elusive language which had for generations stung emperors and kings to fury. The ambiguous thunder of the Old Testament phrases blended with the legal innovations upon which the power of the political Papacy rested. The tradition that Philip burned the Bull is probably an over-statement. He did, however, publish a bogus version of it, which largely accounted for the national sympathy with Philip's attitude. Public opinion is most clearly shown in the addresses to the Pope which the Estates-General drew up early in 1302. The first address, from the nobles to the Car- dinals, asserts the independence of France, and defends the conduct of Philip in upholding it. The Cardinals replied to it with moderation and dignity, and by inference made Peter Flotte responsible for the whole crisis. The second address, from the clergy to the Pope, was more respectful but equally emphatic. The Pope's answer is a strong testimony to his polemical skill. He indignantly accuses the clergy of apostacy, because they had timorously disobeyed the summons to Rome. "That son of Belial, Peter Flotte," was again made the scapegoat of Philip's misdoings. Finally, by a clever device, the supporters of tem- poral independence are accused of the dreaded heresy of Man- icheism — a form of abuse all the more telling because it was equally effective whether it was understood or not by those 198 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY against whom it was directed. The Bull, Unam Sanctam, of doubtful authenticity, was issued by the same Consistory, and embodied the same principles in more formal language. In all the papal documents the point on which insistence is chiefly laid is the argument which Innocent III, so frequently used : the spiritual prerogative in no way entrenches on the temporal ; the two swords do not necessarily clash ; both are to be used in the service of Christ and His Vicar, and the royal rights of kings are not endangered, though their sins are of course to be punished. Throughout the quarrel, Boniface persistently translates the political hostility of Philip 'into the spiritual rebellion of a sinner. Philip's personal character laid him open to this kind of attack, and made it all the harder for him to parry it. His defeat at Courtrai and the death of Peter Flotte left him still further exposed. Boniface therefore lost no more time in ad- monition and rebuke. By a sudden reversal of his policy, he took Albert of Austria, now abject and servile, into his favour, and sent an ultimatum to Paris in the form of Twelve Articles for the King's signature. The legate, however, miscalculated the weakness of Philip's position. France still remained on his side, and the able and unscrupulous Nogaret had taken the place of Peter Flotte in the King's confidence. Philip failed to clear himself of the- charges to the Pope's satisfaction, and drew down on himself a Brief of Excommunication (April, 1303). Philip's anger broke forth in gusts of ineffective abuse. Two Parlements at the Louvre, in which Nogaret took the lead, drew up an indictment of Boniface which is too blustering for serious analysis. Nogaret charged him with being a heretic, a simoniac, and a criminal, and appealed against him to a General Council. The Ordinance of Reformation was passed at the same time, the real object of which was to cover a further extension of royal jurisdiction with a semblance of religious reform. At the second Parlement, a further condemnation of the Pope was carried out, with an absurd combination of ridiculous personal charges with serious political grievances. The animosity itself was genuine and justifiable enough, but the expression of it merely proves the childish impotence to which Philip and his party were reduced. Boniface " had publicly declared that he would rather be a dog, or an ass, or any brute beast rather than a Frenchman ; that no Frenchman had a soul which could deserve everlasting happiness ". A long indictment of his private life, his sorcery, wizardry, and incredible vices aided the charges. Philip took them all seriously, and Boniface found it necessary to clear himself by oath at Anagni, pointing at the same time THE FALL OF THE MEDIAEVAL PAPACY 199 to Philip's reception of the Colonnas as the undoubted origin of the attack. But the fury of Philip once aroused could not be easily allayed, and behind the verbose attack of the Parlement, a plot of consummate audacity was being formed. Philip had through- out the quarrel made a point of collecting in his camp every one who had a grievance against the Pope. Bribes were scattered, among the Italian landlords who had been ousted by the re- lations of Boniface. Nearly all the lesser barons revolted against their new overlords, and the Gaetani power spread all across Southern Italy. Even in the college itself, Philip was able to find adherents. In September, 1303, William of Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna entered Anagni, where the old Pope was residing, with cries of " Death to Pope Boniface ! Long live King Philip ! " The town made no resistance, but the Pope's nephews boldly defended his palace. The successful conspirators gave the Pope nine hours in which to submit, but all the fighting spirit of an old warrior came to Boniface in his hour of need. At the end of the appointed time, his defenders capitulated, and his servants forsook him. The two conspirators, pursu- ing their way through the deserted palace, found a calm and dignified figure seated on the papal throne in full pontifical vestments, his head bowed over a golden cross, and in his hands the dreaded keys. The rebel Cardinal sprang forward to murder him, but the more cautious lawyer held him back. With deliberate heroism, Boniface maintained his dignity, an- swering their insults with his " majestic silence," and their menaces with his contempt of death. He was confined in his palace, while Philip's mercenaries sacked his treasures ; but his dramatic stand had done its work. The French coups d'etat had stunned, but not paralysed, the papal party. News of the Pope's desperate situation was carried to Rome with the inspir- ing story of his courage. Those who had been impervious to French influence, whose interests were bound up with the Gae- tani fortunes, joined with Cardinal Fieschi in an expedition to the Pope's rescue. The brutality of Nogaret and Sciarra and the heroism of Boniface produced a reaction. The French conspir- ators contrived to escape before the relieving force had made its way into the palace. Boniface was conducted to Rome in triumph, after forgiving aU his enemies with a mildness born of misfortune. But he was never more a prisoner than in the hour of his deliverance. Those who had been his rescuers now made themselves his master. The Orsini dictated his policy, and the Colonna menaced him in the distance. 200 A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY He died in October, 1303, at the age of 86, heart-broken by compulsory submission to a domination which all his life he was accustomed to exercise over others. With him fell the great mediaeval Papacy. He had tried to carry its pretensions too high when already they had reached a dangerous eminence. He consistently pressed a theory, which no longer covered the facts, to its logical conclusion and beyond it. " He had striven for a goal which had already become fantastic." 4 CHAPTER XIX THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY AND THE BEGINNINGS OF THE INTELLECTUAL REVIVAL, a.u. 1303-1334 THE disaster of Anagni, like every other historical mile- stone, indicates two directions, the past and the future. For the past, it was retributive. As the victory of Canossa had expressed the supreme moment of the mediaeval Papacy, so the defeat of Anagni announced to the world its failure. But the triumph of Philip over Boniface does not merely suggest a retrospect. It is equally eloquent of the way which was still untrodden. We no longer think of the Reforma- tion as a sudden cataclysm which overthrew the power of the Popes in the sixteenth century and hurled half of Europe into the vortex of Protestantism. Nor do we regard it as a capricious act of divine deliverance which saved the age of Luther from spiritual bondage. It is possible to trace, in the circumstances which group themselves round the Anagni ti'agedy, all the forces already at work which hereafter came together in the Reformation movement. It is true that these circumstances were for the most part independent of one another, and it does not seem to have often occurred to their representatives to make common cause against a common foe. But isolated acts of defiance had already come from most of the quarters in which the storm finally broke. The investiture wars had dealt blows at the moral prestige of individual Popes from which the Papacy could never recover. The forces of nationality had asserted themselves successfully in more than one rebellion against the papal theory of Christian unity. Theorists of all kinds — schoolmen, philosophers, and poets — were already at work exposing the supreme unreason which underlay the papal view of the world. Lastly, it was the bitterness of the new Pope, Benedict XL, to realise that the weapons of the spiritual prerogative had lost their power by too frequent and inappro- priate use. In the last personal duel between a great Pope and a great temporal Prince, the King of France had won his victory in 201 202 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY spite of anathema, excommunication, and the direst papal thunder. What was worse — his subjects had supported him and associated themselves with him in sacrilege. Worst of all, the outrage of Anagni had failed to shock the world or to create the reaction which Churchmen had anticipated in the mind of Christendom at large, Benedict found it impossible even to carry into effect his condemnation of the rebels. He was obliged to release the Colonna from the ban, and to restore the lands of all except the arch-traitor Sciarra. Philip le Bel made a formal declaration of innocence in regard to the plot, which nobody believed, but which the Pope himself felt it expedient not to dispute. In 1304, Benedict was compelled to revoke the decrees against the King which his predecessor had passed, and to associate himself with Philip in condemning the acts of Boniface which had led to the quarrel. In May the same year, Benedict promulgated the decrees of absolution together with a modi- fication of Clericis Laicos. A poor shadow of a Pope, gentle and yielding in disposition, he remained in Rome to rule with what authority he could, under the dictation of the Orsini, while he was harassed on the one hand by the Colonna and on the other by the Gaetani. Finally his position became intolerable. In July he fled to Perugia, and with a burst of daring as ineffective as his earlier complacence, he issued fierce Bulls of condemnation against Philip and the leading conspirators. He was rewarded with instant death, whether from poison or from overstrung nerves history gives no certain verdict. His ponti- ficate had merely served to prove the extent of the papal defeat. The long vacancy which followed was due to strife between the French and Italian parties in the College. The truce which was arranged after eleven months adopted a complicated principle which promised to satisfy both parties. The Italian party were allowed to make the nomination provided that the candidate should be a Frenchman. Three French Bishops were accordingly found, all of whom, in spite of their nationality, were partisans of Boniface VIII. against Philip. The French party made the best of it, and left Philip to come to an under- standing with the least objectionable of the three nominees. This was Bertrand de Got, Archbishop of Bordeaux, who became Pope as Clement V. (1305-1313). During the coronation of Clement at Lyons, a wall fell and knocked off his crown^ from which the papal carbuncle was lost. His ill-fated pontificate thus opened under an evil omen. Under Clement the political calamity befell the Papacy to which Petrarch gave the name of the Babylonish captivity. His THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY 203 predecessor had found it impossible to remain at Rome under present conditions. Heavy as were the disadvantages of de- pendence on the King of France — a dependence which seemed to be inevitable — Clement thought that he might just as well avail himself of its possible advantages. After some aimless wandering in the south of France, he fixed his headquarters at Avignon — not strictly a French town, belonging as it did to Charles II. of Naples as Count of Provence, and yet within the radius of French protection. The dissociation of the Papacy from the Eternal City might have been expected to produce a gi'eater immediate catastrophe than it actually did. At first, however, it made comparatively little difference to the political position of the Papacy. Weak as the Pope was in Avignon, he could not have been stronger in Rome, for Rome was ablaze with a three-cornered faction fight, and Philip had every inducement to fan the flame in order to perpetuate the humiliation of the Papacy. Once more the Pope had fallen into the disastrous posi- tion of a prot^g^, and the situation was the more humiliating since his protector disdained the traditional disguise of the armed friend, and assumed openly the demeanour of a victorious foe. Clement would much rather have had nothing to do with Philip, whose snares were so cunningly laid about him. This being impossible, he encamped under his shadow, made apparent surrender, and at the same time watched for an opportunity to extract whatever benefits he could from his uncomfortable situation. It was really quite a good choice — from every point of view except that of the idealist, and his voice could be ignored, for as yet it seldom reached the Curia. Avignon was not French, and yet under French influence, although it did not at present belong to the Papacy, it was close to the Venaissin which had been owned by the Popes since 1228. The one subject of supreme importance to Clement V., and for which he was prepared to make any concession was the vindication of the memory of Boniface VIII. The theory of spiritual power had to be saved at whatever cost of political sacrifice. It was the theory itself which was on its trial in the reign of Boniface — the theory pushed to unwise conclusions and unhappily involved in political and personal causes. The problem before Clement was to abandon the temporary and inessential, or in other words, the political quttrrel, and to hold fast to the vital principle which Philip's defiance had so terribly imperilled. Happily, Philip also had his requirements, and Clement could with careful management set up a diplomatic 204 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY barter. Philip wanted the Empire for his brother Charles, and he chose to imagine, or to assume that Clement could bestow it at his discretion. Clement found it convenient to let him think so, but at the same time he had no intention of so dangerously- adding to the preponderance of France in Europe. His manoeuvres would not have discredited an age of riper diplomacy. He contrived to allow Philip to imagine that he was throwing all his influence on to the scale in favour of Charles's candidature, while at the same time he was encouraging the German princes to elect in a manner much more favourable to their own interests. The election of Henry VII. as King of the Romans consequently appeared to have been carried through in spite of the Pope, who with the support of Philip proceeded to lay down extensive conditions as a preliminary to the coronation. The Emperor-elect felt that double-dealing was in the air, but he was not shrewd enough to detect its origin. At the same time, he was irritated by the Pope's demands, and in particular by the oath of vassalage which Clement insisted upon as a symbol of Imperial vassalage. Henry was foolish and precipi- tate: he hurried into Italy, where Robert of Naples was busy upholding the rights of the Pope against his Ghibelline rebels. In 1312. Henry forced the Cardinals to crown him in the Lateran, while Robert .held St. Peter's against him in the name of the Pope. But he was not strong enough to carry through a coup d'Uat, and after a few flashes of success he withdrew from Italy, leaving disappointment and democratic revolution in his train. Henry VII. appears in the "Paradiso" as the hope of the Ghibellines to whom Dante had looked in 1300 as a destined deliverer of Italy : it is not the portrait as known to history of the ineffective leader who returned after a fruitless expedition to die in his own country in 1313. Clement had managed to deny the Empire to France without quarrelling with Philip, and now a more urgent project called for new concessions from the Pope for the gratification of the King. Philip owed enormous sums of money to the aristocratic Order of the Knights Templar. It is probable that their general, Du Molay, had been impolitic in pressing for repayment. This in itself was enough to cause their ruin, for Philip was not a merciful debtor. But the cataract of charges which fell on their heads cannot have had a purely fictitious source. The Order was a survival from an age when chivalry was more pure and ideals were more ingenuous. It had outlived its usefulness, and allowing for the animosity of PhiHp, the trial and condemna- tion of the knights was probably an instance of a necessary THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY 205 reform barbarously carried out. It was also the price paid by Clement for the vindication of the memory of Boniface. Con- demned by the King in 1307, and by General Council in 1311, the Order was finally abohshed by the Pope in the Council of Vienna in April, 1312. The Council of Vienna had thi-ee big subjects to deal with, and Clement showed his astuteness in his manipulation of the interplay between them. He suspended his verdict on the Templars while he wearied Philip by the long-winded negotia- tions connected with the trial of Boniface. The third subject, that of ecclesiastical reform, Clement attacked with a surprising amount of enthusiasm, stimulated by a sound political instinct for moral decency. The scandals of the Curia were more con- spicuous at Avignon than in Rome, and the eyes of Europe were focussed on the little town with more than casual interest. Accordingly, the last energies of Clement were spent in rigorously checking ecclesiastical abuses, the oppression of monks by Bishops, the immoral lives of priests, and their worldly habits, to which contemporary literature bears abundant testimony. Clement died in April, 1314; his memory was loathed by his political opponents as that of "an astute and dishonest politician," but it was reserved for later generations to execrate him as the author of the Babylonish captivity. The Conclave which met at Carpentras to elect Clement's successor had more than the ordinary difficulties to cope with. Everybody knew that the problem was momentous. The ItaHan Cardinals clamoured loudly for an Italian Pope and the restora- tion of the Papacy to Rome. The French Cardinals, who were in the majority, were equally determined to keep the Papacy in France, and among them the Gascon element prevailed. Mean- while pillage and violence made the proceedings impossible. The Gascons showed by their behaviour on this occasion that they knew what was expected of the public when an election was held in their midst, and the forcible detention of the Cardinals at Lyons by the French King was necessary to induce them to conclude their business. Their choice fell, in August, 1316, on the old Cardinal of Portus, a middle-class Gascon who had risen by the favour of Robert of Naples and by a certain kind of useful ability which had brought him into prominence at the Council of Vienna. The pontificate of John XXII. seems to have won a greater notoriety than its events can easily account for. He has been made the scapegoat for the ofi'ences with which posterity loaded the Avignon Popes, and he was unfortunate enough to be a 206 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY conspicuous target in an epoch of literary redundance. For he opened the last and least worthy phase of the old Imperial contest. The struggle for the Empire ended in the decisive victory of Lewis of Bavaria at Miihldorf in 1322. This provoked the animosity of the Pope, who had meant to control the events by arbitration. John summoned Lewis to appear before the Curia, claiming the antiquated right of decision in cases of dispute. Lewis felt strong enough to refuse, and he was con- sequently excommunicated. The struggle which these pro- ceedings opened lasted until the death of Lewis in 1347. It was not worthy of the traditions which earlier contests had bequeathed. There is none of the old splendour of the Hohen- staufen feud, although the world at large was much more interested in it, and the events were watched and reported with far more contemporary excitement. In the small and complex motives of John XXII. we miss the extravagant magnificence of Hildebrand, and the vindictive parries of Lewis bear no compari- son with the splendid defiance of earlier Emperors. And yet, Lewis set out with advantages which his predecessors had lacked. The Avignon Papacy, if not altogether discredited, was un- doubtedly in disrepute. Abuses which had passed unnoticed in Rome were notorious scandals in the Venaissin, and Christendom did not hide its outraged feelings. The critical and defensive spirit showed itself in England, in the Statutes of Provisors and Praemunire, and in Germany by the passing of the decrees of 1338, which laid down the doctrine that a legally chosen Emperor needs no further confirmation, holding his powers from God alone. Another difi'erence between the present contest and the earlier ones lay in the fact that doctrinal differences were in- volved in it. It is this which gives it so much of the character of the Reformation itself. It also accounts to a great extent for its extraordinary importance in literature. A schism among the Franciscans had arisen on the subject of apostolic poverty. John XXII., at the expense of his reputation, opposed the Fraticelli or Spiritual Franciscans, and held to a more modified view of the apostolic injunction, which was less inconsistent with the luxurious character of the Avignon court and with the personal avarice of the Pope himself. He was supported by the Dominicans in condemning as heretics the Fraticelli, who in their turn gave their support to the Emperor Lewis. Another theo- logical war was waged in defence of the doctrine of the Beatific Vision, which nearly broke the connection between the Papacy and France. John laid down the doctrine that the dead are not THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY 207 admitted to the presence of God until after the Day of Judgment. Storms of opposition greeted his assertion and he was obliged in the end to retract it on his deathbed. To the men of the four- teenth centiu-y theology was not only an absorbing study, it was also the recognised mental exercise and fashionable amusement. So round the contest of Lewis of Bavaria with the Papacy there gathered metaphysical storm-clouds and among the ranks of the warriors we find the thinkers, sacred and profane, doctrinaires and theologians, who delighted to bring their opinions on to the battlefield or rejoiced to find a market for them in the camp of Lewis or at the court of Avignon. Before the struggle with Philip le Bel had stripped the glamour from the mediaeval Papacy, Thomas Aquinas gave a new meaning to history by interpreting it in the light of Aristotle's teleology. The mediaeval Empire had died a lingering death with the fall of the House of Hohenstaufen : the ghost which survived it was being raffled among insignificant princes. It was to come to life again hereafter as the white elephant of the House of Hapsburg. In the attempt of the Popes to usurp the glories of their defeated rivals, the forces by which they had won recoiled upon themselves. The abuses which had been heaped upon the theory of the Empire could apply quite as well to the temporal power of the Papacy. Innocent III. showed that he realised this danger when he insisted that the Emperor, although subordinate to the Pope, was not subordinate to any- one else. But the doorway to criticism was open when Thomas Aquinas stood on the threshold, and directed the old contro- versies into the new highway of political philosophy. He introduced a new way of approaching the old problems by defending the power of the Popes on the basis of teleology. "The State comes into existence," says Aristotle, "originating in the needs of life, and continues in existence for the sake of good life " (" Politics," i. 2). If the end of government is the good life of the governed, then, according to Aquinas, the supreme authority of the Papacy is not only justifiable, but essential, in order that men should believe rightly. For the one essential condition for "the good life," to the mediaeval mind, was a right faith. As the guardians of " the good life " the Popes need fear no rival, but for their secular defenders they must look — not to the efi'ete and once presumptuous Empire — but to the rising spirit of nationality. This new philosophical basis of papal power was stronger than the old Biblical warrants which the Popes had been wont to produce. Controversy had already shown that texts could be applied by human ingenuity in more 208 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY ways than one. And yet the defence of St. Thomas is most con- vincing where it is least needed ; it was not in its capacity of guardian of "the good life" that the Papacy most required vindication, and the time was not far distant when the words of Aristotle, applied to the Avi2;non Popes, would sound like irony. Thomas Aquinas had not stemmed the tide of criticism : he had merely diverted its stream. Dante, writing his " De Monarchia" a little later, reverted to the older method in his counter-attack, but the spirit which he infused into his anti- quated argument is somehow alive and modern. He grounds his support of the Empire on Christ's historic birth under the Roman Empire, which, he maintains, gave divine sanction once and for all to the Imperial principle, and precluded the Church from its claim to dominion. " De Monarchia" was not a very successful pamphlet : it was an attempt " to exchange one impossible theory for another equally impossible," and the system which it advocated had too lately fallen for an im- mediate revival. But Dante's political theory is more important than his contribution to contemporary history : it reveals a sense of the dignity of human nature which carries it into the atmosphere of the " Divina Commedia". Naturally, Dante pre- serves in his political writings the poet's faculty of ennobling politics, and his views are not the less interesting because they are representative rather than revolutionary. At this point the interaction of politics and theology pro- duced a literary storm. ^Egidio Colonna showed that both the rival powers came independently from God, and John of Paris used this useful theory to prove that the Pope had no right to control the policy of France. Now, as ever, Paris was in the forefront of the intellectual movement, and the fearless delicacy of the Latin mind was busy defining and interpreting the various phases of the dawning Reformation. The imagination of Du Bois exalted the kingdom of France to the supremacy which Empire and Papacy had forfeited. His remarkable books register the first protest against the double use of Scriptural texts, in their literal and their metaphorical application, as historical arguments in the great contest. It was Michael of Cesena, the general of the Franciscan Order, who definitely linked the philosophical dispute to the theological quarrel, by attacking the Papacy on Franciscan principles, appealing to "the uni- versal Church and General Council, which in faith and morals is superior to any Pope ". It is easy to understand the fierce intolerance felt by these early Socialists for the existent hier- archy and all its works. The Chm'ch had lost its hold on the THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY 209 poor, and the world's accumulation of sufifering unheeded cried aloud against Avignon as a travesty of the Christian ideal. The result was that the men of the early fourteenth century turned more and more to first principles, examining the founda- tions of Catholicism in the light of the stupendous inconsis- tency. William of Ockham, the " invincible doctor," turned aside from the path of scholastic theology to take up the absorbing problem, claiming by his "Dialogues" and "Tractates" a direct influence on the sixteenth century. His work is a curious mixture of general principles and details of conflict. Much of his argument is merely a restatement of the case against John XXII. from the Franciscan point of view. He does not pretend to offer a complete system, but his chief con- tribution consists in the attempt to distinguish between the temporal or earthly element in the Catholic ideal, and the divine and eternal truth underlying it. In William's disciple and literary forerunner, Marsiglio of Padua, the literary war reached its culminating point. Among the group of great thinkers who were his contemporaries, he alone stands out as a prophet, one to whom to-day was as clear as yesterday, and from whom to-morrow has much to learn. He, with his colleague, John of Jandun, both professors of Paris, brought forward in 1326 " Defensor Pacis " — a treatise in poli- tical philosophy which foreshadows the main principles of modern political thought. In 1327, they both left the university, and offered their intellects and energies to Lewis of Bavaria, who had good sense enough to appreciate the value of the gifts which they brought him. From that point Marsiglio became the inspiration of a policy foredoomed to failure by the hopeless inefficiency of the men to whom it was entrusted. Like the condottieri of the next period, the philosophers of the fourteenth century sent their powers to market, and in an age when intellect was marketable, they seldom met with rejection. Lewis had more mental ability than force of character. He eagerly adopted Marsiglio's suggestion that he should fight the Pope with the Pope's own weapons. Other Emperors, such as Frederick II., had come to grief because they had answered craft with violence, words with deeds. Let Lewis wage intellectual war on John from a position equally tenable, with weapons equally strong, and as yet untarnished by age-long use. In his contest with the I^'ranciscans, John had used equivocal language, to which a little skill could give an heretical interpretation. He was personally unpopular, and officially defamed: the eyes of Europe looked askance at Avignon. Thomas Aquinas had 14 210 A SHOBT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY made Aristotle a bulwark of papal power : Marsiglio used him as a battering-ram. He accepts the teleological view of the State as a community with an end, the good life, but he goes on to make the extraordinarily modern discovery that the legislator is the people, from whom the ruler derives his authority as by a tacit investiture. As to the ruler himself, Marsiglio is modern enough to leave the question open. Unity there must be, but unity of office and not necessarily in number : a committee could serve the purpose, but perhaps on the whole a king is best. So far, " Defensor Pacis " shines like a beacon across the cen- turies, warning the world of changes to come and lightening the surroundings with the flame of discovery. But the most im- portant part of his argument passed unchallenged at the time. After three and a half centuries Locke reached the same point by a more circuitous route, and Rousseau carried the argument further to its logical conclusion. But the contemporaries of Marsiglio were more interested in him as a pamphleteer, and it is to the temporary application of his argument that he owes his fame in the practical world. The Pope, the hierarchy, and all the paraphernalia of spiritual power were outside his political system : they were the friction which disturbed the normal political life — the enemies of the peace which the de facto ruler, the Emperor, was there to defend. Their rights had been seized and not conferred : Christ had neither exercised nor bestowed " coercive jurisdiction " among the Apostles, and so far from the priests exerting this right, the lay authority ought to appoint and control the priesthood. The power of the Pope rested on no valid Scriptural authority, but on the respect which Rome had inherited from the Roman Empire. It was not even justified by success, for the rule of the Popes had not contributed to the general good, and its failure was written large on the walls of Avignon. If we compare Marsiglio with other thinkers of the Middle Ages, it is at first surprising that a man of such outstanding genius should have affected so little the course of contemporary thought. William of Ockham, with far less penetration of insight, is much more often quoted, and his narrower doctrines found a wider acceptance among his political partisans. It is probable that William evolved his theory out of his politics, whereas it is obvious that Marsiglio, in identifying himself with Lewis and his cause, was seeking an expression of a philosophical ideal. His criticism of the papal position was only one depart- ment, and that a subordinate one, of his view of the universe. But in 1326, a philosophical system was incomparably less THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY 211 important than a good argument against the Pope. So the founders of Protestantism sought among the narrower doctrines of William of Ockham and found what they wanted, while they left the broad and confident truths of Marsiglio of Padua for a more adventurous age to explore. Of course the lire of the critics was returned from the papal camp. Unfortunately for John XXII., his champions, in their frantic efforts to find something new to say — some argument which had not already spent its force — were driven to unwise and absurd exaggeration. Agostino Trionfo and Alvaro Pelago restated the fiction of the Donation, and tried to prove the validity of the Translation of the Empire from the unquestionable actual- ity of the coronation of Charlemagne. The Pope, it was argued, could not have transferred what was not, in the first place, his. Trionfo wrote a book dedicated to John XXII. in which papal pretension was made ridiculous in the eyes of Europe by the strain to which it was exposed. The Pope's judgment was the judgment of God, and the whole existence of the civil state was on sufferance by ecclesiastical consent. It was impossible that such arguments could bridge the gulf which had already opened between John XXII. and Lewis of Bavaria, while they merely acted as fuel to the fire of literary enthusiasm. The coup d'etat of Lewis which Marsiglio had planned proved a disastrous failure. He was to put his views into effect by an expedition to Rome — to take Italy into his confidence for a concerted attack on the Papacy. Up to a certain point , Italy was with him. The Roman people welcomed him as Senator, with their hearts inflamed against the Pope who had deserted them. In January, 1328, he was anointed by two schismatic Bishops, and crowned in the name of the Roman people by that useful rebel, Sciarra Colonna. It seemed as if Rome meant to excel itself to do honour to the democratic Emperor. And yet, in spite of the processions and banquets, and the elaborate care in preserving the customary ritual, the democratic coronation fell rather flat. Perhaps there is always a certain lack of dignity in a democratic pageant, arising from some inherent inconsist- ency between the ideal and its expression. Or it may be that Lewis did not really quite believe in what he was doing. It is certain that many of the witnesses felt qualms, in spite of the brave words of defiance, and Villani, the historian, expressed a prevalent opinion in the following words : " In this manner was Lewis the Bavarian crowned Emperor by the people of Rome, to the great disgrace and offence of the Pope and the Holy Church. What presumption in the accursed Bavarian ! Nowhere in 212 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY history do we find that an Emperor, however hostile to the Pope he may have been before, or may afterwards have become, ever allowed himself to be crowned by anyone but the Pope or his legates, with the single exception of this Bavarian; and the fact excited great astonishment." (Villani, x., 55. Quoted by Greg., bk. xi., ch. 3.) John XXII. left none of the usual stones unturned in oppos- ing Lewis, but his real advantage lay in the Emperor's striking inefficiency, and his conspicuous power of wasting time. Lewis was also harassed on all sides by his supporters, and he lacked the powers necessary to control the democratic forces which were driving him on. The Romans insisted on his deposing John XXII. and stipulated that future Popes should not leave Rome, except for the three summer months, without the per- mission of the Roman people. A senseless persecution of the clergy was carried on in Rome, in spite of the presence of Marsiglio of Padua, the discoverer of toleration. Finally, the Minorites clamoured for an anti-pope, and secured one in Peter of Corbara, who, in May, 1328, took the name of Nicholas V. Peter, the unworthy follower of Celestine V., showed from the first a complete inaptitude for the part of anti-pope. He spent his short months of power in blustering against the Avignon Pope : at the first sign of danger he fled, and when he was sold back to his enemies he grovelled for mercy, to end his in- glorious life in an Avignon prison three years after his sub- mission. Everything went against Lewis from the moment of his departure from Rome in August, 1328. While the Neapolitan forces, under King Robert, were recovering Rome and the Cam- pagna for John XXIL, Lewis dawdled about preparing suits against the Papacy, and fitfully asserting his power in North Italy. The picturesque and successful criminal, Castruccio Castracane, tyrant of Lucca, died in September in the course of a quarrel with Lewis which threatened to break up the unity of the Ghibelline party. Foremost among the Ghibelline leaders who had invited Lewis to Italy, Castruccio had encroached on the Emperor's own rights, and, at his death, Lewis was involved in a fight with his sons over the possession of Florence and Pisa. At this critical moment a mutiny broke out among the Imperial troops. Rinaldo d'Este and Azzo Visconti, fearing to suffer the fate of the Castracani, submitted to Avignon, and thus withdrew from Lewis the allegiance of Ferrara and of Milan. Further deaths among the Ghibelline tyrants, and among them that of Sciarra Colonna, convinced Lewis that he was beaten, and con- THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY 213 firmed John XXII. in the impression that Heaven was on his side. Lewis left Italy, Rome tendered its submission to John, and the anti-pope appeared at Avignon with a cord round his neck. It was not surprising that, in 1330, the Pope could aflbrd to take a high line with the Emperor ; the offer of Lewis to de- pose the anti-pope was met by a stinging retort which must have sealed his humiliation. At this point, history seems to be full of surprising personali- ties, whose meteoric careers shed a fictitious brilliance across the narrative. Among these, the knight-errant, John of Bohemia, was conspicuous, and his chivalrous expedition to recover Italy for the Pope, relieves the inglorious story of the last struggle between the Empire and Papacy, His sudden and unexplained appearance, the panic which he struck among the Ghibelline tyrants, the brave exploits of his 16-year-old son, and the mysterious failure in which he vanished "like smoke" across the Alps — these things thread with colour a narrative otherwise lacking in interest. If Lewis was not born to succeed, neither was John XXII. All the pettiness of a subtle nature was his, and his reign smouldered out in an incompleteness more inglorious than failure. Romagna was imperfectly subdued, and the Gascon regents whom John appointed, and particularly his nephew Beltram, were a cause of growing irritation. In 1334, Bologna openly rebelled, and the citizens raised the cry of " Death to the legate and the men of Languedoc ". The spiritual forces also gathered against the disappointed old worldling : another ex- pedition of Flagellants under Fra Ventiu'ino stirred Italy against him, and his last act was the condemnation of its leader at Avignon. John XXII. died in December, 1334, at the age of 9U. His pontificate bore the impress of his own character. It had passed in an unworthy struggle for an outworn and worth- less dominion, and such as it was it had failed to conclude it. He was a pedantic-minded lawyer, who might have led a useful life in a mediaeval university or a provincial town. As Pope, he had sown doctrinal discord in the world, just as Boniface VIII. had sown political strife, and, in doing so, he had robbed the Catholic Church of her dignity in the eyes of Europe. His very virtues lacked distinction : his scholarship was narrow and dogmatic, his personal simplicity counterbalanced by his enor- mous riches exposed him to the charge of avarice, while his pugnacity was not justified by a successful military policy. Papal history cannot afford to be lenient to John XXII., for, in his reign, the Reformation as an intellectual movement began. 214 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY It would be absurd to hold him responsible for the spirit of criticism which dominated his age, but contemporary Church- men must have had good reason to regret that the sword-thrusts of the enemy could so easily get home through the weaknesses in the character of the Pope and his court. CHAPTER XX WHEN ISRAEL CAME OUT OF EGYPT, a.d. 1334-1370 BY the time of the death of John XXII., the Popes had thoroughly exhausted the advantages of the Avignon position. From 1334 onwards the interest of the story lies m the growing attraction towards Rome and the gradual extrication from the toils of French bondage. For seven years Benedict XII. (1335-1342) gave himself with single-hearted zeal to the task of uprooting the evils which John XXII. had sown. He did everything that an upright strong man could do, but success was not within his reach. There seemed good hope of ending the weary struggle with Lewis at the beginning of his reign. But Lewis, though he was subservient enough on most points, clung obstinately to his alliance with England, and Philip VI. threatened to treat Benedict worse than his grand- father had treated Boniface VIII. if he gave way to the ally of the enemy of France. Benedict dared not oppose Philip, and this fresh proof of the " captivity " of the Pope so far improved the position of the Emperor that in 1338 the Declaration of Reuse gave constitutional confirmation to the advanced Ghibel- line doctrine, that the Emperor derived his title from God alone, and that whoever was elected King of the Romans could use Imperial rights without waiting for papal sanction. Of course the actual circumstances belied the brave words, for the Empire was never more powerless, and the Papacy had many another humiliation to impose upon it. But the Declaration of Reuse, as a spontaneous protest against interference, is a more im- portant national document than a charter of liberty would be, if proclaimed by a strong Emperor at the zenith of his power. Unfortunately for Lewis, he had no sense of " the tide in the affairs of men," and a few years later he created a reaction against himself by his folly in dissolving the marriage of Margaret Maultasch in order that she might marry his own son. He could plead with perfect justice that he was only carrying the theories of Marsiglio one step fui'ther in thus acting as if he was the fountain of morality. But his supporters were not yet prepared to see spiritual powers wielded by a layman : they would 216 216 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY follow him in asserting his rights against the capricious policy of the Avignon Popes, but when he began to adopt the Pope's own evil ways — to use a more than doubtful spiritual authority to serve an end which was frankly worldly, the weakness of the Emperor's position stood revealed. For the first time the views of Marsiglio and Ockham began to be regarded as dangerous, and Europe, now on its guard, was slow in giving its allegiance to the new principles. Where Benedict had failed as a peace- maker his successor was not likely to succeed. Clement VI. was not a man of compromise : he pursued the unfortunate Emperor back across all the ground he had won, made him unsay all his rash words of defiance, and, finally, set up Charles of Bohemia against him. Lewis died in 1347, having spent his fitful energies in the most futile of all the struggles between the Empire and the Papacy. Charles IV. outlived him, but he never managed to assert himself against the Popes, whose creature he was, and Germany treated him accordingly. More than once Benedict XII. had tried to efifect the return to Rome. But he failed, as his three successors were to fail, owing to the strength of the pressure of France on the one hand, and, on the other, the natural reluctance of the Cardinals to go back to the city of anarchy. So Italy was left in the hands of the Ghibelline tyrants, and the bitterness of the land against the Popes increased in proportion as the evils of tyranny and private war oppressed it. A pathetic confidence is expressed in Italian literature of the time, that, if only the Popes were to return, all would be well with Italy. The memory of Latin countries is short-lived and forgiving. In the consciousness of present evils past troubles were forgotten. The great Popes had given Italy golden days of renown ; they had made Rome the heart of the world and upheld the tradition of her " eternity ". In the remembrance of these things the wars which had de- vastated Italy were forgotten : so were the extortions of the Curia and the scandals which had already defamed the Vatican court. But the sighs of the Romans, though not unheeded, were in vain, and Petrarch, his heart aflame with worship and pity for Rome, flung his poetic appeals to Avignon, believing that the Pope had only to know of Italy's sufi'ering in order to come and deliver her. With consternation the news reached Rome in 1339 that Benedict was building a great palace in Avignon, and that French craftsmen were at work adorning it : it confirmed their worst fears, for it seemed as though the domination of France was not after all an episode in papal history, but a con- summated revolution. WHEN ISKAEL CAME OUT OF EGYPT 217 The Babylonish captivity had the strange effect of arousing in the Romans a sense of civic dignity, partly genuine and largely artificial, founded on an epidemic of antiquarianism and personified in the fantastic figure of Cola di Rienzi. Clement VI. (1342-1352) found himself more firmly established than ever in the neighbourhood of France, and the Romans turned, in their sense of desertion, to " the tragic actor in the tattered purple of antiquity". In 1342, a strange and beautiful young man ap- peared at Avignon as an envoy from the Roman people, to implore Clement to return. Though his mission was unsuc- cessful, for Rienzi, the messenger, it was a personal triumph. His wonderful language and his strange magnetic charm won the worldling Pope, who sent him back to Rome high in favour as a papal notary and in the company of a papal Vicar, thus enabling him to claim the approval of Avignon for his earliest exploits. The career of Rienzi belongs to the civic history of Rome, but the amazing success of his irregular dictatorship at the opening, and the social upheaval caused by his eventual failure, show how strong were the rival forces with which the Papacy had to contend. The Romans had been living for centui'ies under conditions which were calculated to rob them of all political self-respect. And yet, in spite of their dependence on the Popes, alternating as it did with periods of oppression by the baronage, they had never quite forgotten the civic heritage which came to them from a remoter past. This consciousness, which was kept alive by the palaces of the Palatine Hill and the temples of the Forum, was always breaking out in eruptions of more or less genuine democratic revolt. Three times in history these movements extended beyond the civic policy of Rome : the revolution inspired by Arnold of Brescia in the twelfth century involved the Emperor and the Pope, and its consequences were felt throughout Europe. In the fifteenth century Stephen Porcara conducted a conspiracy against Pope Nicholas V. in the name of civic liberty which for the mo- ment overthrew the political balance of Italy. But the most astonishing and the least accountable of the Republican epidemics was the " Buono Stato" of Rienzi. His code of laws, proclaimed from the Capitol, shows real administrative power, which belies the theory that he was a mere masquerader with an instinct for dramatic effect and a demagogue's gift of persuasion. The thing which is surprising is that the originator of the Buono Stato have shown so little stability and so great an inherent capability of deterioration. The democratic revolution was watched from Avignon at first 218 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY with approval, afterwards with suspicion, and, finally, with active hostility. It was natural that the Pope should be well- disposed towards a movement avowedly hostile to the power of the Roman nobles. The Colonna and the Orsini, contemptuous at first of the noisy and rather vulgar proceedings, were forced to take them seriously when they found their houses besieged by the mob, their defences prohibited by law, and their persons proscribed by the Tribune ; their submission exercised an influ- ence beyond the walls of Rome. The country nobles followed their lead, and Lewis of Hungary and Joanna of Naples called on Rienzi to arbitrate in their quarrel. For a moment Europe was dazzled by the dream of Rome's ancient splendour, which Rienzi had compounded from his knowledge of classical litera- ture and his own fiery imagination. Then came rumours of strange patriotic orgies in the new-born Republic. Rienzi, the self-styled Tribune, was bathing ceremoniously in the por- phyry font of Constantine, and crowning himself with the Seven Crowns of the Holy Ghost. The reports of the Tribune which reached Avignon did not stop short at mere exhibitions of vanity. Sinister accounts of treachery were mingled with fantastic stories of brutal cowardice. Clearly the days of the Buono Stato were numbered. Clement's answer to the imperi- ous demand of the Tribune for his return was to send a legate with a writ of excommunication to denounce Rienzi as a heretic. As the declared enemy of the Papacy, Rienzi lost what semblance of authoritative sanction he had hitherto been able to parade. He had already forfeited the confidence of his immediate sup- porters. After seven months of glorification, therefore, the Buono Stato fell. Roman Republicanism sank back into the ruins whence it had emerged, and the Tribune sought congenial shelter among the revolutionary retreats of the Fraticelli. Meanwhile, Clement VI. was outstripping all his predecessors in zeal for the cause of France. The English war gave him a special opportunity to be useful to the French monarchy. First he tried to prevent it ; failing in this, he interceded with England after Cressy and Calais ; finally, he granted an ecclesiastical tenth to Philip VI. to help him pay his way, and encouraged his relations to give private financial assistance to the French barons. " Ipse Francus, Franco ferrenter adhaesit " is a mild indication of the direction of his policy. Moreover, he bought Avignon from Joanna of Naples, and thus committed the Papacy more irrevocably than ever to the domination of France. While Clement was packing his Curia with more French Cardinals, opposition was growing louder in Europe, and was WHEN ISRAEL CAME OUT OF EGYPT 219 naturally headed by the English. The Pope's desire for money was boundless, and, in his absence from Italy, the revenues from the Papal States were negligible. England was conse- quently the chief " quarry," until Edward III. woke up to the fact that the French soldiers were being paid by the money which left England in the form of papal dues. These were never so burdensome or so excessive as now, when the national need of money was proportionately greater than ever. Clement VI. might well laugh, and say that his predecessors had not known how to be Popes. Funds poured in to Avignon from provisions, reservations, and dispensations. All ecclesiastical rights which it was possible to lay hands on were seized by the agents of the Curia, In 1343, two papal agents were opposed in seizing the offices to which Clement had appointed two of his Cardinals. Soon after, Edward formally complained to Clement of the " army of provisors which has invaded om- realm ". The Statute of Provisors of 1351 gave legal form to the protest. Clement's need of money was greater than his discretion, and a clash of authority was the result. Royal nominees defended their claims in the King's court while their opponents flaunted papal Bulls. This led, in 1353, to the second great anti-papal Statute of Praemunire, which forbade an appeal to any foreign court on pain of outlawry. Of course, this was only the beginning, and not the end, of the contest, but it was a warning to the Avignon Popes of a new direction from which hostility might be anticipated. It was the beginning of direct financial op- position to the claims of the Papacy. "That great and prodigal lord," Pope Clement, was deluded by a false sense of security. The Emperor, Lewis, was hardly ever dangerous, and Charles IV. was docile to a fault. There was nothing to fear from France : the Queen of Naples knew that absolution for her crimes had been cheap at the price of Avignon. Italy, it is true, was not in a satisfactory state, but the loyalty of Rome could always be bought with a promise that the Papacy should return, and Rienzi's fall had shown that in emergency papal influence was still predominant So Clement heaped riches on his relations, and luxury on his court, and looked the other way when an occasional remonstrance reached him against the more flagrant vices of his clergy. The worst charges brought against the Avignon Papacy were pro- bably true of the pontificate of Clement VI. The clergy were luxurious and immoral, and at the papal court extravagance and good-living were carried much too far. But the Pope him- self was an able man, whose worst fault was the leniency which 220 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY tolerated such an atmosphere. He was a very popular preacher, a successful diplomatist, and above all a kind-hearted man. He tried to protect the Jews against the brutal bigotry of Christendom, and even gave them a place of refuge in his Avig- non estate. Such acts of spontaneous generosity, sometimes impolitic in regard to his reputation, are characteristic of him. Perhaps he did not greatly care for contemporary good opinion. Certainly he was not a hypocrite : he lived on a lavish scale, and treated the world with immense good-humour. This was his way of showing Christendom how to be a Pope. Clement was succeeded by a man who was a complete con- trast to himself. Innocent VI. (1352-1362) instantly began to set his house in order. In the constitutions which he issued im- mediately after his consecration he revoked all the irregular powers which Clement had seized. Commendams were for- bidden, and every priest was bound over to personal residence in his cure on pain of excommunication. He laid down that preferment was to be the reward of merit alone since " ecclesi- astical dignities should follow virtue and not birth ". Conster- nation must have reigned among the satellites of the Avignon court as they watched the transformation from the reign of licence to the rule of austerity. Painstaking as he was. Innocent was not a successful poli- tician. His relations with Charles IV., which ought to have been an easy problem, were in effect a failure. He seems to have wanted money almost as urgently as Clement, and although he spent it in more worthy ways he met with quite as much opposition to his demands. His efforts to levy a tenth in Ger- many were opposed in vigorous language. In the words of the Count Palatine, " Stulta est mea sententia Germanorum devotio : quae Romanis vulturibus, qui sunt insatiabiles,cibum parat". Charles IV. threw off the mask of meekness and asked the Pope why he did not first reform the morals of the clergy. In 1356, the Golden Bull of the Empire dealt a direct blow at the Papacy which had long been imminent. The declarations of Reuse and Frankfort had already proclaimed that the fourteenth century was not going to tolerate papal interference in imperial elections. But the Golden Bull was to be a fixed and fundamental law of the German constitution. It nominated the seven Electors who were from henceforth to choose the Emperor, and in defining their powers and privileges the Pope was not once mentioned, nor was there the faintest recognition of his claim, even in the form of a denial. Thwarted in his financial demands in England and in Ger- WHEN ISRAEL CAME OUT OF EGYPT 221 many, Innocent began to reflect on the troubles of Italy and in particular on the state of the Patrimony. Avignon was no longer the peaceful retreat which it once had been. The French wars had let loose armies of mercenaries in the south of France, and to protect the papal court from bands of freebooters, Inno- cent had been obliged to build new and expensive fortifications. Moreover, the advantages of French protection were long ago ex- hausted, and Innocent began to look towards Rome with a growing confidence which struck new horror into the hearts of the French Cardinals. In 1351 Rienzi had reappeared as a factor in politics, his fertile imagination had caught fire again, not as before from studies of antiquity, but from the strange doctrines of the mystic-revolutionists among whom he had lived for three years. In common opposition to the Papacy the Fraticelli had found themselves associated with the Ghibelline philosophers in the camp of Lewis of Bavaria. Lewis was now dead and his place was filled by the least Ghibelline of Emper- ors, Charles IV. To him Rienzi went, armed with prophecies, appeals, and arguments, to persuade him to come to Italy, as his grandfather, Henry VIL, had come, to reform the Church and restore amity to the world. Charles was certainly interested, and perhaps a little impressed, by the picturesque and turbulent apparition. But he had little in common with this wild dreamer of dreams, and it was dangerous to listen to his abuse of the Pope. Rienzi's courage and trust in Charles deserved a better fate than imprisonment, but the Bohemian Emperor was bound to the service of Avignon, and after a year of detention at Prague, Rienzi was handed over to the Pope. He was the type of man who is noblest in times of stress or of failure : his head was not strong enough to stand success. At Prague and at Avignon he behaved with the dignity of an idealist. He justified himself to the Pope by a curious succession of sophisms which he soon per- suaded himself to believe. But he faced the probability of death with courage, and convinced even his enemies of the inherent nobility of his nature. Petrarch, his friend throughout, de- fended him passionately both to the Cardinals and to the Romans. These two men were bound to each other by their common idealism and love of Rome. Petrarch's faith in Rienzi was strong enough to survive the tragedy of the fall of the Buono Stato : disillusioned as he was by the Tribune's conduct, he was ready to support him again in the second phase of his career. It is possible that Petrarch read his friend's character in the light of the mutual attraction of genius. He certainly contributed largely to the influence which saved his life. Rienzi 222 A SHOUT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY in prison at Avignon, his appeals ringing in the ears of the GhibelHnes, his praises sung by Petrarch in words of fire, was a more dangerous person than Rienzi playing the tyrant among the ruins of the Forum. Meanwhile the Romans were engaged in exalting a new demagogue, more violently anti-papal than ever Rienzi had been. Innocent conceived the masterly plan of playing off Rienzi against his inferior successor, Baroncelli. It had the double advantage of bringing the Romans back to papal allegiance and saving the Cardinals of Avignon from the necessity of condemn- ing to death a popular hero. The ingenious Rienzi easily became a Guelph, and in August, 1353, he set out for Italy with the best statesman of the papal court. In Cardinal Albornoz, Innocent had found the right man for the restoration of his power in Italy. He had gained military experience in fighting the Moors and he soon showed diplomatic wisdom in an exceptional degree. The expedition of Albornoz really amounted to a reconquest of papal Italy, for in the absence of the Popes every city of any consequence had either yielded to the local tyrant, or thrown off its allegiance in the name of communal liberty. Albornoz realised that the rights of the absent Papacy made no appeal in Italy, and that in order that it should win it must be allied to a principle more powerful than itself. He therefore made common cause with the spirit of liberty in the towns against local despotism. The most formid- able of his opponents was Bernabo Visconti, who had made good use of the papal absence to extend the boundaries of Milan and had lately added the city of Bologna to his plunder. Bernabo was no dutiful son of the Church to be cowed by a curse. When the legates were sent from Avignon to excommunicate him he made them eat the Bull as well as the leaden seal attached to it. But Albornoz was brilliantly successful, and in seven years he managed to win back almost the whole of the ground which had been lost. The recovery of Bologna in 1360 was a diplomatic achievement which rounded oflf the cycle of victory. Rienzi meanwhile had served his purpose in Rome. He had drawn off the supporters of Baroncelli and restored at least the nominal authority of the Popes. Once again his love of drama proved fatal to him. He played the Senator as crudely as he had played the Tribune, and the spell of his personality seems to have lost its hold on the Roman imagination. His execution of Italy's best condottiere, Fra Moreale, led to a mob rising, in the course of which he was assassinated. His death was probably a relief to Innocent, who would almost certainly have met with WHEN ISRAEL CAME OUT OF EGYPT 223 further difficulties at the hands of the clever enfant terrible who had at last ended his masquerade. The work of Albornoz had made it possible for Innocent to contemplate a return to Rome, upon which it seems that he had always set his heart. Further ravages of the freebooters made it urgent. But by the time it was possible Innocent was too ill, and his death in 1362 seemed like a divine dispensation to the Cardinals, to whom Rome was a nightmare. To Urban V. (1362-1370) belongs the honour of ending the Babylonish captivity. In character he was saintly, wise, and only just short of heroic. At the beginning of his reign, Petrarch wrote to him, as he had written to two of his predecessors, urging him not to delay any longer. His appeal shows what experience had taught him of the Avignon curia. He describes the beauties of Italy, the excellencies of Italian wine, and the facilities of the journey from Avignon to Rome. Only in ending does he appeal to the Pope personally, with confidence in his moral vision — '-Wouldst thou rather rise at the last day among the infamous sinners of Avignon than between Peter and Paul ? ". It was indeed no easy task which lay before Urban, and only a determined man could have carried it through. But there were strong political motives to urge him forward, as well as the appeals of his friend Petrarch. The peril of the mercenary bands was worse than ever ; the French wars had made France as dis- orderly as Italy; and the Black Death in 1361 had ravaged Avignon even more cruelly than elsewhere. The position of the Papacy was more than ever anomalous now that France was weak, and the conquests of Albornoz had at least made Italy possible. Leagues for the protection of the Pope were promised by the Italian cities, and the Emperor was eager to conduct him back in person. A fleet of sixty galleys sent by Naples, Venice, Genoa, and Pisa promised an easy journey. Only the opposition of the Cardinals stood in the way. The three Italians among them longed for Italy, but the soft Frenchmen dreaded the barbarism of Rome, and clung to their fashionable Avignon palaces. The seeds of the great schism were in fact already planted in the College of Cardinals. The moral courage of Urban was strong enough to prevail, and in April, 1367, the fleet set sail " like a floating city ". The first person to greet the Pope when he landed at Corneto was the conqueror Albornoz, now old and disillusioned by the ingratitude of the Curia, which had supplanted him as legate of the papal states, though he was still the directing influence in the Italian policy of the Pope. He had been recalled to Avignon in 224 A SHOKT HISTOBY OF THE PAPACY answer to charges brought against him in connection with Bologna, but Urban showed his sympathy with his brilHant ser- vant in a beautiful letter of consolation in which he ascribes his misfortunes to the envy which overtakes all great men. At Viterbo, the next stopping-place on the road to Rome, the death of Albornoz cast a shadow across the progress of the Pope. The splendour of his funeral did honour to the greatest of cardinal- statesmen. His work outlived him, and his code of laws for the patrimony, known as the ^Egidianse, survived until the nineteenth century. Bologna holds a memorial to him in the College for young Spaniards which he founded there. He was buried as he desired at Assisi, whence his body was afterwards taken to his native land. The Pope gave the jubilee indulgence to the coffin- bearers, among them the King of Castile, who carried his remains by stages to Toledo. As the Pope drew near to Rome his progress looked more and more like the approach of a conqueror. His military escort increased, and a rebellion at Viterbo before he left that city, had necessitated special precautions. Rome did her best to honour his entry, but not all the garlands and banners could disguise the sinister appearance of the city. The churches were in ruins, the palaces were deserted, and stocks of rubbish filled the squares. For more than sixty stormy years there had been no court life, no pilgrims worth mentioning, no great religious festivals, none, in fact, of the ordinary sources of Roman prosperity. The nobles had shunned the dismal city, the mercenaries had sacked it, and even the priests had fled, leaving their deserted cloisters to add to the surrounding desolation. It needed all the determination of Urban to face the com- plaints of the Cardinals on the one hand, and the problems of government on the other. Much as he had hated the luxury of Avignon, the discomforts of the dilapidated Vatican must have told severely on a delicate constitution. Nevertheless he stayed in Rome for three years, and only left it when it seemed to him really expedient to go back to France in order to promote peace with England. His three years were crowded with the work of restoration. During the first winter Rome was filled with masons, and the clerics came flocking back. In the spring of 1368 Charles IV. paid his promised visit to the Pope, but memorable as the occasion was on which " the two swords were reconciled " in the eyes of Christendom, the Emperor's sojourn was not an occasion of glory. Charles IV. was a sensible, commonplace man, and he spent most of his energies in Italy in commuting imperial claims for money. He went back to Germany rich with Italian WHEN ISKAEL CAME OUT OF EGYPT 225 gold, but despised by the land which preferred fantasy to commonsense, and dreams to reality. In the following year another and apparently greater triumph fell to Urban when John Palseologus, the Eastern Emperor, knelt before him, and promised, in return for fighting-men and money, to heal the schism between East and West. Urban knew the circumstances too well to offer more than sympathy, but there were other reasons which made the idea of a crusade against the Turks a not unwelcome one at this moment. In order to under- stand the difficulties which Urban had to face, both in Avignon and in Italy, it is necessary to realise the immense power of the bands of mercenary soldiers which appeared in Europe in the fourteenth century. Their principal fields of activity were France and Italy — France distracted by the intermittent wars with England, and Italy torn asunder with the rival interests of tyrants and communes. These " errant military states," with their splendid generalship and organisation, were largely com- posed of " the proletariat of European society which was breaking out of its ancient grooves". The breakdown of chivalry as a social force had let loose, on the one hand, classes which had hitherto only known a modified freedom, and on the other hand it had deprived the nations of their standing armies. The result was that Europe was practically at the mercy of these strong and efficient confederacies, and the only hope of peace was to play off one against the other, and in all cases to pay and pay heavily. The answer of Landau to Albornoz when the latter asked him to respect the peace of the states of the Church is typical — " My Lord, our manner of life in Italy is universally known. To rob, plunder, murder those who resist, is our custom. Our revenues depend on mortgages in the provinces which we invade. Those who value their lives buy peace and quiet by heavy tribute." In 1364, Urban V. appealed to the Italian towns to combine in expelling the bands, and Albornoz managed to arrange a five years' truce with the White Company, which was, under John Hawkwood's leadership, the most formidable of all. But neither leagues nor truces had any real efi'ect. The disunion of Italy played into the hands of the condottieri, whose interests lay in promoting jealousies and keeping up local vendetti. When, in 1365, Charles visited Urban at Avignon, the Emperor and the Pope formed the plan of using the mercenaries against the Turks. But the captains only jeered, knowing that there was more profit in the plunder of Italy than in the East, which had been pillaged by many generations of crusaders. Urban'e bulls of excommunication against the bands are almost 15 226 A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY pathetic in their inadequacy, and the League of Italy which he formed while he was making final preparations to leave Avignon fell to pieces at the first hint of internal jealousy. It was probably this which broke the spirit of Urbaii, and led him to leave Rome in 1370. Another reason was his failure to keep his hold on the cities which Albornoz had won back to allegiance, and in this he shows traces of lingering Franco- domination. Places had to be found for his French followers, and in employing them as local governors he deserted the traditions of Albornoz and loosened the bonds with municipal self-government in the towns. Urban's departure was the signal for a general rising against the French Papacy, and the con- sciousness of failure must have been growing on him for some time. St. Bridget's warning of death when he left Italy, and the sorrow of the Roman clergy, who genuinely loved him, could not avail to keep him when the troubles of France called him back. His farewell speech to the Romans, in which he thanks them for their good behaviour while he lived among them, shows how little a Pope might expect from the city which had most reason for gratitude. Two months after his return to Avignon Urban V. died in humility in his brother's house. It would be a harsh world which would echo the censure of Petrarch, unblinded by his prejudice and assisted by historical perspective: "Pope Urban would have been numbered among the most honoured men," says Petrarch, "if, when dying, his litter had been carried before the altar of St. Peter, and if with tranquil conscience he had there fallen asleep in death, invoking God and the world as witnesses that if ever any Pope forsook this place the fault was not his, but that of the author of his disgraceful flight ". CHAPTER XXI THE SCHISM AND THE COUNCILS, a.d. 1370-1418 IN spite of all his efforts, Urban V. had done little more than sow the wind. His learned and gentle successor, Gregory XI. (1370-1378), had a harder task than ever before him, for the Cardinals knew from experience what to expect in Italy, and the Italian cities had learnt how to resist the French Papacy. The work of Albornoz had been undone, the city states of Italy had entered on their golden age, and the Papacy stood with its back to the dawn. Florence, in her proud freedom, deserted her Guelph traditions, and put herself at the head of a League of Liberty against the Pope and his foreign governors. Eighty cities followed the red banner of Florence, inscribed with a silver "Libertas"; Joanna of Naples joined the national movement, Bernabo Visconti made himself its leader, and the Pope's own "Holy Company" under Hawkwood was bought over for 13,000 gold florins. Rome stood aloof in spite of blandishments, for the Romans had reason to know that Gregory would not betray their hopes for a permanent return of the Curia. In the first negotiations between Gregory and the League, Bologna held the scales. Gregory, anxious to keep this "jewel in the papal crown," was ready to make reasonable terms, but Florence held out, trusting to the magic of the word " liberty " to work its way, even in the Pope's most favoured city. The Florentines knew their ground : Bologna joined the league in March, 1376. Never before had such a thunder-cloud of excommunication broken on a rebel people as that in which the mild Gregory condemned the Florentines to be the slaves of every Christian nation wherever they might be found. Above the clamour of war the voice of Catherine of Siena was heard with its burden of peace. St. Catherine was much more than a political figure, but as the Joan of Arc of papal history her memory was reverenced in an age which could not have done justice to her mystical genius. Her letters to Gregory and to the Florentines are fearless, impartial, and ardent, and in both cases her plea is for peace at any price, even the price of 227 228 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY liberty or of temporal power. She implores Gregory to return to " the garden watered with the blood of martyrs," and urges him not to be deterred by the condition of Italy. " Do not let your- self be kept by what has come to pass in Bologna, but come. I tell you that ravening wolves will lay their heads in your lap like gentle lambs, and beseech you to have pity on them, O Father." The maid of Siena showed more than paper courage. In the same year she went as the envoy of Florence to visit Gregory at Avignon. Her interviews with the Pope astonished the whole court, including Gregory himself, who heard the Buffering of Italy and the sins of the clergy laid to his charge, and his own faults, more particularly his nepotism, sorrowfully deplored by the intrepid nun. The maid of Orleans at the head of her forces was no braver than the Italian girl who faced the perils of Avignon and dared the anger of the papal court, to give peace to Italy and unity to the world. Catherine was fortunate in the character of the man whom she was taking to task. Gregory defended her, treated her with honour, and — urged, it is true, by other considerations as well — yielded to her persuasion and allowed her to accompany him back to Rome. The journey was deplorable enough. Rough weather, the black looks of the Cardinals, and the political confusion of Italy would have deterred a less resolute man. But in January, 1377, Gregory entered Rome with a small military escort, sheltered by a baldachino, with dancers and tumblers in front of him and as many loyal nobles as he could collect at his back. St. Catherine had desired him to enter alone, accompanied only by the crucifix and a small religious procession, but the fourteenth century was not in sympathy with her ideal of religious simplicity. The news which reached Gregory in Rome was not encouraging. A massacre at Cesena strengthened the rebels, and Florence still offered the most unreasonable terms. But an Italian league could never hold together for very long, and in the course of a few months there were signs of disruption. Bologna was one of the first to buy autonomy at the price of peace, but other states followed its example. A peace congress at Sarzana was proposed at last, in which Bernabo Visconti was to act as mediator between the Pope and Florence. But before it was definitely arranged Gregory XI. was taken ill, and with failure behind him and tragedy in sight, he died on March 27, 1378. The Papacy had worn him out, for he died an old man at the age of forty-seven. The tragedy which Gregory had foreseen was that of the house divided against itself. Two parties had for a long time THE SCHISM AND THE COUNCILS 229 existed in the College of Cardinals, the French and the Itahan. Hitherto the Italian party had been too small to count as an opposition in times of election, but since the Popes had begun to leave Avignon a split had shown itself in the French party. The last four Popes had been Limousins — natives, that is, of the part of France round about Avignon. There is a racial difference between northern and southern France, and this contributed to the jealousy which sprang up between the Limou- sine Cardinals and the so-called Gallicans. None of the three parties was strong enough to stand alone, and therefore a man of no party was elected, the Neapolitan Archbishop of Bari, who took the name of_ Urban VI. (1378-1389). It was an unfortunate choice from every point of view, for it pleased no one, and the new Pope, though he was pious and austere, had a temperament which was fatal to the peace of Italy. The Romans resented his Neapolitan origin, and a riot occurred which gave rise later to the theory that his election was the result of compulsion and so invalid. Urban soon showed his character, and hastened the catas- trophe which had for so long been imminent. He was a keen reformer and he instantly published an unmeasured condemna- tion of those priests who, like most of the Cardinals, held several bishoprics or abbeys and served none of them. He called the priests perjurors who came to do him homage, because they had left their parishes to do it. He told one Cardinal he was a blockhead, and required the others to cease their foolish chatter- ing. St. Catherine, who was not afraid of a little violent language, warned him that "justice without mercy will be injustice," and that " excess destroys rather than builds up ". " For the sake of your crucified Lord," she adds, " keep these hasty movements of yours a little in check ". By August the endurance of the Cardinals was exhausted. After applying for leave of absence "for reasons of health," and failing to obtain it, the French Cardinals withdrew to Anagni. What had finally driven them away was the threat of Urban that he was going to create a large number of new Italian Cardinals to counteract the worldly in- fluence of the French. In September, 1378, they announced to the world that the true Pope was Robert of Geneva, henceforth Enown as Clement VII. The words of St. Catherine were not calculated to pour oil on the waters on this occasion : " I have learned that those devils in human form have made an election," she writes to Urban. "They have not chosen a Vicar of Christ, but an anti-Christ: never will I cease to acknowledge you, my dear Father, as the 230 A|SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY Representative of Christ upon earth. Now forward, Holy Father : go without fear into this battle, go with the armour of divine love to cover you, for that is your defence." It was the last advice which it was necessary to give to such a man. Alberic da Barbiano was already in the field for Urban, and by June, 1379, Clement VII. found that Italy was no longer a possible country for an anti-pope, and was obliged to escape to Avignon. Here he was on friendly ground. The King of France, Charles V., had stood at the back of the rebel Cardinals. He had naturally regretted the departure of the Popes from Avignon, and he had much to fear from Urban's zeal for reform. He was, therefore, ready to finance Clement in his resistance to Urban, to lend him the Breton band of mercenaries, and to give him and his Cardinals the protection of France. In return, Clement granted most of the states of the Church to Louis of Anjou, as a prospective reward for the expulsion of Urban. The schism was an accomplished fact, but the course of it depended on France. "I am Pope," Charles is reported to have said, when he heard of the election of Urban, and Europe endorsed his opinion. England accordingly declared for Urban, and so did the Emperor Charles IV., who had always hated the Avignon Papacy. Scotland and Spain followed the lead of France ; Joanna of Naples joined Clement owing to an independent quarrel with Urban, and her enemy, the King of Hungary, therefore joined the rest of Italy in allegiance to the Roman Pope. Urban showed no wisdom in organising his forces. He chose to centre all his attention on Naples, where his quarrel, first with Joanna and afterwards with Charles of Durazzo, gave him a pretext for an endeavour to acquire a Neapolitan lordship for his worthless nephew, Butillo. Urban was apt to concentrate with dogged futility on some one political object without recog- nising failure until it grew into catastrophe. In Naples, his humiliations came thick and fast. His Cardinals intrigued against him, provoked by the discomforts of life in a whirlwind court, and by the disastrous selfishness of Urban's schemes. He was besieged in Nocera, and treated by his enemies with open contempt. He could only retaliate by excommunicating the besieging army with great ceremony at his window four times a day. When finally he escaped, he was a homeless wanderer in Italy, with a few supporters to whom he was stupidly ungrateful, and six captive Cardinals, whose sufiferings aroused sympathy with their conspiracy and hostility against the vindictive Pope. THE SCHISM AND THE COUNCILS 231 Urban was not a welcome guest in the towns which he pro- posed to honour. Genoa was not very respectful, and Florence refused to receive him at all. Perugia could not keep him out, but the love adventures of Butillo caused a riot which hastened their departure. Rome was in the throes of municipal rebellion, but he was driven by sheer poverty and lack of support to take refuge there on his way back to Naples in 1389. Here he died, deserted and unregretted by the friends who had rallied round him in the first crises of his reign. The schism may have been inevitable from the time when the Popes first left Avignon, but Urban had driven a wedge into the rift by his exuberant un- wisdom. His pontificate is an example of the danger of electing a Pope untried in greatness: as a non-party Archbishop he had had very little influence, and when he was made Pope he meant to have his fling. Many other Popes were like him in this, but the real trouble was that his aims were unworthy, and he was too honest to disguise them. Urban had created twenty-nine Italian Cardinals to fill the places of those who had deserted to Clement. Of these fourteen were in Rome at the time of his death. They met in conclave and elected Boniface IX. (1389-1404) who was first and foremost a man of peace, of afi'able ways, and a thorough Italian. The chroniclers consider it remarkable that no charge of unchastity was ever brouiiht against him. "Though he was not above thirty years old when he entered upon the Popedom, yet he lived so strictly at that florid age and in those wicked times that no act of lust or inordinate pleasure could be charged upon him; for he seemed to have changed his youth into age" (Platina). Meanwhile Clement VII. was not as strong as the antagonist of Urban VI. should have been. The desertions from Urban's camp were chiefly personal, and the distribution of nations remained as it was in the beginning. Clement's chief asset was the allegiance of Spain, which had been procured by his ablest supporter, Peter de Lana. On the other hand, there had been signs since 1380 of a tendency to weaken the loyalty of France. The death of Charles V. in 1380 had removed his strongest supporter. The failure of the French in Naples was a severe blow, and the money diflBculty in France was very acute. But more serious still was the attitude of the University of Paris — that strong body of educated opinion which formed the ideas of Europe. The University had taken the troubles of Christendom profoundly to heart, and it showed a disconcerting disposition to ignore the political issues inherent in the schism, and to 232 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY concentrate on the moral necessity for peace. In 1381, Pierre D'Ailly, the spokesman of the University, had suggested three ways of ending the schism, by cession, by compromise, or by General Council. In the same year Langenetur, a German doctor of Paris, wrote a defence of the principle of a General Council, which henceforth became the ruling idea of University policy. France on the whole followed the University, and its support of the Avignon Papacy was henceforth intermittent and unreliable. The madness of Charles VI. made Clement's position still more unstable, and his attempts to bribe the Court party as against the University did not increase his popularity in Paris. The truth was that Clement was too sensitive for an anti-pope : he could neither get on with nor without France, and while he resented his dependence he could not make good his emancipa- tion, Boniface IX. was more successful than Clement, because his aims were definite, consistent, and limited. He wanted to restore the papal monarchy in Italy, and he wanted as much money as he could get. If " money was the origin of the schism " as contemporary chroniclers insist, it was also the chief difficulty of the schismatic popes, for the papal revenues which had been found insufficient for one Pope, now had to pro- vide for two, and that in the teeth of the storm which had already gathered against papal exactions. Boniface showed the genius of an auctioneer in the sale of offices, and the wisdom of an extortioner in commuting advantages into money. He sold not only the offices themselves, but " preferences " to the offices, and if there were bidders enough, " pre-preferences ". He sold the titles of papal Vicars to the nobles who had seized lordships in the Papal States, and renewed them for further payments after ten years. This was an ingenious plan, because, while it sanctioned the fact, which could not be disputed, it reserved a certain discretionary authority for the Pope to use in the future. Its disadvantages would not be felt until time had neutralised the Pope's influence, and until such great names as Malatesta of Rimini and Este of Ferrara had eclipsed the shadowy claim of ecclesiastical overlordship. Like his predecessor, Boniface IX. founded his Italian policy on Naples. He allied himself with Ladislas, the young son of Charles, and reaped the advantages of that prince's energy and success. But it was always dangerous for a Pope to commend the fortunes of the Papacy to youth and ambition, and the career of Ladislas is no exception to this rule. While Ladislas was making good his position in Naples, sanctioned and helped THE SCHISM AND THE COUNCILS 233 by the alliance of the Papacy, Boniface was struggling with the nobles of the Campagna, and collecting lands and titles for his relations. In 1393 he was driven from Rome through the un- popularity caused by his financial exactions, but Ladislas came to the rescue and enabled him to return on the most favourable terms. A second rising was put down by Ladislas a few years later, and in 1398 the mere rumour of his approach was enough to subdue the rebel Count of Fondi and the more formidable Count Vico of Viterbo, and to win from the Romans the sacrifice of their civic liberty. Ladislas was running up a long account against Boniface, which the future would have to pay. The movement in favour of unity threatened Boniface just as severely as his rival. In 1394, the University of Paris was pressing a scheme for the withdrawal of allegiance from both Popes, and Boniface felt it expedient to give his approval, knowing that Clement would oppose it, and hoping to win favour in France by his show of humility. But the death of Clement — the 'opportunist who lived by compromises " — seemed to pro- vide an easier way. Union did, indeed, appear to be in sight. " It was as though the Holy Ghost stood at the door and knocked." But the French Cardinals, unwilling to do all the surrendering, elected Peter de Luna as Benedict XIII. on the express understanding that he should a^icate as soon as he was required to do so. Instead of carrying out his promise, he clung with amazing tenacity to his unenviable office, survived five rival Popes, and died after thirty years of futile self-assertion. The immediate situation created by his election was a deadlock. Neither Pope would move without the other, and both were content to carry on a war of excommunication. Benedict XIII. showed a surprising power of winning over the best of his opponents: he seems to have had a scholar's attraction for scholars, and even D'Ailly, the apostle of unity, accepted a bishopric from »him in 1395. But the unity movement had spread from Paris throughout Europe, and in 1397 embassies from England, France, and Castile were sent to Rome and Avignon to require the Popes to heal the schism before 1398. In 1398, Charles of France met Wenzel, King of Germany, at Rheims, and each undertook to make his own Pope resign. This was followed by the withdrawal of the allegiance of France from Benedict, and the siege of Avignon from September to April. Wenzel meanwhile insisted that Charles must act first — " W£en he has deposed his Pope, we will depose ours ". The truth was that both Kings had promised more than they could fulfil. France was being torn by civil war, and the successes of the 234 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY Orleanists had brought a reaction in favour of Benedict XIII., who was now released from Avignon, and successfully at work winning over the Burgundian faction. Boniface was playing much the same game in Germany. He was supporting Rupert against Wenzel, and in Hungary he championed the claims of Ladislas against Wenzel's brother, Sigismund. Envoys passed between the rival Popes, but to no purpose : neither of them really wanted unity, for each in his own way found the schism a success. When the envoys of Benedict reached Rome they found Boniface ill and in great pain, and in October, 1404, he died. His last reported words were : " If I had more money, I should be well enough ". The Roman Cardinals followed the example of Avignon in the next election, and each promised to resign if elected. As at Avignon the promise was broken by the new Pope, Innocent VII. (1404-1406), an old and blameless Neapolitan, who owed his election to the certainty that he would not live very long. In his two years' pontificate he reaped the un- fortunate results of his predecessor's dealings with Ladislas. Innocent was too old to hold his own against the strong forces of young Italy, and from the first the King of Naples made him his tool. Ladislas made an agreement with the Romans which left him the arbiter in all their quarrels with the Papacy. The next step was, of course, to stir them up to revolt, and so to weaken both sides that Rome should fall an easy prey to Naples. Innocent was at first popular in Rome, but the wiles of Ladislas and the importunities of his own relations soon turned the tide. When the Romans found that Ladislas was ready to support them, they turned on Innocent and wrung concessions from him till he had no more to yield. " I have given you all you wished," he said; "what more can I give you except this mantle?" In a dispute concerning the custody of the bridges, his nephew killed eleven citizens who were under the Pope's protection. The riot which followed obliged Innocent to escape to Viterbo, while the Colonna seized the Vatican, and Ladislas occupied the city. In January, 1406, the Romans implored him to return, and after a few months of peace, he died. Nothing had been done for the cause of unity but a few futile negotiations between Innocent and Benedict XIII. , the latter having fled to Genoa owing to a revulsion of feeling in France. Encouraged by the death of Innocent the Roman Cardinals elected another old Pope in November, 1406. Gregory XII. (1406-1417) was eighty years of age, and all his life he had been renowned for his sincerity. He was known to care for nothing THE SCHISM AND THE COUNCILS 235 but unity, and in his first sermon as Pope he gave out as his text: "Prepare ye the way of the Lord". He had, of course, undertaken to resign at once, and there is every reason to think that he meant to keep his word. But he was torn between Ladislas and his relations, and led by them into uncongenial duplicities. In his first negotiations with Benedict neither side was sincere, and a meeting was appointed at Savona which neither Pope meant to attend. Gregory's nephew, Antonio Correr, was his spokesman, and also it seems his master. In May, 1407, the envoys of France, Pierre D'Ailly among them, approached each Pope in turn ; the interviews were characteristic of the two men. Benedict answered the questions put to him so fast and so fluently that no one understood what he said, and every one relied on his neighbour's intelligence to exceed his own. When the general haziness was discovered, they asked in plain language for a Bull containing a promise to abdicate at Savona. Benedict put them ofl" once more, this time with an emotional appeal for confidence and a gentle remonstrance for their want of faith which reduced the envoys to tears, and sent them back to Paris forgiven and deceived. Gregory was completely in the hands of his relations, who spent his money and alienated his supporters, while round him whirled intrigues of all kinds to prevent his resignation. The envoys could make nothing of him. He disavowed his nephew's undertaking that he should go to Savona ; he did not see how he was to go ; he could not afi"ord the galleys ; he did not like the treaty ; he could not leave Rome while Ladislas was so near. The inexorable D'Ailly answered his excuses point by point, and finally reduced him to tears. It seems as if at the back of his reluctance was the fear of his own family. " Oh, I will give you union, do not doubt it," he cried, pathetically dis- traught ; " and I will satisfy your King, but I pray you do not leave me, and let some of your number accompany me on my way and comfort me." The time for the meeting drew near, and Gregory was said to be on his way to Savona. A letter from Benedict reached him on his journey. "We are both old men," wrote Benedict, "God has given us a great opportunity ; let us accept it when ofi"ered before we die." But Gregory's journey proved to be merely a tour for the aggrandisement of his nephews, and bad news from Rome was a pretext for saving him from "the damnable and diabohcal suggestion" of abdication. There was really some excuse for Gregory : Ladislas was financing rebellion in Rome, and Benedict XIII. was found to be intriguing behind his back. 236 A SHOBT HISTOBY OF THE PAPACY But the patience of Christendom was exhausted, and drastic measures were in preparation against both him and his rival. Eight Cardinals met together at Livorno, four from each Curia, to discuss plans for a General Council. All Gregory's Cardinals had deserted him except one, and the strongest man of his party, Baldassare Cossa, legate of Bologna, was raising troops against him. Benedict was equally defenceless, for France had threatened to withdraw obedience and had already cut off supplies. The Council of Pisa was announced by the Cardinals for May 29, 1409. Their action was of course a revolution, but it was sanctioned by necessity, and Europe readily acquiesced. Gregory and Benedict were both equally discredited, for both had shown a deplorable lack of public spirit. But neither was without his supporters, even at this crisis. Gregory was out of his element in politics, but he was a good man in private life, and it is impossible not to be sorry for him. " I followed the Pope from Lucca rather through affection than because I ap- prove his course," said Leo Bruni. Benedict's defects, on the other hand, lay in the quality of his mind, which was hard and legal, and he did not know how to present his case to those who were different from himself. The attitude of the Council of Pisa towards both Popes was summary and uncompromising. On their failure to appear in answer to summons, they were both pronounced contumacious, and after two months' delay a decree of deposition was issued against them. The Cardinals' call to arms had met a ready response from the national churches, and yet the assembly at Pisa, in spite of its numerical strength, was obviously not sure of itself. D'Ailly and Gerson laboured feverishly to establish a legal basis for the act of revolution : the law of nature, the usage of primitive Christianity, and the authority of Scripture were brought forward to justify the Cardinals' emergency measure, and the proceedings were carried out with a combination of haste and intellectual violence which almost suggests apology. The Council was not unanimous, and yet the opposition remained unheard. The envoys of Rupert, King of the Romans, were excluded, and Carlo Malatesta, who refused to break faith with Gregory, could not get a hearing. The embassy of Benedict XIIL was not even received. The assembly was almost entirely ecclesiastical ; it was obviously uncomfortable in rebellion, and the plea of emergency gave it no relief. The decree of deposi- tion did not end the schism, because each of the Popes retained some of his followers who were unwilling to abide by the con- ciliar decision. In June, 1409, when there were still two Popes THE SCHISM AND THE COUNCILS 237 in Christendom, the Council of Pisa proceeded to elect a third. For this reason it is said to have failed; it did not end the schism, and it carried through no reform ; it did, however, eflfect a more momentous achievement in paving the way for the reformation. The Council's Pope, Alexander V. (1409-1410), lived only ten months; unable to entefTxtmio. which was held by Ladislas in the name of Gregory, he died at Bologna, under the shadow of Baldassare Cossa. Alexander was a Greek theologian, whose heart was bound up with the Franciscans. The contest between the friars and the parochial clergy, of which Chaucer gives so clear a picture, was then at its height. The unworldly Alex- ander's one important measure was a Bull in favour of his beloved order of such extravagant beneficence that the Franciscans themselves had to refute it in self-defence. The inevitable successor of Alexander was the man who had really carried through the Council of Pisa. Baldassare Cossa, who took the name of John XXIII. (1410-1415), cannot fairly be judged by ordinary ecclesiastical standards. He was first and foremost an able condottiere, who as legate had made himself lord of Bologna, and ruled it with firmness and care. He had risen through his success as an extortioner for Boniface IX., and his extraordinary efiiciency in profit-making showed itself as much in politics as in finance. The first problem which con- fronted him as Pope was the schism which had infected the Empire. Of the three candidates to the Empire, John chose to ally himself with the Sigismund of Bohemia, whose allegiance was to cost him dear. The immediate result, however, was to give him the support of Germany, and, encouraged by this, he set out for Rome to fight Ladislas in the name of Louis of Anjou. But after the one victory of Rocca Secca, the fortunes of John and his ally deserted them. Louis proved to be useless, and their best general, the famous Sforza, deserted to Ladislas. After con- soling himself with burning Sforza in eSigy and indulging in a few coarse jokes at his expense, John made peace with Ladislas in terms which are characteristic of Italian warfare at this period. Both sides threw over their allies, and neither meant to keep faith with the other when they were disarmed. Meanwhile, John found himself obliged to take steps towards summoning a Council for the reform of ecclesiastical abuses, which had been enjoined by the Council of Pisa. If reform had been difficult to carry through when there were two Popes, it was harder still with three, and John had no intention of modifying or abolishing any profitable abuses which helped him to pay his 238 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY way. Nor was his character unknown, for, in answer to his sum- mons for a Council in Rome in February, 1413, only a few clergy arrived, and their serious business merely consisted in burning the books of John Wyclif on the steps of St. Peter's. ' Soon after the Council, John had to take refuge in Florence while Ladislas occupied Rome. While he was there he opened negotiations with Sigismund, who was anxious to carry his im- perial claims to Italy in the time-honoured imperial manner. As a preliminary he suggested another General Council, and he made this a condition of his alliance with John XXIII. The thought of Ladislas and his soldiers in Rome led John to agree, and his envoys set out to discuss the place and conditions for the assembly of the Council. Sigismund proposed the town of Constance, and. in the face of the Pope's expostulations, he re- mained surprisingly obdurate. John knew the importance of meeting the Council on his own territory, but in the end he was obliged to submit. All he could do was to safeguard his personal freedom, and to ally himself with Frederick of Austria, whose territory dominated the " trap for foxes," as John gloomily named the Council meeting-place. The Council of Constance had an ambitious programme. Its aim was " to restore the unity of the Church ; to reform it in head and members; and to purge it of erroneous doctrine". It is unnecessary here to describe the immorality and worldliness of the clerical standard in the fifteenth century, for all con- temporary literature bears witness to it. It was natural that the doctrine which enabled such conditions to survive should be called in question as well as the conduct for which it was un- justly made responsible. The Council of Constance was a real congress of Europe, and not, like Pisa, a glorified synod of ecclesiastics. At Constance, therefore, there was less unanimity of purpose, and a greater complexity of motives. The University of Paris, which had been so active in introducing the conciliar movement, now wanted merely to restore and purify the Papacy, which schism had degraded. Some German reformers, of whom Dietrich of Niem is typical, wanted to go further and limit the papal power, while John Huss and his Bohemian supporters demanded a root-and-branch reform of the entire papal system. With regard to unity, John XXIII. protested with some reason that Pisa had settled the question already, but the wiser counsel of D'Ailly, that Benedict and Gregory should be gently treated, ultimately prevailed. With the arrival of Sigismund in December, 1414, the Council opened in the full splendour of the pageantry in which he de- THE SCHTRM AND THE COUNCILS 239 lighted. Between 50,000 and 100,000 strangers came to the little Swiss town, and among them fifteen hundred prostitutes and four- teen hundred minstrels and mountebanks. Business opened with a crushing blow for John XXIII. A proposal was made that all the three Popes should abdicate at once. It was avowedly hard on John, but he would not refuse "since the Good Shepherd would lay down his life for the sheep ". That, however, was not John's conception of the pastoral office. His acquiescence was due to his confidence in the Italian majority to vote solidly in his favour. Bishop Hallam of Salisbury cut away the ground under his feet by proposing that each nation should vote separately, irrespective of its numerical strength. The proposal was fatal both to John and to the Council, as after events were to show. A Bull was wrung from the reluctant Pope, after two formula had been rejected as insufficiently binding, and John made a last desperate and fruitless attempt to bribe Sigismund with the gift of the Golden Rose— the highest compliment which could pass between a Pope and his royal sons. When, however, Sigismund began to talk about a new election. John felt that it was time to act. With the help of his friend Frederick of Austria, he escaped from the foxes' trap, and took refuge under Frederick's protection at SchaflThausen. Frederick meanwhile was entertaining the Council at a tourney, while John passed through the gates disguised as a groom. His excuse was that his life was in danger in Constance, both from ill-health and from his enemies. " By the grace of God we are free," he wrote to Sigismund, "and in agreeable atmosphere at Schafiliausen, where we came unknown to our son Frederick of Austria, and with no intention of going back upon our promise of abdicating to promote the peace of the Church, but that we may carry it out in freedom and with regard to our health ". His flight left the Cardinals in a dilemma. They must either obey the summons of the Pope and share his inevitable fall, or they must remain with the Council and bear the brunt of its displeasure. It had by now become their settled policy to defend the theoretical position of the Papacy and ward off all dangerous efi'orts towards reform. Even D'Ailly, since John had made him a Cardinal, saw the situation from the angle of the Curia; the Cardinals must stand or fall with the Papacy and the claims of the Council, soaring daily higher, must be some- how held in check. It was not loyalty to John, but to the principle of the Papacy, which threw the Cardinals into opposition, and they made no attempt to defend the Pope against the charges brought against his character in the decree 240 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY of deposition which denounced him as "unworthy, useless, and harmful". John himself did not attempt to answer the fifty-four charges of the Council, because he knew that they were unanswerable. He offered no defence, and tried only to avoid a public humilia- tion. His accusers ranged over his life and unearthed the sins of his youth and the crimes of his manhood. They applied to him a standard to which he would never have pretended to aspire, and condemned him for conduct characteristic of the life of the freebooters' camp, to which he properly belonged. Among other accusations we find, " Item quod Dominus Joannes Papa cum uxore patris sui et cum Sanctis monialibus incestum, cum virginibus stuprum, et cum conjugatis adulter ium et alia incontinential crimina . . . commisit". (Von de Hardt. See Creighton, vol. i., p. 341.) John's real mistake was in allowing himself to be made Pope. He had been a successful soldier of fortune, but he was ludicrously out of place among theologians and moral reformers. After his deposition on May 29, 1415, he was kept in custody till the dissolution of the Council, at the Castle of Heidelberg. In 1419, however, he escaped and found a shelter in the household of his friend, Cosimo de Medici. His last humiliation occurred when he prostrated himself before his successor, and won from him grace to retain the cardinalian purple. The Florentines had shown him respectful sympathy, and when he died, a few months later, they buried him in their beautiful Baptistery. In spite of Martin V.'s objection, Cosimo gave him a pontifical tomb, the work of Donatello and Michel- ozzo, inscribed with the words "quondam papa". With the deposition of John'XXlIL, one of the aims of the Council was attained. The schism was practically over, for the rival Popes, Gregory and Benedict, were powerless in the face of the unanimity of the Council. The Cardinals were successful in postponing the question of constitutional reform by directing the zeal of the Council to an attack on heresy. The trial and execution of John Huss, the proto-martyr of Protestantism, is a stain on the spiritual integrity of the Council of Constance, but we are obliged to think of the Catholic Church in this period merely as a political system, and there can be little doubt that the sacrifice of Huss was a political necessity. John Huss had borrowed his creed very largely from Wyclif, whose teaching had been condemned five times in Bulls by Gregory XL, and on every occasion since, on which they had been brought into prominence. Wyclif was an idealist, and the Utopia which he constructed out of the papal criticism of his age had no point THE SCHISM AND THE COUNCILS 241 of contact with the world of fifteenth century conditions. In England, the religion of the heart, which Wyclif taught, was degraded by his followers into a spurious and unthinking socialism. Carried to Bohemia through the influence of Richard 11. 's marriage, the system of Wyclif bcame identified with the national movement of the Czechs against the Germans, which had its centre at Prague. John Huss himself, like Wyclif, believed in the possibility of a kingdom of God on earth : no man, according to his teaching, who had committed a mortal sin could be a temporal ruler, a bishop, or a priest — " because his temporal or spiritual authority, his office, and his dignity would not be approved by God". Such a creed was in itself a challenge to the ecclesiastical system as it confronted Huss and his followers. Before accepting the invitation to the Council, Huss was warned that it might mean his death, but he knew that it was also his great opportunity, and trusting in the safe- conduct of Sigismund he set out for Constance. His fearlessness in examination and his uncompromising consistency made him an easy victim to the Council in its character of inquisition. By the logical extension of his principles to a criticism of temporal authority, he lost the support of Sigismund, and on July 6 he was burned, protesting to the last his loyalty to the Catholic faith. In one sense Huss was the scapegoat of the Cardinals, who had successfully diverted the streams of reform into the one channel in which they were safe. As the guardians of orthodoxy, the Cardinals restored their prestige in the Council which had Buffered a check in the proceeding's against John XXIII. They could now make assurance doubly sure by pressing for the election of a new Pope. Their plans were helped by the absence of Sigismund, who undertook a diplomatic expedition to Spain and France, from July, 1415, to January, 1417. In his absence the aristocratic Church party managed successfully to do nothing. Jerome of Prague followed John Huss to the stake, and the unorthodox works of Jean Petit were condemned through the influence of Gerson. It was easy to prolong theological discussion to the exclusion of practical reform, with the result that Sigismund found on his return, the Cardinals all- powerful, and his own position considerably weakened. More- over, the national antagonisms, which had been temporarily set aside, could no longer be controlled. Relations were strained to breaking point between the English and the French, and owing to this and the influence of DAilly, France was unanimous in supporting the demands of the Cardinals for the election of a 16 242 A SHOKT HISTORY OF THEi PAPACY new Pope. Germany was divided against itself, and a hostile league of Rhenish electors had long been threatening Sigismund with trouble. In vain Sigismund pleaded that at Pisa the election of a new Pope had proved fatal to reform : the very- word had lost its power to kindle the enthusiasm of the wearied and impatient delegates. The desertion of England turned the scale against the reformation party. Henry V. and Cardinal Beaufort decided to throw in their lot with the papal party, and in January, 1418, an election was held by the Cardinals together with thirty delegates from the Council, six from each nation. Sigismund had to take what consolation was afforded by the decree Frequens, which provided for another Council to be held in five years, to be followed by others every ten years in the future. The election of Oddo Colonna as Martin V. (1417-1431) showed that the Cardinals were wise in their generation, for no one was better fitted to cope with the restoration of papal power. No one, either, was less likely to give trouble with projects of reform. His first announcement was that it was impious to appeal to a Council against a papal decision — a measure which he succeeded in carrying by a skilful manipulation of the national divisions, in spite of the opposition of Gerson and others, who realised that it was suicidal for the conciliar move- ment. To satisfy Sigismund's party, a few uncontestable reform measures were carried, and other disputed points were referred to Concordats issued separately to each nation. The dissolution of the Council in May, 1418, was clearly a relief to every one, for its zeal had languished and its usefulness was obviously extinct. Those who had set out in 1415 to redeem Israel must have longed to bury their shattered ideals in their native lands. The national Concordats proved to be worthless, except in the case of France, and the Hussite wars were soon to show that heresy had not been extinguished by the condemnation of a few honest men. For its achievement the Council could point to the unity of Christendom and the power of the true Pope Martin V. Meanwhile, of the two veterans of schism, Gregory XII. and Benedict XIII., Benedict still held out, indomitable to the last. The desertion of Spain, the personal visit of Sigismund, and the anathema of the Council failed to shake the composure of the ninety-year-old anti-pope. A warrior to the last, he shut him- self up with his two Cardinals on the rock of Peniscola, where he kept his solitary state, wearing the papal tiara and secretly supported by Alfonso of Aragon. His rival had ended his days in peace and dignity as legate of Ancona, in 1417, but Peter de THE SCHISM AND THE COUNCILS 243 Luna lived till 1423, still asserting his> rights and insisting on the election of a successor to vindicate them after his death. Nothing in the career of Benedict XIII. compels our admira- tion so much as the sublime obstinacy of his thirty years' " contumacy ". PART IV THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION CHAPTER XXII THE RECOVERY: MARTIN V. AND EUGENIUS IV., a.d. 1418-1447 MARTIN V. was Italian in aspiration and in sympathy, but he was wise enough not to plunge into Italian politics before he had had time to consider the situa- tion. He, therefore, spent three useful months at Geneva, re- ceiving embassies of congratulation, while he weighed in his mind the relative advantages of every possible line of Itahan policy. As a Colonna, he would naturally have wanted to go straight to Rome, to live amongst his powerful relations and his family palaces. But this was the one course entirely out of the question, for Rome was the centre of a great duel between the two mightiest men in Italy, Braccio and Sforza. Round these brilliant generals the quarrels of the Italian states grouped them- selves, and their personal rivalry had become the determining factor'in Itahan politics. After some hesitation, Martin accepted the invitation of the Florentines to make his headquarters among them. His reception in Italy was magnificent, and the enthusiasm which greeted him was all the more gratifying be- cause it bore so little relation to his territorial strength. As a landless vagrant Pope, Martin V. looked out Irom Flor- ence on an Italy which was curiously changed from the Italy which his predecessors had known. The two great catastrophies which had overwhelmed the Papacy during the fourteenth cen- tury had the effect of withdrawing the Pope a little from the ordinary current of Italian life. Controversy and war had filled their feverish sojourns in Italy, and intercepted that close touch on atmospheric conditions which is characteristic of the most successful periods of papal policy. Apart from this, the fifteenth century, after the time of the Council of Constance, turns a new page in history. Ahready there were signs that the mind of Christendom had grown stale in controversy, and that a newer, fresher, intellectual life was waiting for it in the kingdom of Art and Learning. While the Papacy had languished in the sinister luxury of the fortress-palace of Avignon, Italy had passed through the " Heroic Age " of the Renaissance. When Martin 247 248 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY came to Florence in 1418, the spring-time of Art was filling the city with beauty. Giotto's " lily-tower " had been its pride for half a century : the Duomo and the Baptistery were being finished under the inspiration of Donatello, Ghiberti, and Brunelleschi. Fra Angelico was weaving his dreams out of the double thread drawn from the doctrinal controversies of the old century, and the spirit of beauty abroad in the new. The civic life of Florence, intense, vital, and full of movement, swept past the monastery of Santa Maria Novella, where Martin V. was staying, in the many- coloured stream which is familiar to us through the pic- tures of Masaccio. In history, as in art, new life comes into the picture : in politics, as in other spheres, the fifteenth century is the epoch of character. The people we meet are not merely picturesque — they are individual, with a psychology as subtle as that of the characters in modern politics. The chronicles, especially of Italy, become more vivid in response to the appeal of personality, and the decorative social life of the Quattrocento illuminates contemporary records with a new and graceful pageantry. Martin soon saw that his chief advantage lay in the fluctuating state of Italy. Everywhere there was movement. Venice was expanding her mainland territories in order to protect her trade routes. Filippo Maria Visconti was spreading his dominions— at the expense of the lesser lordships and mushroom republics which had succeeded in throwing ofi" the yoke of his father. In the south, the misrule of Joanna of Naples was driving her king- dom to distraction : a nonentity herself, Joanna was ruled by a succession of incompetent favourites, who exasperated the nobles and crippled the power of the condottieri. The succes- sion question added to the unfortunate kingdom's embarrass- ments, for Joanna was a childless widow of forty-seven. For these very reasons, Martin chose to enter the arena through the door of Naples, conscious, perhaps, of his unusual gift for " fish- ing in troubled waters," and acquiring personal gain. Besides, Braccio held Rome, and Joanna had Sforza in her pay. Martin, therefore, allied himself with Joanna, and Sforza was glad enough to incorporate the cause of the Church with that of Naples in his operations against Braccio in Rome. But the instability of Joanna made her an unsatisfactory ally, and Sforza and Braccio were too evenly matched for alliance with either of them to be profitable at this moment. A readjustment suggested itself to Martin, which reveals him as an excellent politician. If he could detach both the military masters of Italy from their present pre-occupations — Sforza from Naples, RECOVEEY: MARTIN V. AND EUGENIUS IV. 249 and Braccio from his ambitions in Rome — he could then employ them both in separate fields of enterprise, with the length of Italy between them, and a common cause to unite them. To circumvent the rivalry between these two was half-way towards the peace of Italy, and the whole way to the attainment of Rome. Early in 1420, Sforza visited Martin in Florence. It was far from easy to persuade him to make peace with Braccio, and, when this was done, it was a much less serious task to detach him from Joanna, and to commend to him the claims of Louis III. of Anjou to the succession in Naples. Hard on the heels of Sforza came Braccio, dressed with an eye to Florentine favour in purple and gold, and riding at the head of four hundred horsemen in gold and silver armour. He, too, made his bargain with Martin ; he was confirmed in Perugia and the other towns which he had stolen from the Pope, in return for the conquest of rebellious Bologna. But Braccio's visit cost Martin much more than a few towns in the March of Ancona, for through it he had learnt the humiUating truth that the Italian public was far more impressed by a brilliant soldier of fortune than by a penniless Pope. When he left Florence later in the year, the rhyme was still ringing in his ears which the Florentine boys had sung as they ran along the streets beside Braccio's shining escort : — Braccio valente Vince ogni gente n Papa Martino Non vale un quattrino. — (Creighton, II., p. 139.) " Poor Pope Martin isn't worth a farthing . . .," Martin re- peated in disgust to the Florentine Bruni, a few days before he left the city. His return to Rome was not likely to improve Martin's spirits, and the contrast between the desolation which he found there and the beauty and prosperity which he had left behind in Florence must have wounded his Roman patriotism. Platina, writing half-a-century later, thus describes Martin's home- coming : " When he came he found the city of Rome so dilapi- dated that it looked nothing like a city. You might have seen the houses ready to totter, the churches fallen down, the streets empty, the city full of dirt and mire, and in extreme want of all sorts of provisions. What should I say more? There was neither the face of a city nor any sign of civility there, the citizens seeming rather sojourners and vagabonds. The good Pope was troubled to see it, and applied himself to adorning 250 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY of the city and reforming the citizens' manners, so that in a short time it looked much better than before " (Platina, " Life of Martin V."). Martin, as a Roman noble, could not resist the impulse to concentrate on the great work of restoration, and it is in this that he earned the love of the Romans as " Temporum Buorum felicitas " (Tomb of Martin V.). The course of events in politics encom-aged him, for the breach in Naples between Joanna and the heir of her choice, Alfonso of Aragon, had led to a general peace in 1422. Louis of Anjou stayed in Rome, the guest and dependent of Martin, ready to be produced at any moment as a stick to beat Alfonso with in the inevitable renewal of hostihties. Alfonso carried on operations on his own account, and Braccio hurried from the conquest of Bologna to fight another round of his duel with Sforza. But in 1424 the two great rivals both fell in the Neapolitan war. Braccio was stabbed by an exiled Perugian who bore him a grudge, and Sforza was drowned in an attempt to save the life of a young follower who was fording the river Pescara. Their deaths gave Italy the first real chance of peace since Martin's accession, and the immediate result was the reconciliation between Martin and Alfonso of Aragon, through the influence of a Spanish envoy who thus introduces to papal history the notorious name of Borgia. Martin V. was the first Pope since the age of Boniface VIIL and Clement V. to use nepotism and family connections as a serious factor in his policy. In his recovery of the papal States he found this an immense advantage. As a Colonna he could rely on the support of one of the two great Roman families, and with the prestige of the Papacy behind him it was com- paratively easy to buy off the Orsini with fiefs and marriage alliances. The failure of the reform movement was stamped on the face of Italy by the family policy of Martin V., and yet it is impossible wholly to condemn him for taking the only obvious way out of his difficulties. The States of the Church had been too long alienated to be recovered by the exercise of papal claims and spiritual denunciations. It was better, in Martin's eyes, to retrieve them for the Pope's family than to let them pass right out of his control. From Joanna he got two large fiefs for his brothers, who became Prince of Salerno and Count of Alba respectively. By marriage alliances he won over the Orsini, the Gsetani, and Guido of Montefeltro. A Colonna marriage was no mesalliance for the greatest of Italian princes and a Colonna nepotate could not be regarded as an upstart, however ambitious his pretensions. It is true that the Papacy could not use marriages to the same efl'ect as they could be used RECOVEEY: MARTIN V. AND EUGENIUS IV. 251 by an hereditary monarchy, for the advantages gained were personal, and limited to the lifetime of the Pope. But, as in the case of Martin, nepotism often meant immediate political success, especially in an age when good generals could always be bought by a powerful family, and a wise Pope would be careful to leave a family representative among the Cardinals, who would have a good chance of reaping the rewards of the future. Martin's most serious danger was the remnant of the reform party, which held him to the promise given at Constance that a Council should be called to deal more thoroughly with this in- convenient question. In 1423, Martin was obliged to summon a Council to Pavia, which was subsequently removed to Siena. The Pope's attitude was so obviously hostile that the delegates were discouraged ; many of them were bought over, and the others felt themselves insulted. The curial party carefully sowed dissensions among the nations, and no one was sorry when after a few months the legates published a Bull of dis- solution. The Council of Siena was too complete a failure to be politic, and Martin, with his usual skill in getting the best out of an awkward situation, followed it up with a reforming edict of his own, which he published in the following year. Martin's reforms were entirely directed against the Cardinals, who had reaped to the full the advantages of their victory at Constance. Martin now earned their undying displeasure by his provisions for their decorous hving and his strict limitation of their house- holds. He thereby disarmed the cities, who looked on him as the opponent of reform, and at the same time made himself more than ever master of his own house. The cry of reform was not raised again until the end of his reign, when the storm brewing in Bohemia impelled Martin to summon another Council just before he died. In foreign policy, Martin was less successful than in Italy, but he did not lose ground. The concordats issued from Con- stance left a legacy of trouble by the recognition and encourage- ment which they gave to the national Churches. France in particular had advanced extravagant claims of independence. But the accession of Charles VII. in 1425, and his eagerness for the Pope's support, created a reaction in Martin's favour. Annates and appeals were restored in spite of the protests of the Parlement. In England he was less successful, but the weak- ness of Archbishop Chichele disguised his defeat. The anti- papal laws of England had rankled in the minds of many Popes. " Among Christians no States have made ordinances contrary to 252 A SHOKT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY the liberty of the Church save England and Venice," Martin wrote to England, demanding a repeal of the statues of Pro- visors and Praemunire. But England was too full of Lollards, and Parliament was too proud of the anti-papal laws for the Archbishop even to get a hearing. All that Martin could do was to withdraw from an untenable position and to vent his anger on Chichele by suspending his legatine authority. Car- dinal Beaufort also proved a broken reed, for he collected troops for a Hussite Crusade at the request of the Pope, and proceeded to march them off to the wars in France. Martin had got nothing out of England, but he had successfully asserted his right to interfere. Meanwhile he had been devoting himself with enthusiasm to the restoration of Rome. A terrible flood in 1422 had thrown the work back, and increased the poverty which was already calamitous. But since then, Martin himself, and his Cardinals, exhorted by him, had undertaken lavish plans for the preserva- tion and adornment of the Churches. Five hundred thousand gold florins were spent on the roof of St. Peter's. To St. John Lateran Martin gave its beautiful mosaic floor, and Gentile da Fabriano was employed to adorn its walls. The age of the great art patrons had hardly yet arrived, but Martin was generous to artists, and showed a genuine love of beauty in details of adorn- ment. His presents were always exquisite, and their intrinsic beauty must have excited as great a pleasure as the honour which they conferred. To men of rank he gave caps and swords of honour, to great ladies golden roses: the rings which he be- stowed on the Cardinals of his creation were finely wrought, and to the captains who fought the battles of the Holy See he presented wonderful banners and images of saints. The beautiful tiara and the clasp of his Florentine cope were as per- fect as Ghiberti's art could make them. But Martin's own pleasure in these things was limited : he used the talents of his artists as he used the skill of his generals, to bring back the lustre of the papal crown. His attitude to the early humanist movement was very much the same. He showed Httle personal interest in the revival of learning : he was suspicious of it, and not without reason disapproved of some of its votaries. When the body of St, Monica was brought to Rome in the course of his pontificate, he preached on her virtues, as the mother of St. Augustine, in words which must have distressed the humanists in his audience. " While we possess Augustine," he says, " what care we for the sagacity of Aristotle, the eloquence of Plato, the prudence of Varro, the dignified gravity of Socrates, the authority EECOVERY: MARTIN V. AND EUGENIUS IV. 253 of Pythagoras, or the skill of Empedocles ? We do not need these men; Augustine is enough for us." And yet among Martin's Cardinals were Capranica and Cesarini, who were humanists at heart, Prospero Colonna, his nephew, who was famous for his library, and Giordano Orsini, whose unique collection of manu- scripts 'was left to the Papacy in the time of Martin's successor. Among the secretaries we find Poggio, the brilliant Latinist, and Valla, his future antagonist, both more interested in turning the latest scandals of the Curia into scurrilous Latin than in retailing the edifying discourses of the Pope. In February, 1431, Martin V. died, in the same month in which he had summoned the Council of Basle. He had aimed at an achievement well within his reach, and for this reason he was extraordinarily successful. His common sense and shrewd- ness taught him to reap every possible advantage from the em- barrassments of his neighbours, and he never tried to run against the wind. He accepted things as they came, without enthusiasm and without opposition ; the Renaissance, the Councils, and the rivalries of condottieri all brought grist to the papal mill. While we praise his quiet energy, it is unreasonable to deplore that it stopped short of the moral reformation. To effect this he must have brought into play quahties the very opposite to those which made him a great temporal Pope. The Cardinals in conclave in 1431 were determined not to suffer again the indignities thrust upon them by Martin V. They therefore drew up a code for the future Pope to safeguard their dignities before they proceeded to an election. They then proceeded to elect a middle-class Venetian, who had the reputa- tion among them of a harmless nonentity. Gabriel Condulmier was a good figure-head, of a usefully pious disposition : here his advantages stopped. As Eugenius IV. (1431-1447) he soon showed himself to be a tactless and obstinate person, who, hke the unfortunate Urban VI., acted on impulses and never aban- doned a foolish plan. He began his reign by a quarrel with the relations of Martin V. In his attempt to crush them he merely created a hostile party in the Curia and destroyed the peace of Rome. Cardinal Prospero Colonna, and the Colonna prot6g6, Cardinal Capranica, carried their quarrel over the Alps, and at the Council of Basle, which was now assembling, they incited that feeling of personal hostility to Eugenius which is traceable in all its doings. The diflaculties of Eugenius were not all of his own making, although he showed an astonishing incompetence in dealing with them. But even Martin V. had feared the Council, which 254 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY nothing but necessity would have led him to summon. The followers of John Huss in Bohemia had organised themselves, smce the Council of Constance, into an army of militant Protes- tantism. Sigismund had led three unsuccessful military expedi- tions against the Hussites, and early in 1431, a Crusade, headed by Cardmal Cesarmi, suffered a defeat which had shaken the Catholic world. It was clear that orthodoxy could not win with the sword, and it remained for the Council to find another solution Under the influence of Cesarini-a man utterly to be respected, in whom his contemporaries recognised qualities far above the standard of his times-the Hussites were invited to a Conference with the Council, in which the articles of their faith were to be discussed by " men in whom you trust that the spirit of the Lord rests, gentle, God-fearing, humble, desirous of peace, Botemians) '''^'' ^""^ *^^ *^'''^' ""^ ^^"'*" ^^^^^"^ *° To the consternation of Cesarini, Eugenius, at this point, showed his opposition to the Council by sending a Bull of dis- solution to Basle. The Pope had taken alarm at the democratic character of the Council, and his rigid monastic training made him unprepared to consent to negotiate with heretics. In vain Cesarini entreated him to withdraw his Bull ; Eugenius showed an utter incapacity to grasp the situation. He thought he could count on the support of Sigismund, for Sigismund wanted to be crowned, and Eugenms could postpone the imperial coronation at his pleasure. In order to remain loyal to the Pope, Cesarini was obliged to resign the presidency of the Council, and the result was that the anti-papal party opened an attack on fii?T'' ^"".^.^'f^^'"^ ^^^ "contumacious". In September, 1432, Cesarini took up the presidency again, hoping to control the animosity of the Council, and reconcile it with the Pope be- !L' il^'^n *'''' n^*'; Sigismund held the key to the situation, thth r.^^P *^'''^''' ^^^P*'^ ^'"^ ^^^^^ its protection which led the Pope to reopen negotiations. But Eugenius took a superior tone, and only consented to recognise the Council on terms which would cripple its power of action. Probably he knew that the crown could be dangled a little longer in front of Sigismund s eyes, and he was right. Sigismund, who had got as lar as Siena, was determined to reach Kome at all costs. He therefore cooled in his attitude to the Council, urged it to moderation, and, in alliance with Eugenius, achieved his heart's desire. But the combination could not last. Neither Eugenius nor Sigismund had any resources to speak of, and both were deep in embarrassments. Fihppo Maria Visconti, Duke of RECOVERY: MARTIN V. AND EUGENIUS IV. 255 Milan, was posing as the champion of the Council in order to oppose Sigismund, whose imperial claims to Milan might become inconvenient. Filippo sent the two rising young condottieri against the Pope and the Emperor in the name of the Council. To Rome he sent Fortebraccio, the nephew of Martin's scourge, and to the March of Ancona he sent Sforza the younger. Fortebraccio found supporters among the Colonnesi, and soon the news of the Pope's ignominious flight to Florence delighted the ears of the fathers at Basle. Eugenius had to accept the inevitable. From Florence he surrendered to the Council of Basle, where Sigismund had arrived just in time to prevent the Pope's deposition. He had to confirm Sforza's conquests in the March, thus turning the hired adversary of a moment into the territorial foe of the future. The Council had been occupied meanwhile in the Hussite negotiations, untroubled by the attitude of the Pope. The dignity and the reality of the speeches on both sides show that the time had arrived when controversy could be carried on with- out recrimination, and when men could discuss their diflferences without hostility. Of course, Cesarini's task in keeping the peace was not a light one, and the congress occasionally fell to wrangling. But the general level was admirable, and the war of orators seldom spoiled it. The discussion turned on the Four Articles of Prag, which embodied the contentions of the Hussites, but it soon became clear that the Bohemians were divided among themselves. They were at one in demanding the Communion in both kinds, but, in the subtler articles of their faith, the Taborites, or extremists, far outpaced the moderate party, which was essentially Catholic. This was clearer still at the succeeding Diet of Prag, where the envoys of the Council produced proposals for reunion. The Four Articles were accepted in substance by the Council, but the modifications ofi'ended the Taborites, who ofi"ered battle and were cut to pieces under their brilliant general, Procop, at the battle of Lipan (August, 1434). An inundation of challenges from Basle followed the humili- ation of the Pope. In 1435, a decree was passed abolishing annates and dues, and the next year saw the audacious claim of the Council to issue indulgences on its own authority. Success, however, brought reaction, and the Council soon found that it had overshot the mark. The confiscation of the papal revenue threatened not only Eugenius but the very exist- ence of the Curia, and the "saner minority" of the Council were unprepared for such an extreme course of destruction. A 256 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY new question came to the front with the beginning of overtures from the Greeks for reunion with Latin Christendom. The desire of the Greeks was not disinterested, and had little theological foundation. The Greek Emperor, John Palsologos, wanted a Crusade against the Turks, who were threatening the very gates of his capital. When the Council tried to carry on the negotiations, they found that the Pope had forestalled them. In answer to the envoy who carried the reform decree of the Council to Constantinople, the Greeks rejected it with scorn. " Either amend your edict or get you gone," was the reply. It was clear that union with the Greeks was to be efifected through the Pope or not at all : it served as further cause of dissension between the Pope and the Council, and finally dropped out of the Council's programme. From this point the fortunes of Eugenius began to revive. The Congress of Arras which had given peace to France in 1435, was ascribed to Eugenius, whose legates had arranged it. Mean- while the French radical party was all-powerful in the Council, and the other nations turned more and more to the Pope, fearing that the Council was heading for another Avignon " captivity ". Cesarini and Nicholas of Cusa were now the declared partisans of Eugenius and had given up the hopeless attempt to keep the peace. The rock on which the Pope and the Council actually split was the comparatively unimportant point of the town in which the conference with the Greeks should take place. The Council wanted Avignon— the Pope insisted on Udine or Florence. In the Cathedral at Basle the conflicting decrees were published simultaneously, the envoys shouting each other down amid the uproar of the contending factions. Then followed the usual proceedings: Eugenius was summoned and pronounced contu- macious ; the next step would be his deposition. Eugenius on his side dissolved the Council, and recalled the delegates to the council which he proposed to hold at Ferrara. Events in Italy had given encouragement to the Council in its extreme measures. On the death of Joanna, Eugenius claimed Naples as a lapsed fief and sent Vitelleschi to govern it. The re- sult was that Alfonso of Naples joined Visconti, and took up the cause of the Council against Eugenius, who on his part resumed the Angevin cause in Naples. This led directly to the climax of the unworthy struggle, when, in 1439, Eugenius was deposed, and the Duke of Savoy was elected by the Council as Felix V. The catastrophe of schism had once more befallen the Papacy, but the attitude of Europe was surprisingly calm. Germany remained sturdily neutral : a few princes declared for Felix V., RECOVEEY: MAETIN V. AND EUGENIUS IV. 257 and to win over the rest became the whole object of conciliar policy. Sigismund had died in 1437, worn out by the legacy of trouble which the Council had left for him in Bohemia. Albert II. his short-lived successor, and the Electors had declared for neutrality, but both sides hoped much from Frederick III., whose indolence was as yet mistaken for prudence. Tlie triumph of the extremists in the Council had brought it to ruin. All the best men were leaving Basle. It was obliged to retract its reforms in order to provide for the anti-pope, and thus put an end to its moral pretensions. Felix himself was dissatisfied with it and in 1443 he deserted it for the more profitable alliance of the Electors. The Council henceforth simmered out in ignominious neglect. Eugenius could not take any credit to himself for his victory over the Council of Basle. Its disruption had come from within, and his sood fortune lay solely in the characters of his sup- porters—men like Cesarini and Nicolas of Cusa, who had the courage of their convictions, and the power of imposing them on others. In Italy, the prestige which he won at the Council of Florence was out of all proportion to the advantages gained or his share in gaining them. The controversy with the Greeks was curious and picturesque rather than profitable, as far as its main object was concerned. The long-winded discussions of the theologians seemed to lead nowhere : the points which were all-important to the Greeks were hardly understood by the Latins, and the Emperor showed himself to be far more inter- ested in hunting the Este forests than in discussing the Filioque clause of the creed. When the plague broke out in Ferrara, the Council was removed to Florence, to the rehef of the Marquis of Ferrara, who had carefully preserved his game, and of the Pope, who preferred the Greeks to be cut ofif from com- munications by sea. John Palseologos was disappointed with the whole proceeding : he had counted on finding more disunion, and consequently more profit as a partisan, in Latin Christen- dom • he had hoped for more politics and less theology, and above all for more money. The aged Patriarch, who had been brought against his will, was dying ; every one was tired of the endless discussions, and there was no desire for union as an end in itself. Accordingly, by a tacit agreement, vague words ot definition were accepted on both sides, union was forced through just before the Patriarch died, and the Pope promised 300 men and two galleys for permanent use against the Turks. From a theological point of view the Union was worthless, and it was rejected by the Greeks at once ; but Europe did not look beyond 17 258 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY the published decree, and Eugenius owed more to it for his recovery of prestige than to anything else in his reign. The tide had turned for Eugenius, and in the last period of his pontificate, if it was not brilliant, he at least recovered much of the ground which he had lost. In 1440 the way was cleared for his return to Rome by the death of the condottiere-Cardinal Vitelleschi. In the early part of the reign of Eugenius, Vitelleschi had won the road to fame by subduing the Romagna, which bristled with small tyrants and rebel captains. The soldier- priest understood his work, and did it thoroughly. He left behind him a trail of crime and cruelty, and when in 1436 he had suppressed Rome, he ruled it with the iron hand of tyranny. He exterminated the last of the Prefects of Vico. He held Romagna against the Colonna and Orsini factions — against Sforza and Braccio, the champions of Milan — against the wily little Piccinino, who was also employed against Eugenius by Filippo Maria. He cleared the Campagna of freebooters, and destroyed thirty towers which had sheltered brigands. There was something in the quality of his daring which cast a glamour over Eugenius. He was loaded with honours ; he became a Cardinal, Archbishop of Florence, and Patriarch of Alexandria. Then suddenly he fell, through mysterious circumstances in which it is impossible to discover how far Eugenius was impli- cated. The Florentines apparently suspected Vitelleschi of con- spiring against them with Piccinino, and they seem to have undermined the Pope's confidence in him by accusing him of a desire to make himself independent in Romagna. As Vitelleschi was standing on the bridge of St. Angelo, the portcullis was suddenly lowered between him and his soldiers who had just passed out. A fortnight later he died. " A man who has achieved what I have done," he said, when he found himself a prisoner, " ought not to be arrested, but if he is, he ought not to be released. I shall die not of my wounds but'of poison." His successor in the Pope's favour, Cardinal Scarampo, took care that his prediction should be fulfilled. The career of Vitelleschi, the crimes which he committed in the name of the Church, and his fall as an " over-mighty subject," are typical of the " restored " Papacy of the fifteenth century. In 1443 Eugenius changed his alliance with Venice and Florence for an alliance with Alfonso of Naples. He considered that the two cities had treated him unfairly in allowing Sforza to keep his conquests in the March of Ancona, by the terms of the Peace of Cremona, 1441. The Angevin party in Naples was extinct, and Alfonso was the only power which could support KECOVEKY: MAKTTN V. AND EUGENIUS TV. 259 Eugenius in Rome and at the same time fight for him against Sforza. Sforza was now the Duke of Milan's son-in-law. but they were not on the best of terms with each other, and after a few operations in the March, the sphere of war passed to the north. Sforza found the March too small for his ambitions, and allowed it to revert to Eugenius, who once more found himself master of a situation which he had done nothing to bring about. Meanwhile, the theological reaction against the Council was in full swing. Eugenius could issue excommunications with greater effect from a council in the Lateran than he could from Florence. But the greatest victory of all came to him on his death-bed, through the efibrts of the humanist adventurer, iEneas Sylvius Piccofomini. Eugenius could not have found a finer instrument for his delicate negotiations with Germany than this valued Italian secretary of the Emperor. Events in Hungary, hitherto a bone of contention, opened the way for alliance with Frederick. The Pope and the Emperor had hitherto supported rival claim- ants to this unfortunate kingdom. But on the field of Varna, Vladislor of Hungary died fighting against the Turks. Vladislor was the de facto king whom Eugenius had upheld. With him died Cardinal Cesarini with characteristic heroism as the leader of a forlorn hope. Ladislas Posthumous, the ward of Frederick III., was now the sole heir of Hungary, and Eugenius was ready to support him. Frederick, on his side, sold his neutrality for a sum of money and a life interest in certain bishoprics and benefices in Germany. A harder task was the winning of the princes, many of whom were pledged to the support of Felix V. But the "noble deed" of ^Eneas found a way. An embassy from the princes offering haughty terms was supplemented by a secret embassy from .Eneas, coaching the Pope in the part which he was to play. Eugenius sent a vague and conciliatory answer instead of the blank refusal which might have been expected. ^Eneas proceeded, meanwhile, to "squeeze the venom " out of the princes' proposals, making vast promises to them for which he had no authority, and carrying a carefully edited version of them to Rome. Eugenius was dying, but he wanted to see the end. He empowered the Cardinals to act for him, and consoled himself for his concessions by a secret protest in writing, which said that what he had done was merely to " allure " the Germans to unity, and was not to be considered as binding by his successor. In January, 1447, the restoration of German obedience was pub- lished, and Eugenius, obstinate to the last, lingered on in life, petulantly refusing extreme unction in his resolution to live. 260 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY ) I "What wonder," exclaimed Alfonso of Naples, "that the Pope ' who has warred against Sforza, the Colonna, and myself, and j all Italy, dares to fight against death also?" Time, usually the best friend of Eugenius, vanquished him at last, at the moment when his triumph seemed complete. His difficulties had been immense, and he had to cope with them in two spheres at once. His fortunes in Italy had reflected themselves at Basle, and each phase of the ecclesiastical quarrel reacted on his territorial policy. He was only the passive agent of his success, which he owed rather to the impetuosity of his enemies, and the inherent stability of the Papacy, than to any exertions on his own part. In character he is overshadowed by the men who surround him. He represents mediocrity among the talents — the commonplace in an age of distinction. He shows the suspicion and reserve of a man among his intellectual superiors. And indeed, with Poggio and Valla as his secretaries, Bessarion and Isidore among his Cardinals, and the keen eyes of iEneas Sylvius on his diplomacy, there was some excuse for the misgivings of an ordinary man. Eugenius could, however, give his confidence very freely to a few, though his choice of intimates was some- times regrettable, as in the case of Vitelleschi and Scarampo. His attitude to humanism was encouraging but not enthusiastic. The Council of Ferrara-Florence had given great stimulus to the movement, and many of the scholars who came over in the train of John Palseologos remained as the masters of the new learning. Plethon stayed in Florence to be the literary adviser of Cosimo de Medici. Bessarion and Isidore came back again to join the Curia. Intellect ranked higher than ever ; the chief lessons which ^neas deduced from the Council of Basle were the consummate importance of humanism and the ineS'ectiveness of men of " more soul than eloquence " in that rather pedantic assembly. Greek manuscripts began to pour into Italy with the cultured refugees, who fled with their literary treasures before the advancing Turk. Eugenius showed some enthusiasm for art, but his intentions were better than his taste. He admired the beautiful gates of Donatello which he had known so well in Florence, but he employed a second-rate artist, Filarete, to carry out the same idea in Rome. The iron gates of St. Peter's are not altogether a success, but they remain as a monument to the goodwill of Eugenius IV. He is more to be congratulated for his restoration of the Pantheon and for his Fra Angelico frescoes. As a true Venetian he was chiefly in his element when he was planning gorgeous ceremonies, and he was fortunate in the opportunities RECOVERY : MARTIN V. AND EUGENIUS IV. 261 which his reign afiforded for this delightful pursuit. He was fortunate too in being a tall good-looking man, who could play his part in a pageant without looking ridiculous. The meeting with John Palffiologos was probably the happiest day of his troubled life, and one is glad to know that he had not sufficient insight to gauge the hoUowness of the splendour of this occasion. CHAPTER XXIII THE RENAISSANCE POPES, a.d. 1447-1471 IT is easy to sympathise with the Cardinals who elected the scholar-bishop of Bologna to the Papacy as Nicolas V. (1447-1455). The wars of Martin V. and the blunders of Eugenius IV. had produced a longing for peace and plain-sailing, and of these things the temperament of Nicolas was a guarantee. The conclave of 1447 met under ominous conditions. Alfonso of Naples was encamped with his army on the hills above Rome, ready to influence the new election with the sword. Only the fear of him stifled a dangerous outbreak of democracy under the leadership of Porcaro, the Rienzi of the fifteenth century. The election was entirely unexpected. The crowd had expected the election of Prosper© Colonna, but " he who goes into the conclave a Pope comes out a Cardinal," was the wise reflection of iEneas Silvius. There was great rejoicing at the election of the gentle student Pope : his aims were the aspirations of his subjects, and his tastes were shared and understood by the best of his con- temporaries. "We intend to strengthen the bishops," he an- nounced, "and hope to maintain our own power most surely by not usurping that of others." The same spirit in politics prompted his dealings with Germany and Italy. In Germany his business was to complete the formal act of union, which was expressed in February, 1448, in the Concordat of Vienna. The terms seem to be so complete a surrender that we are inclined to wonder how Germany was induced to accept them. The explanation lies in the condition of the country. Frederick III. could not stand alone against the princes : he needed the papal alliance to supply him with outward dignity and an apparent moral purpose. The Bishops were frankly bought over, with a grant of the disputed privilege of reserva- tions for their lifetime only. Such a peace could not endure, but it served its immediate purpose. The Concordat of Vienna and the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges contain the fruits of the conciliar movement. The results were dangerously inadequate, for the Papacy had postponed the day of reckoning until the 262 THE RENAISSANCE POPES 263 next century, when Europe was to accumulate fresh scores to deepen the old. -, . xt- , The abdication of Felix V. followed the Concordat. Nicolas treated his harmless rival with characteristic consideration, and the way was made as easy for him as possible. He was allowed to keep the outward honours of a Pope in his own dommions, and he was £riven the first place after Nicolas in the precedence of Europe. ^His supporters were forgiven and confirmed in their offices. The anti-pope had nothing to complain of, and, re- cognising this, he gave no further trouble. Nicolas carried out his peace policy as thoroughly in Italy as elsewhere. He restored the Colonnesi to their possessions and the Bentivogli to Bologna. When, in 1450, Sforza put an end to the democratic disorders in Milan, which had followed the death of Filippo Visconti, Nicolas accepted him as Duke ot Milan, and hailed him as another peacemaker. To his most dangerous enemy, Porcaro, Nicolas was injudiciously mild. He ought, perhaps, to have recognised the serious character which a liberty movement invariably took among the inflammable Romans. On his accession, he sent Porcaro into honorary exile as Podesta of Anagni, whence he returned to Rome and raised for a second time the cry of independence. He was still allowed to be at large, but he was sent to Bologna, the home of lawless- ness on " ticket-of-leave ". Here he formed another conspiracy to seize Nicolas and the Cardinals at Mass, to abolish papal government, and restore the Roman Republic. In 1452 Porcaro fled to Rome to join his nephew with three hundred soldiers and to carry out the coup d'etat. But his escape was reported to the Pope before he reached Rome, and his nephew's army had already been detected by the police. This time Nicolas could not afi"ord to be lenient, and Porcaro's execution put an end to the worst danger the Pope had to face. Like Rienzi, Porcaro can be interpreted in many ways. Some of his contemporaries saw in him "a worthy man who loved his country"; others looked on him as the incarnation of sedition. He is probably most fairly explained as a literary dreamer with a turn tor practical afl-airs. His plot was ill-conceived and unluckily timed. The democratic cause was always popular in Rome, and the fifteenth century was likely to give it special welcome because humanism pointed naturally to democracy, and Rienzi had already made the two movements one. But it was unfortunate for Porcaro that the Pope whom he sought to overthrow should be beloved of every humanist in Rome, himself a man of letters, and not without sympathy for Roman freedom as far as it was ^64 A SHOET HISTOBY OF THE PAPACY compatible with papal government. The popularity of Nicolas V. among those who would otherwise have sympathised with Porcaro robbed the conspiracy of all possibility of success. Twelve years later he might have had a better chance. In 1450 Nicolas V. held a jubilee in Rome which brought in an immense amount of money, all of which was spent in beauti- fying the city. Two hundred pilgrims were killed in a crush on the bridge of St. Angelo, and the Pope therefore had the bridge widened and built an exquisite memorial chapel to the victims. The jubilee was interrupted by the plague, and hardly had the consternation died away before the news of an approaching visit of Frederick III. began to cause something like a general panic. But the Italians need not have feared the coming of the power- less Emperor. A prince who could not hold his own in Germany was not likely to succeed in making good the Imperial claims in Italy. Frederick's behaviour soon persuaded Italy and Nicolas that he meant no harm, and the cities expressed their relief in magnificent pageants of welcome, ^neas Silvius enjoys telling us of the splendid meeting between Frederick and his child-bride Leonora of Naples at Siena, in which he himself played so impor- tant a part. The wedding and the coronation of the Emperor in Rome was as glorious as empty magnificence could make it. But politically Frederick's visit had not the slightest importance. At Florence he negotiated with Sforza, who sought investiture, but when Frederick tried to turn it to profit by seeking tribute, Sforza showed what he thought of the beggar-Emperor by re- fusing the privilege unless he could get it for nothing. Poverty in a prince was an unforgivable sin in Italy of the fifteenth century, and Frederick's attempt to mediate between Venice and Florence was treated with contempt on this account. In 1453 the disaster fell which darkened the pontificate of Nicolas v., and turned the sunlight of his peace to gloom. Repeated appeals of the Eastern Emperor for help against the Turks had been ignored or inadequately answered. Now the news came that Constantinople had fallen. Nicolas was not to blame as much as many of his contemporaries : he had sent an expedition in 1452, and he had done what he could to stir the princes of Europe. But he felt it as a personal blow, and iEneas Silvius, writing in the spirit of Job's comforter, expressed the feeling of which Nicolas was all too conscious : " Historians of the Roman pontifi's, when they reach your time, will write : ' Nicholas V., a Tuscan, was Pope for so many years. He recovered the patrimony of the Church from the hands of tyrants ; he gave union to the divided Church ; he canonised THE RENAISSANCE POPES 265 Bernardino of Siena; he built the Vatican and splendidly restored St. Peter's; he celebrated the Jubilee, and crowned Frederick III.' All this will be glorious to your fame, but will be obscured by the doleful addition : ' In his time Constantmople was taken and plundered (or it may be burned and razed) by the Turks ' Your Holiness did what you could, and no blame can justly attach to you. Yet the ignorance of posterity will blame you when it hears that in your time Constantmople was lost " iEneas was right as to the importance which posterity would attach to the event, but he could not foresee in what way it would be regarded as a milestone in history. The immediate effect of the catastrophe on the Papacy was to create a sudden diversion of political energy. It opens an epoch in which the test of a Pope's statesmanship was his zeal for the Crusade. Nicolas V. responded as readily as he could to the demands of the crisis. He preached the Crusade with scholarly eloquence, and sent his envoys to exhort the princes of Europe to set aside their mutual quarrels and to unite against the enemy of religion. He welcomed the peace of Lodi in 1454 as the first step to- wards an Italian expedition, but Italy showed no inclination to take the lead, and the attitude of Europe was discouraging. Frederick III. and the German princes were wordily sympathetic, and used the crusading diets to advance their own interests. They ridiculed the zeal of Philip of Burgundy, the only genuine crusader among the host of plausible lion- hearts, who protested everything and committed themselves to nothing. The failure of Nicolas to rouse Europe against the Tm-ks is easily explained. As a religious ideal the crusading spirit was dead : poUtically, it had been replaced by the spirit of nationality in England and France, and in Germany and Italy by the particularist interests of princes and cities. /Eneas Silvius, whose political psychology is always brilliant, thus expressed his impression of crusading Councils in Germany : " We look on Pope and Emperor alike as names in a story or heads in a picture. Each state has its own king: there are as many princes as there are houses. How will you persuade this mul- titude of rulers to take up arms ? " Nothing but passionate conviction could supply the necessary persuasion, and Nicolas himself was conscientious rather than enthusiastic in his crusading policy. For he was a man whose dominant idea really excluded all others, and he had given himself with intense self-devotion to the adornment of Rome and the revival of learning. Books and pictures meant far more to him than soldiers or cities, for "to create solid and stable convictions in 266 A SHOKT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY the minds of the uncultured masses there must be something that appeals to the eye: a popular faith sustained only by doctrines Avill never be anything but feeble and vacillating. But if the authority of the Holy See were visibly displayed in majestic buildings, imperishable memorials, and witnesses seem- ingly planted by the hand of God Himself, belief would grow and strengthen like a tradition from one generation to another, and all the world would accept and revere it." In these words Nicolas V. expressed the ideal of his pontificate : in its fulfil- ment we find the reflection both of his age and of his individuality. We see him as the friend of Cosimo de Medici, the lover of exquisite manuscripts, the patron of an " army" of artists and builders, and the director of artistic and literary toil. He saw Rome as a mine of hidden beauty vvhich it was his dream to bring to light. It remained at his death a dream unfulfilled, for his plans were too vast for one Pope to accomplish, and the gift of Renaissance beauty to Rome grew sinister in the eyes of Europe when Constantine's city fell into the hands of Mahomet. Nicolas tried to carry out too much. He planned and began the rebuilding of St. Peter's on the lines afterwards carried out by Julius II. He rebuilt most of the Capitol, and the city walls. He began the fountain of Trevi, and reorganised the water-supply. In the Vatican he built the Cortile del Belvidere and the library. This was not the end of his plan, but his work as a whole is sadly incomplete, and it suff'ered, as the artistic plans of the Popes always did, from the lack of continuity in papal history. Nicolas was succeeded by a "Philistine" Pope, and his schemes had to wait a long time for a worthy successor. To literature he gave still greater enthusiasm ; the eight years of his pontificate gave the banner of humanism to the Popes, and committed them to the Renaissance as irrevocably as Germany had already bound itself to the cause of Reformation. The scholars and artists of Nicolas were an army to fight the Councils : the cry for reform was to be met with a display of culture ; Teutonic stolidity was to be opposed by Italian civilta, and the long-winded theology of the opponents of the Papacy was to be answered by the nimble wit of classical scholars. Nicolas knew that a patron who wants good work must be tolerant of artistic weaknesses, and not too rigid a censor of conduct. Among his scholars were men as notorious as they were distinguished. The coarse jokes of Poggio did not debar him from favour in the Cm'ia, and Valla's brilliant intellect was a passport for his atheism. The quarrel between Poggio and THE RENAISSANCE POPES 267 Valla was an exercise in literary scun-ility, but Nicolas turned a deaf ear to it, and kept them both in his service. Nothing but a I'lck of skill could alienate the favour of the scholar-Pope: he could forgive the obscenity of Valla, but not the inaccuracy of George of Trapezus. He sent his learned men all over Europe in search of manuscripts, and financed scholarship on a scale equal to his appreciation. When he died in March, 14oo, he was lamented with good reason by the crowd of scholars, among them a large proportion of refugee Greeks from Constantinople, who were dependent on his bounty. Alfonso Borda. the old Spanish Cardinal who succeeded Nicolas as Calixtus HI. (1455-1458), made short work ot the scholars He shared the resentment of the uncultured many at the artistic expenditure of Nicolas at a time when money was urgently needed for the Crusade. Calixtus inherited the heredi- tanr Spanish hatred of the Moslems, and he concentrated the feverish energy of old age on two objects, the Crusade and the aggrandisement of his nephews. The year appointed for the Crusade opened a few months after Cahxtus HI.'s accession but the news that reached Rome was not encouraging, and the apathy of Europe stood revealed. In most cases the torces raised for the Crusade were being used for other purposes Alfonso of Naples had built a fleet, but he was using it against Genoa. Charles VH. of France was spending the Tenth raised for the Crusade in a war against Naples. Meanwhile, the papal fleet under Cardinal Scarampo was putting away time in winning small victories on unimportant islands. The relief of Belgrad by Hunyadi and Capistrano was the only relief, and even these tidings were accompanied by dismal accounts ot the hostility to the Papacy in Germany, ^neas Silvius, with all his diplomatic skill, and his genius for cajolery, could not break the tide ot German opposition. Martin Mayr and his patron, the Arch- bishop of Mainz, expressed the grievances of Germany in a letter of congratulation to yEneas, when, in 1457, Calixtus forced open the door of the Cardinalate, as ^neas expresses it, on his behalf The answer to German opposition is found in the " Germania " of ^neas, and in the benefits bestowed by Calixtus on the Archbishop of Mainz. But there was a spirit behind the events which could not be defeated by words or gifts, and the pontificate of Calixtus contributed to the growing conflict be- tween the soul of Italy and the soul of Germany. Meanwhile, the name of Borgia was already beginning to col- lect the antipathies of Princes and Cardinals in Italy. Calixtus had already created as Cardinals two good-looking young nephews 268 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY \ who had nothing to recommend them but their youth and high spirits. He now embarked on a quarrel with Naples for the benefit of a third. He refused to recognise the bastard son of Alfonso as heir to the kingdom, claiming it as a fief of the Church, and establishing his nephew, Don Pedro Luis, in two Neapolitan duchies. Meanwhile, Rodrigo Borgia and his brother exercised an informal tyranny in Rome, and caused the ostra- cism of all the Cardinals who were likely to interfere with them. Scarampo was kept at sea; Carrajal and Nicolas of Cusa were sent to Germany, while the saintly Capranica was deprived of power. The effect of the Pope's nephews was to rob their uncle of his reputation. Calixtus was a harmless old man with an exaggerated weakness for his own family, and an unbounded enthusiasm for the Crusade. When he died in August, 1458, the only "objet d'art" mentioned in the inventory of his bedroom furniture was a copy of his crusading vow elaborately framed. And yet he is better known to history as the uncle of Rodrigo, and the founder of a family connection which brought the Papacy to its lowest depth of moral infamy. Calixtus was succeeded by ^Eneas Silvius Piccolomini. With his accession the Renaissance comes into its own. Nicolas V. had patronised the humanists, Calixtus III. had been a target for their criticism : in Pius H. (1458-1464), they hailed one of them- selves. But" they were doomed to disappointment, for it im- mediately appeared that the pontificate of Pius II. was not to be interpreted in the light of the career of iEneas Silvius Piccolomini. ^neas had already been at work for some years uprooting the wild oats which he had sown in his youth as secretary at the Council of Basle, and as envoy at the German court. And yet his reputation and his character made it difficult for his denuncia- tion of his early exploits to seem sincere. He could not help giving dramatic expression even to his deepest convictions, and his contemporaries, recognising the artist, suspected artifice. When he urged them to " accept Pius, and reject ^neas," they made a mental reservation of the novels of iEneas — still popular in circles which Pius was pledged to condemn. They recalled the love-letters which ^Eneas had written for young Sigismund of Tyrol, and found them out of keeping with the tone of the papal Bulls of Pius. They whispered rumours of his personal indiscre- tions, and contrasted them with the high standard which he demanded of his Cardinals. All this was extremely unfair, but it is the usual tone applied by criticism to those whose characters are plastic and easily moulded by circumstances. Pius was pro- bably quite as much in earnest preaching reform at Basle as at THE EENAISSANCE POPES 2G9 Mantua, pronouncing the Bull " Execrabilis." but it was hard for more rigid intellects to accept the possibility of so complete a change of front. Hence the interest of his pontificate is not to be found in the intrinsic importance of its events, but in the degree in which they impressed themselves on the mmd of the Pope, and in the form which they assumed when he gave them expression. f 4.u„ The first of these influences was the conception ot the Papacy itself As soon as he had achieved his election, the brilliant traditions of his office possessed his imagination ; his poet's sense of the oneness of the past and present brought back to life the forgotten dreams of a world-wide spiritual do- minion and gave him for its concrete expression the ideal of the Crusade We seem to watch the deepening of the impres- sion as he journeyed through Italy, on his way to the Congress of Mantua, which had been summoned for 1459. He hked to be splendidly received, although his tastes were all for simplicity and gentle quiet, because he had a great sense of the dignity of his mission. In the same spirit he made peace with Ferrante of Naples : he did not want to be worried with an Italian war until the great enterprise was launched, and yet he managed to leave a loophole in his agreement with Ferrante to enable him to revert to the French policy in Naples if occasion demanded it. His progress through Italy was not a mere pageant : it had a deep political importance as well, and every city which received him took its place in his mind with permanent results. With his own town of Siena there had been difficulties, but they sub- sided when he was there in person, and for two months he stayed among his own people, whose welcome meant more to him than all Italy. While he was enjoying the homage of his Alma Mater— all the sweeter because he had once been regarded as an indiscreet son-he made the plan for the beautifying of his little native village of Corsignano, which was to be his best contribution to the Renaissance of architecture. Corsignano, transformed into Pienza in honour of the Piccolomini, is a perfect example of the simplicity of Italian building in the transition from Gothic to Classical style. It is also full of the character of Pius himself, with its wide open views of Italian landscape its perfect command of detail and use of restraint, and its complete fulfilment of the desired effect. . From Siena Pius went to Florence, where he was received with honour, although Cosimo de Medici diplomatically stayed in bed At stormy Bologna he was uncomfortable, for the town was nearly in rebellion, and Pius had to enter it between two 270 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY lines of Milanese troops. But at Ferrara Borso d'Este received him with open arms ; from Ferrara to Mantua he sailed up the Po in a forest of splendid ships, and his entry to Mantua was as glorious as the Marquis Gonzaga could make it. Here Sforza's wife and children visited him, and little Ippolita Sforza charmed him with her Latin speech of welcome. Then the envoys of the Council began to arrive— not nearly fast enough or many enough to satisfy Pius, and before many days he be- gan to discover the deplorable truth that he himself was the only whole-hearted crusader there. The Emperor's envoys were inadequate, the Cardinals complained of discomfort, the Princes were full of their own quarrels, and the Italians cared more for the peace of Italy than for anything else. All the genius and conviction of Pius spent itself in his great crusading sermon, which was a masterpiece of persuasive prose. He recalled the great crusades of the Congress of Clermont, and the magnificent enthusiasm of Europe when, with one voice, it shouted "Dieu le veult!". All that could be done with such material Pius managed to do, but the Congress showed no disposition to sink differences and antipathies in the common cause. Heimburg, the personal enemy of Pius, was there to neutralise his appeal with the repetition of personal scandals, and the Germans were all too ready to listen to him. France flaunted the Pragmatic Sanction, and quarrelled with the Pope's alliance with Ferrante. Sforza cared only for Italian peace and the exclusion of foreigners, especially the French. Florence was jealous of Venice, who was likely to be the chief gainer in the crusading enterprise, and Cosimo was further influenced by loyalty to the French cause in Naples. In all the grievances one common note is traceable, which is a vague distrust of Pius, a tendency to ask what he was getting out of it all, to resent his phrases and his rhetoric, and to question his political sincerity. In spite of this, Pius managed to collect a larger Crusade than might have been expected, though it was far less than he demanded, and too small to be in any sense adequate. Before he left Mantua in 1460, Pius published the Bull " Execrabilis," in which the practice, common among refractory princes, of appealing to a future General Council was denounced as " an execrable abuse, unknown to early times ". This was the rebuke of Pius to the selfishness of the national churches, which he condemned as the chief cause of the lack of crusading ardour. The councils were responsible for this selfishness, and Pius was consciously destroying the results of the conciliar movement. As the author of the Bull " Execrabilis," he stood THE EENAISSANCE POPES 271 before the world as the exponent of the old-fashioned Hilde- brandine ideal. His new role was not a popular one, and it lent itself to further charges of insincerity, for, as a young man, JEneas had made his name as the disciple of Caspar Schlick, the famous anti-papal Chancellor of Frederick IT. Since the days of the Council of Basle, iEneas had honestly changed his mind, but, unfortunately, his reputation would not bear the strain of the demand made upon it, and the Bull became a use- ful tool in the hands of his enemiee. When Pius left Mantua in 1460 he had learnt more about Italy and about his own position than when he had set out. In the quiet Umbrian country-side which he loved, he pondered over these things until the autumn brought tidings of riot from Rome, and recalled him to face the inevitable crisis which recurs like a refrain throughout papal history. Porcaro's rebellion had left an aftermath of discontent which Pius had to reap in the riots of one Tiburzio. But the circumstances of 1460 were lacking in dignity and importance, and Pius had no difficulty in restoring order after a few executions. His ItaUan policy, always a secondary consideration to him, henceforth centred in Naples. His worst enemies were the condottieri who openly bid for war at any price, and entered into mutual agreements to oppose the crusading peace which was the object of the Pope. " Who wants peace?" wrote Picinino to his opponent Sforza, in 1463— " No one, save priests and merchants, the Roman Curia, and the traders of Venice and Florence. ... In peace, we are despised and sent to the plough; in war, we become mighty and may follow the example of Francesco Sforza, who has raised himself to a dukedom." We can imagine the disdain which was felt by these great masters of the fine art of war for the amateur army of dilettante crusaders, which was all that Europe had to offer against the Turks. Under these conditions the peace of Pius was dearly bought. He might plead— "We fought for Christ when we defended Ferrante ; we warred against the Turks when we smote the lands of Malatesta," but the argument did not carry conviction to his critics, who noticed that the war in Naples brought fiefs to the Piccolomini, and saw in the struggle with Sigismondo Malatesta the expression of vindictive personal hostility. The policy of Pius in Naples involved him in trouble with France. With the accession of Louis XI. in 1461, Pius hoped that the aggressive attitude assumed by France at the Congress of Mantua would cease, for Louis as Dauphin had recognised that the danger to the French monarchy was greater when 272 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY Church privileges were exercised by the nobility than when they were left in the hands of the Pope. At first his hopes seemed likely to be fulfilled : the Pragmatic Sanction was abolished, and the warmest courtesies were exchanged between Paris and Kome. But the question of Naples gradually broke through the harmony with insistent discord. Louis declared himself the champion of R6n6 of Anjou, and Pius, concealing the extent to which he was committed to Ferrante, replied to Louis's envoys with "many words but no good deeds". An open quarrel soon followed, the French Cardinals were recalled to Paris, and Pius, seeing in France the lost recruiting-ground of the best crusaders, gave rein to his passionate resentment. The restora- tion of Galilean liberties followed his explosion of wrath, and Louis is henceforth to be counted among his enemies. France was not the only obstacle to the Catholic peace of Europe. George Podiebrad of Bohemia had failed in his attempt to serve two masters. In 1460 he had made peace with Pius, leaving his creed vaguely expressed in order to satisfy his Hussite subjects. In the dourse of two years his position be- came impossible, and a Hussite conference in Rome created a definite breach between Pius and George. George Podiebrad was as good a diplomatist as Pius, and in the end he outwitted him. He became the agent of the anti-papal party, and the patron of a fantastic scheme for a secular Crusade by which he was to become King of Constantinople, supported by the combined forces of the enemies of Pius. It is not to be wondered at that a scheme so purely negative for every one except George failed to win many supporters, and the rival Crusade never became a serious source of anxiety to Pius. In his dealings with Germany, Pius was no more fortunate. Unlike Martin V. he had no talent for reaping the advantages of the misfortunes of others. Germany was in a deplorable state of purposeless disunion. Pius was drawn to Frederick III. in common opposition to territorialism, and the "only chance for their cause lay in the lack of cohesion among their enemies. "Be of good cheer," he wrote to the disconsolate Emperor, "it is difficult to overthrow the Apostolic See and the Roman Empire at the same time. Their roots are planted too deep for the wind to prevail against them, although we who are poised on their summit must expect to feel the blast." All through his pontifi- cate Pius "felt the blast" with inconvenient severity, but his generalisation held good. The gale blew strongest from Austria, where the origin of his troubles was a quarrel between Duke Sigismund and Nicolas of Cusa. Pius was drawn into it when THE RENAISSANCE POPES 273 Nicolas appealed to him, and his intervention brought Heim- burg forward once more. Whenever Pius and Heimburg are face to face, the personal motif predominates. Ever since Pius had laughed at the heated German sincerity of his rival envoy at the court of Eugenius, Heinburg had never lost an oppor- tunity of winning the scores of the plain blunt man over the orator. When Sigismund defied " Execrabilis " in 1461 and appealed to a General Council, the excommunication which followed was parried by Heimburg in a counter-attack on the character of Pius. " Let him consider his own past life," is the burden of the Austrian apologia. Some of the shafts of Heim- burg got home in spite of his raucous abusiveness. Pius had been trying ever since he became Pope to subdue in himself his love of poetry and classical literature. Nothing moved him more than Heimburg's references to " the tropical orator," who will only see straight " when his fit of wind is over . . . when he has sent away the Muses and has turned to the Canon Law ". The Muses had been banished with the other undesirable com- panions of the youth of iEneas Silvius, but their phantoms still haunted the middle-aged Pope, and to such as Heimburg he was still the subtle phrase-monger who had talked truth into falsehood and outwitted the Germans as the go-between of the Empire and the Papacy. As a matter of fact, Heimburg had overreached himself: his extravagant language had left a loophole for internal discord, and the quarrel between Pius and Sigismund remained a personal one, in spite of his efforts to give it a wider setting. This personal character of the troubles of Pius II. is a feature of his pontificate. His second great German quarrel with the Archbishop of Mainz was of the same natiue, and in both cases the dispute only became dangerous when it was joined to something like a political movement. Heimburg and Diether of Mainz were individually defeated without much difficulty, but the movement to depose Frederick and arraign Pius before a General Council might have become serious if Pius had not created a diversion by the deposition of the rebel Archbishop. In 1464 a formal peace was made be- tween Sigismund and Pius, but it was too late to be of any use to Christendom. Germany had already made its great refusal, and the fate of the Crusade was sealed. Pius was hampered in Germany by the expert knowledge of the situation which he had acquired as an official of Frederick's court. In his policy he wavered between the claims of a spirit- ual overlord and the attitude of a foreign prince. Hence he could neither defeat the opposition in open attack, nor make good his 18 274 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY right to override it. The source of all his troubles lay in the personal bias with which he was credited ; he " approached German politics as a partisan where he should have appeared as an arbiter". He was under the impression that he was taking a short cut to a peace which would at least facilitate the Crusade. For the European policy of Pius II. must always be regarded as a prelude to his last great effort. His faihire to convince Europe of his sincerity in the enterprise for which he was prepared to die, amounts to a tragedy. His contemporaries, it must be admitted, had their justification. His quaint attempt to convert the Sultan, by a long polemical pamphlet in his best literary style, looked very like playing with the situation. It was, in fact, a naive expression of the humanist's blind faith in the power of reason. His policy in Naples seemed to be framed with a view to enriching his own family : the Piccolomini fiefs were, however, a wedge driven into the heart of Naples as a guarantee for the galleys of Ferrante. " Whatever we do is con- strued for the worse," Pius wrote in pathetic enlightenment, and even his plan of going on the Crusade in person failed to produce the effect on which he had calculated. Philip of Burgundy, whose father had been kiUed by the Turks, had promised to go if any other prince did so too. Pius himself was greater than any other prince, since he was both Pope and King. "The noise of our plan will come as a crash of thunder and rouse the minds of the faithful to the defence of their religion," he wrote. But the crash did not raise the echo which was expected. Louis XL held obstinately aloof, and allied himself with Milan. Florence joined them out of jealousy of Venice, who was likely to be the chief gainer from the Crusade. Finally, intrigues in Burgundy delayed Philip's start, although he had welcomed the Pope's project with enthusiasm. Meanwhile Pius was undaunted. The discovery of alum mines at Tolfa brought in large sums of money to the papal treasury which were all devoted to the Crusade. It was to be the great act of atonement for the sins of the priesthood. The priests were to be exhorted to join, as examples to the princes : " Perchance when they see their master, the Vicar of Jesus Christ, though old and sick, advancing to the war, they will feel ashamed to stay at home ". Pius was not old in years, but he was delicate, and he suffered terribly from gout. In 1464 he arrived at Ancona where the forces were to assemble. He was already ill, and the confusion which confronted him affected his spirits. He was not a good organiser, and on the road to Ancona he met crowds of crusaders who were discouraged at the THE RENAISSANCE TOrES 275 first stage by the lack of provisions at the seaport, and the inadequate arrangements for mobilisation. Venice alone was efficient, but her efficiency was depressing to the rest of the world, and particularly to the penniless enthusiasts who Hocked to An'cona without any means of subsistence and awaited in vain the arrival of transports. In August it became apparent that the Pope was dying. The Venetian ships at last began to arrive, and he watched them from his window overlooking the port, his whole heart set on living to embark. If the Pope could die a crusader, surely the Crusade would succeed. He could not believe in the possibility of failure, and he was fortunate enough not to be disillusioned. The Crusade of Pius never could have succeeded, and death saved him from knowing it. The shadow of mistrust still hovered over him, but on the whole he died a hero. There is a certain simphcity in the project on which he had built so many hopes, which is in keeping with the most lovable things known about him. He was always happiest in the country, among bhrds and trees and peasants, living quietly and un- pretentiously, and never far from his favourite books. For in spite of his intentions Pius remained all through his life a humanist at heart. " Time after time I have put aside poets and histories," he tells us, '' but like a moth round a candle I flutter back to my ruin." The instinct of self-expression was too strong in him to be thwarted by his sense of the decorous. All his life he had written books revealing the inner workings of his mind, from the improper novel of his early yovith to the history of Asia, which embodies the dream of the crusader-Pope. It is through his books that we know Pius so much more inti- mately than most of the Popes. He is the first papal historian who writes to make a picture of his own times for posterity, and his own character stands out in the foregrovmd. This is his real importance in papal history. He was not a great patron he was a critic rather than an admirer of contemporary Uterature, for he held that " poets and orators ought to be supreme or they are nothing "'. He was not even a great scholar, according to the academic standard of his age. He was a free-lance, a scien- tific investigator of humanity, a lover of by-ways and subtleties, readier to receive impressions than to impress others, " not a man to mould the world but to be moulded by it ". He left the problem of the Renaissance Papacy unsolved : how far could it adapt itself to the new spirit without losing its essential char- acter ? Between the Scylla and Charybdis now in sight, could a com-se be found for St. Peter's ships without disaster from 276 A SHOKT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY paganism on the one hand and the Reformation on the other ? Everything depended on the hehnsman. The seven years' pontificate of Paul II. (1464-1471), who succeeded Pius II., has on the whole a negative value in papal history. He did not attempt to pursue the peace-policy of Pius, and yet his assertion of an aggressive attitude was not pronounced enough to succeed. His policy was always non- committal ; it was not imperial, not Italian, and not humanist, and yet he did not definitely discard any of these attitudes. Against George Podiebrad of Bohemia he adopted the practical expedient of using Mathias Corvinus of Hungary, who had put himself at the head of a baronial revolt. The Bohemian war was disastrous in the face of the Turkish advance, but Paul cared more for immediate advantage than for larger ends. In 1468 Frederick III. visited him in Rome, and tried to persuade Paul to recognise his own claim both on Bohemia and on Hun- gary. But Paul had other ideas, and on the death of George Podiebrad in 1471, Ladislas of 'Poland succeeded to the dis- tracted kingdom. Ladislas was a Catholic, but he had to tolerate Utraquism, which had flourished under George's ill-defined orthodoxy until it had taken root in the national life. In Italy, Paul tried unsuccessfully to carry on the war of the Papacy against the Malatesta, until in 1470 the combined in- fluences of Ferrante and the Crusade led him to make peace. Meanwhile he was occupied with the most significant struggle of his pontificate, which brought down on him the hostility of humanism. In his own way Paul was just as much a child of the Renaissance as Pius : he had indeed a greater and wider love of beautiful treasures, but, unlike his predecessor, his mind was as decorous as his person. Pius II. had not always been kind to the humanists who thronged round him, but his dis- favour took the form of contempt for their mediocrity rather than disapproval of their morals. Paul II. had a rooted dislike of the mental and moral outlook of the humanists of 1460-1470. He resented their claim to be outside religion and morals. He saw that it was unreasonable to punish heresy in Bohemia and to condone atheism in Rome. From the other side the quarrel began with Paul's schemes for reforming his household in 1464. He decided to abolish the crowd of abbreviators, or under- secretaries, whom the Pope found it difficult either to control, to employ, or to pay. Most of the abbreviators were humanists, among them the historian Platina, and their literary vengeance has made it difficult to form a just estimate of Paul's character. His other great fight with humanism was his attack on the THE KENAISSANCE POPES 277 Roman Academy in 1468. The Academy had begun as a genuine association of scholars and antiquarians who gathered round the Stoic teacher Pomponius Lectus. It had degenerated mtoa silly and self-conscious institution which wasted its energies in profane attacks on Christianity, and gained its recruits from the unemployed abbreviators. Paul II. was obliged to punish the Academy, which flaunted its emancipation in his face. He ac- cordingly arrested and imprisoned Platina and Pomponius. But the futility and chHdishness of the Stoic philosophers, who promised " to celebrate in prose and verse the name of Paul " if he would set them free, convinced Paul of their essential harm- lessness. The Academicians regained their liberty, and Platina showed his gratitude by writing an unfriendly life of Paul in his "Lives of the Popes," in which he describes him as "a great enemy and despiser of human learning, branding those for heretics that gave their minds to it". The Academy and the fortunes of Platina revived under Sixtus IV., but Paul II. can- not fairly be condemned for his attitude towards a corporation which attacked religion with the weapons of buffoonery. Through his supposed attack on humanism Paul alienated many of the Cardinals, who, like Bessarion, were its strong sup- porters. His high-handed dealings with the pretensions of the College lost for him the sympathy of the rest. He wanted the Cardinals to be magnificent and splendid but entirely dependent on himself. He liked to walk among them in processions, his own the tallest and most distinguished figure of the dignified and imposing band of princes. He had no closer bond with them than this, and he did not care for intimate intercourse of any kind. Even his three nephews were not specially favoured, and impartiality and kindliness were his chief social aims. He hated to refuse petitions, and therefore gave few audiences. He dreaded above aU things to condemn a criminal to death. And yet he could be severe on occasions, as when he would suddenly flash round on an impostor with the words, " You are not speak- ing the truth". "He is surrounded by darkness," was Am- manati's description of him, and the knowledge that he was not loved saddened him, for, as he said, " a little wormwood can pollute a hive of honey". But the real Ufe of Paul II. was among inanimate things. His companions were his treasures, and his delight was in the jewels which he took to bed with him that he might feast his eyes on them in the hours of the night when he was kept awake by asthma. He loved to strive with other great collectors for an object of preciosity on which he had iset his heart. His 278 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY greatest triumphs were those in which he successfully — but always honestly — outwitted an Alfonso, or an Este, or a Medici in the purchase of a vase or a stone. Even in thig passion, which was shared by so many of his contemporaries, he was not understood. His pleasure in beautiful things was aesthetic, while theirs was antiquarian ; they collected for display, while he enjoyed his treasures in solitude. He was a Renaissance Pope, for the Renaissance had made him, but he was more con- spicuous as an example of individuality in the age when the individual personality first comes into play among political forces. CHAPTER XXIV. THE SECULAR PAPACY, 1471-1503. IF we apply the written language of the average canonist of the fourteenth century to the Papacy in the time of Sixtus IV. (1471-1484), we shall find that the distance travelled in the hundred years is so great that it seems like a break in the continuity of papal history. But it was the world which had changed, and the rise of the nations which had dis- possessed the Papacy by its universality as completely as the Popes themselves had triumphed over the claims of the Empire in the early Middle Ages. The conception of the Papacy as a world-state, binding the kingdoms of Europe in a harmonious circle of common obedience, could no longer stand against the vigorous realism of the new era. "The spell of dogmatic tran- scendentalism" was broken by the dominance of political interests and practical methods which characterise the fifteenth century. The efforts of Martin V. to restore the temporal power, the struggles of Eugenius IV. with the papal vicars, the syste- matic nepotism of Sixtus IV., and the definite family policy of Alexander VI. are progressive stages in the process of readjust- ment by which the Papacy was to be transformed into a modern political state. Side by side with the growth of consolidation we find another tendency, equally inevitable— the process of secularisation. Neither of these forces is quite new in the fifteenth century— they are both in a sense inherent in the rise of temporal power which had begun with Hildebrand, and perhaps even before him, in the evolution of the Patrimony. But a movement which dom- inates one age often has its roots in another, and the secular Papacy, like the Renaissance itself, belongs none the less to the fifteenth century, although we can trace its beginnings in the ages preoccupied by other principles and interests. The fifteenth century Popes were wise in their generation : those succeeded best who best played their neighbours' game, and gave up the attempt to reduce a non-religious age to obedience to a spiritual institution. Conspicuous among the failures we find Eugeuius 279 280 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY IV., wounded in his ecclesiastical capacity by his political antagonists and unable to descend from the clerical high-horse. Even more tragic was the attempt of Pius II. to revive the theocratic principle, and to lead Europe to the Crusades, un- conscious of the fact that his failure is both the cause and the result of his success as a temporal prince. Popes like Nicolas V. and Paul 11. had shown superior intuition by their identifica- tion of the Papacy with the Renaissance. The essence of the new monarchy was popularity : the Renaissance Popes, like the Medici of Florence and the Tudors of England, owed their strength to the fact that they gave their subjects what they wanted. The Italian subjects of the fifteenth-century Popes wanted strong local government, money to spend in pageants, and an ample satisfaction of their desire for beauty — all which is summed up in the word " civiltd ", The early fifteenth-century Popes, beginning with Martin V., had aimed at territorial monarchy, but they had not pursued it along any definite political line. Sixtus IV. chose out of the many alternatives the safest and most congenial, that of nepotism. He showed the aggressive family pride of a self- made man, whose very name was borrowed from another. As Francesco della Rovere he had been General of the Franciscans, and he was known as a learned man of limited outlook and boundless energy. Round him flocked his vigorous young nephews, one of whom, Piero Riario, had secured his election by judicious bribery among the Cardinals. The nepotism of earlier Popes had been haphazard favouritism : Sixtus used it deliberately in order to strengthen his position. He instantly made two young nephews Cardinals, and allowed the younger, the same Piero, to exhaust himself in debauchery so that he died in four years at the age of twenty-nine. For the other young Cardinal, Giuliano della Rovere, a more brilliant future was reserved. A third nephew, by his marriage with the daughter of Ferrante of Naples, was the pivot of a Neapolitan alliance on which turned the Italian policy of Sixtus. Another Delia Rovere married the daughter of Federico of Urbino and became Duke of Sinigaglia, thus opening up the way to Romagna, which was the main objective. Romagna was to be the territorial expression of the Pope's personal monarchy, held, not by the old weak feudal tie, but by a strong family bond which was very nearly dynastic. That Sixtus IV. failed, as Alexander VI. was to fail, in founding an Italian dynasty was due to no de- ficiency of character but to the limitations of the Papacy. The Pope could play the political game as well as any of his con- THE SECULAK PAPACY 281 temporary rulers; he could bind territories to his family and his nephews to himself. But in an intensely personal age he alone could not perpetuate the personal tie. His children and his nephews, as such, had no claim on their subjects' allegiance, and on the death of a Pope, the cities and territories which he had ruled would remember their ecclesiastical obedience as an excuse to throw off their anomalous lords. Pontificates were short, and no Pope could ever count on influencing the election of his successor. In this lay the condemnation of nepotism as a political factor, which is illustrated by most of the papal families of the Renaissance, but pre-eminently in the lives of the Delia Rovere and the Borgia. The crowing secularisation of the Papacy increased the worldly appearance of the Vatican Court. When Leonora of Naples came to Rome to marry Leonardo della Rovere her brothers and cousins-in-law gave her a magnificent reception, in which a wild man in sugar and a bear roasted in his skin played conspicuous parts. After the death of Cardinal Piero, Sixtus passed a series of sumptuary laws for the Cardinals forbidding them to hunt, or to wear short hose, bright colours, or long hair. He forebore from making Girolamo Riario a Cardinal when he succeeded his brother in his uncle's afifection. Sixtus kept him a layman, and bought for him the lordship of Imola from the Duke of Milan, together with the hand of the Duke's splendid illegitimate daughter, Caterina. The Jubilee of 1475 attracted very few pilgrims except those who, like Ferrante of Naples, made it a cover for a political mission. Rumours were abroad in Europe of the debauchery of the Pope's family and the unseemliness of his court. In Italy, outraged decorum was allied to political apprehension. A league of the three gi'eat Northern powers— Milan, Florence, and Venice— was formed in 1474, nominally to protect the peace of Italy, actually to keep a watchful eye on the Pope and the King of Naples. Sixtus failed in numerous attempts to break up the triple alliance which he rightly regarded as a barrier to his family policy. For various reasons Florence was the most probable aggressor, and at first Sixtus had taken some pains to propitiate her. He had allowed Lorenzo de Medici to buy the treasures of Paul II., and he had appointed the Medici as his bankers in Rome. Sixtus IV. and the Medici, as the two leading powers in Italy, were natural enemies. Florence had everything to gain in thwarting the plans of Sixtus in the Romagna : Sixtus could not get far without wounding the dominions of Florence. The trouble began with Imola. Florence had always wanted it, and 282 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY now Milan had ceded it to the Pope's nephew. The circum- stances were aggravated by the refusal of Sixtus to make Giuliano de Medici a Cardinal, and the transference of the Pope's banking business from the Medici to the older Florentine firm of the Pazzi. When finally, in 1474, Giuliano della Rovere ' was engaged in putting down a rebellion in Spoleto, the inter- ference of Florence brought Paolo Vitelli, who had helped the rebels, to terms before he had been sufficiently humiliated. The inadequate results of the disturbance rankled in the mind of Sixtus, and led to the crisis connected with the Pazzi conspiracy in 1478. The Pazzi conspiracy was an attempt to overthrow the rule of the Medici in Florence, and its failm'e is the highest testimony to the popularity of the great tyrant house. The murder of Galeazzo Maria Sforza at Milan in 1476 had produced a wave of admiration for the ethics of political assassination, which infected a handful of discontented Florentines. Girolamo Riario, who foresaw disaster to his own position in the event of hie uncle's death, used this spirit to rid himself of his arch-enemies, the Medici, by working on the rivalry of the Pazzi. Sixtus was equally anxious for the overthrow of Lorenzo, and recognised the danger of Girolamo's position now that his family connection with Milan was broken. But as Pope he could not go so far as to countenance assassination. The chosen assassin, Montesecco, had an interview with him in which Sixtus expressed his desire for the overthrow of the Medici without their death. He would not be caught by Girolamo's attempt to exhort from him a pardon for the murder before its committal. " You are a beast," was his answer to his favourite ; " I tell you I do not wish any man's death, but a change of government." The Pope had washed his hands, but the criminal preparations went forward. Giuliano de Medici was stabbed before the High Altar of the Duomo on April 26, 1478. Lorenzo escaped at the expense of the life of a friend. The Florentines showed in what quarter their suspicions lay by imprisoning young Cardinal Raflfaello, the great-nephew of the Pope, who was celebrating Mass at the time of the murder. The plot had failed, for Lorenzo lived to reap the results in an outflow of popular enthusiasm which was poured into pamphlets directed to the Pope. Sixtus put Lorenzo under the Ban, and Florence under the Interdict for supporting him. The quarrel grew wider : Louis XL tried and failed to arbitrate, and the city became more and more passionately loyal to the Medici party, and increasingly hostile to Sixtus. The trouble grew into war, in which Naples supported the Pope, and THE SECULAK PAPACY 283 Florence gained what help bIio could from her uninterested allies. The Pazzi wars found Florence ill-prepared: the aggressor was really Sixtus, who was anxious to secure the position of Girolamo in Imola by every means he could. In 1479 Lorenzo travelled to Naples to arrange a peace with Ferrante: in 1480 he made terms with Sixtus IV. The Turks had occupied Otranto, and as usual Italy was reawakened to a moment's national consciousness by the disaster. Lorenzo and Sixtus had laid aside their quarrel at the news of the landing of the Turks in Italy. They took it up again when in 1481 the Turks retired. But the position was not the same as before, for Lorenzo had founded his peace with Naples more firmly than with Sixtus. On the other hand, Venice had made peace with the Pope out of jealousy of the "unnatural" Florentine- Neapolitan alliance. In 1482 a fresh war broke out, which was famous in Italian history for its exceptionally deadly character. The aggression of Girolamo Riario lay at the back of it, as of all the political schemes of Sixtus. This tempestuous young man had added Forli to Imola, and showed further designs on Fen-ara. But it was one thing to overthrow the unpopular House of the Ordelaffi at Forli, and quite another to oppose the powerful Este of Ferrara, with the support of their kinsman the King of Naples. Girolamo and his "dark designs" were even more than Italy could stand, and Federigo of Urbino refused to serve as papal condottiere. Roberto Malatesta took his place, and both the leaders fell in the great battle of Campo Morto, August 21, 1482. It was technically a victory for Sixtus, but it was barren of results. Ferrara was unconquered, and Rome was distracted by a blood feud which had produced an acute revival of Colonna-Orsini hostility. Riario was making liimself person- ally odious wherever he went, and Venice was behaving in a high-handed way as the Pope's ally. It only needed ecclesias- tical opposition to complete the Pope's discomfiture, and this element was supplied by the Archbishop of Krain, a simple- hearted German who had been imprisoned for plain-speaking when, on a visit to Rome in 1479, he had been shocked at the moral atmosphere which he found there. He now reappeared in the ominous city of Basle, where he published his opinion of Sixtus as a son of the devil, etc., and invited the Pope's enemies to a Council. Krain's words and his methods were antiquated, but Florence and Milan showed Home interest in him, and Sixtus was alarmed in proportion as he knew himself to be vulnerable. The belated conciliar movement came to nothing, and Krain hanged himself in a prison cell 284 A SHORT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY in 1484. But his action had a marked effect on the policy of Sixtus. The last phase of the Italian policy of Sixtus begins in 1482, when in December he made peace with Ferrara, and ordered Venice to do the same. Bat Venice had her own reasons for pur- suing the war, and refused at the point of victory to abandon it. Sixtus promptly faced round on his too-powerful ally, and joined the confederacy of her foes. Fortified by the further support of Louis XI. of France, who might otherwise have taken up the conciliar cry, the Pope excommunicated the Venetians, and refused to open negotiations with them until they should have been driven back from their mainland conquests. On his death-bed in the following year, Sixtus had to ratify a peace dictated by his allies on less exorbitant terms. He did so indignantly and under pressure, for a last desperate struggle with the Colonna had spent the flame of his wonderful energy. His last recorded act is one of broken faith. The Colonnesi had taken the part of Naples against him on the field of Campo Morto. They had headed the opposition to Girolamo Riario, and in revenge Sixtus pursued them with the fury of Nemesis. Castle after castle was seized, and the last two were delivered up by Fabrizio Colonna as the price of the life of his brother Oddo, then in the Pope's hands. Oddo was submitted to a mock trial and executed, and his mangled remains were sent to his mother who found in them the proof of the faith of Pope Sixtus. Oddo Colonna, like his fellow victims the Ordelaffi, Giuliano de Medici, and many others, were sacrificed to the ascendancy of the secular Papacy. The seal of Machiavelli's approval con- firms the worst deeds of Sixtus IV., for they showed how "things that before were called errors could be hidden behind the papal authority ". Since Machiavelli laid down the ethics of villainy, the successful criminals of the world have never been without an apologist. But Sixtus IV. was not really one of these : few crimes can be directly brought home to him, and still fewer met with the justification of success. His very energy was borrowed, and the odium which followed him was incurred by others. The sensual crimes of Piero Riario and the recklessness of Girolamo were cloaked by the official position of their uncle, whose complacence and connivance were his worst faults. He never pretended to be other than a worldling, but judged by contemporary standards — taking for granted, that is, the low moral values of his age — he still remains a failure. None of his plans succeeded : he had failed to overthrow Lorenzo de Medici, Ferrara held out against him to the last, and Venice had THE SECULAR PAPACY 285 successfully braved his anger and asserted herself against him, first as an ally and later as a foe. Naples had coquetted with him and thrown him over at the bidding of Florence, while the Colonna had made him pay dearly for the barren privilege of humiliating them. In art as in politics, undiscriminating energy marked the pontificate of Sixtus. The Sistine Chapel, which is his gi-eatest monument, is not a thing of beauty in itself, but it is interesting as showing the beginning of Renaissance architecture in Rome. His artists formed themselves into the confraternity of St. Luke, and among them were the most brilliant names of the splendid period But it has often been remarked that none of them— not even Ghirlandaio or Perugino or Botticelli— did themselves justice under the influence of the Pope. The second-rate work of Cosirao Roselli won the prize in the fresco competition for the walls of the Sistine, possibly because his pliable talent submitted itself more easily to the taste of his patron. Humanism too received impetus under Sixtus, but again of the uncritical, mediocre type, and Platina's name alone stands out among the crowd of scholars who blessed the name of the Pope. To the foundation of the Vatican library we owe one of the most interesting portraits which papal history gives. Melozzo da Forli's picture represents Sixtus giving the keys of the library to Platina, with his nephews standing round him. As a family portrait it is full of character, and in the features of the della Rovere and Riario nephews we can trace the same brutal energy which directed the policy of Sixtus and enabled him to leave so deep an impression on the character of the Papacy.^ The confusion on the death of Sixtus was unusually great, owing to the number of militant spirits in the College. Jobbery ran so high that the strongest candidates defeated each other, and finally Cardinal Cibo of Genoa was elected by the combined influence of Cardinal Rovere and Cardinal Borgia. Innocent VIII. (1484-1492) was not in any way remarkable, except for a certain honesty which led him to acknowledge openly a large family of children, two of whom played conspicuous parts in the history of his pontificate. But the Cibo family were not of the stufi" of which the Rovere were made. Innocent's daughter, Teodorina, was married to a rich Genoese merchant, and quite content with her lot. The only son who made any mark was Franceschetto, who lived at first at the Vatican Court and was 1 For an interesting account of this picture, see " Rome and the Renais- sance," by Klaczko, Ch. I. 286 A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY generally known as Innocent's nephew. In aadition to these, the Pope was credited with fourteen other children, but this is probably an exaggeration : he was too kind a father not to have made provision for them, and they would surely have left traces of their existence in an age in which the Pope's nephews ranked as princes. Sixtus IV. had at least a definite policy : Innocent VIII. was content to drift with the tide. Trivulzio, the great soldier, gives an estimate of him which history cannot deny — " The Pope is full of greed, cowardice, and baseness like a common knave ; were there not men about him who inspired him with some spirit, he would crawl away like a rabbit, and grovel like any dastard " (Creighton, IV., p. 148). It was true that Innocent was controlled by master-minds. His first policy was dictated by Giuliano della Rovere, who had manipulated his election. In accordance with the Rovere tradition he supported the Nea- politan barons against Ferrante of Naples. The French claims on Naples had now passed to the crown, and out of fear of French intervention Florence and Milan sided with Ferrante. But the Cardinals present in Rome shared the universal fear of France, and at their urgency and during the absence of Giuliano in France, Innocent was induced to make peace in 1486. The appalling state of Rome had contributed to the need for peace. The Orsini had joined Ferrante, and Virginio Orsini was besieging Rome when Sanseverino relieved it, but the mercenaries on both sides plundered the city with indiscriminate zeal. But the peace was dishonourable to Innocent, who had sacrificed his allies, the barons and the Colonna, and it infuriated Cardinal Rovere who found on his return that his sun had set. Lorenzo de Medici dominated the second policy of Innocent. He bought the Pope with his daughter, Maddalena, whom he offered as a bride for Franceschetto. The offer was irresistible, and since Maddalena was the daughter of Clarice Orsini, Vir- ginio's sister, it meant a reversal of the Pope's earlier alliance with the Colonna party. Neither this consideration, nor a half- concluded alliance with Venice, which had to lapse, hindered Innocent from carrying out the Medici marriage. Virginio Orsini was taken into favour, and Giuliano della Rovere was kept at a distance. Henceforth Lorenzo controlled the Vatican policy, and it was fortunate for the Pope that he had fallen into such capable hands. In 1488 the murder of Girolamo Riario by his subjects in Imola was laid at the door of Innocent, and when the courage of Girolamo's wife, Caterina, saved the city for her son, Innocent was further accused of deserting the rebels THE SECULAR PAPACY 287 whom he had at first encouraged. Innocent was the kind of person who would always be accused of breach of faith, because he cared nothing about consistency. But Girolamo's death was naturally welcomed by his life-long enemy, Lorenzo, and in the following year the Pope's alliance with the Medici was drawn closer than ever by the appointment of Lorenzo's son, Giovanni, to the cardinalate. Innocent's dealings with the King of France were as ineffec- tive as his Italian schemes. The Florentine alliance had inter- rupted his negotiations with Charles VIII. concerning Naples, but a curious .little intrigue had been carried out round the pic- turesque figure of Djem. Djem was the Sultan's brother, who had been captured by the Knights of St. John at Rhodes, and placed by them under the protection of the French Crown. He was a most useful person in many ways because he was both the rival of the reigning Sultan, Bajazet II., and a hostage for his good behaviour. He was also the much-desired of every European province, and the paying-guest of his captors. Every one offered bribes to the Regent of France for the privilege of en- tertaining Djem, but Innocent held a trump card in the offer of a cardinalate to the Grand Master of the Knights. At the same time he was prepared to withhold a dispensation from Anne of Brittany, who wanted to marry her cousin within the prohibited degrees, and so to enable the King of France to marry her, and add Brittany to France. It was nothing to Innocent that Anne and Charles were both pledged by previous contracts : he even showed himself complacent enough to condone the fact that the marriage was accomplished ten days before the Bulls arrived. Meanwhile, Djem had come to Rome in 1489, and the proud, silent Oriental, who refused the courtesies and gifts of his captors, formed a dignified contrast to the fussy duplicities of the Pope. The interviews between Innocent and Djem outraged public opinion in a way that the worst immoralities of the Cardinals and irregularities of the Popes failed to do. Only a generation ago Pius II. had appealed to the Church militant to combine against the infidel in a Holy War. His third successor was now exchanging courtesies on equal terms with a Moslem prince, who was at once his guest and his paymaster. In the year 1492, Cardinal Borgia gave a magnificent bull- fight in Rome to celebrate the Union of the Spanish Monarchy and the fall of Granada. Both these events were important for the future of the Papacy. The strong new kingdom of Spain was bound by the iron bond of the Inquisition to the Pope's service, and the Moors, who were expelled from Granada, swelled 288 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY the ranks of the infidels of South Italy, and made Rome more pagan than ever. At about the same time young Giovanni de Medici came to Rome to begin his life as a Cardinal, fortified by Lorenzo's wise letter of advice, in which he warns hind against the dangers of Rome as a " sink of iniquities ", Giovanni must have missed in Rome the cultivated society to which he was accustomed in Florence, but he left his own city on the eve of sorrow. Later on in the year Lorenzo died, and the golden age of Florentine civilta gave place to a period of constitutional upheaval. The exquisite day-dream of Platonic philosophy and ephemeral pleasure, in which the discussions of the Academy and the laughter of carnival had an equal share, passed away with Lorenzo de Medici, and Florence awoke to the sound of controversy and civic strife. Savonarola already held sway by his preaching, and Piero de Medici was giving proof of the in- capacity which was to bring his house to ruin. In the middle of these great events Innocent VIII. died, old and unregretted, except by the children for whom he had toiled. Before his death he had just married his grand-daughter to Ferrante's grandson. These marriages cost him a lot of money, and, in order to obtain it, he had created and sold new offices in the Curia. The result of this was to lower the standard of the officials of his court, and dishonesty and forgery were added to venality in the authentic charges against the Curia. The Car- dinals were still further corrupted, and gambling was among the lesser evils prevalent among them. The Vatican under Innocent had a domestic aspect : he began the practice of in- viting ladies officially to dinner, and at his country-house of La Magliana he lived the life of the ordinary middle-aged layman, surrounded by his children. He was not particularly interested in art or letters, but he went steadily on with the adornment of Rome. He placed a fountain in the piazza of St. Peter, and he built the Villa Belvedere in the Vatican gardens. Harmless and ineffective, Innocent VIII. had merely confirmed the secular character of the Papacy, and by his open acknowledgment of family ties made further developments possible. The Conclave which met in 1492 to elect Innocent's successor was an exceptionally brilliant assembly, but there were three men who stood out beyond the others, each of them masters in statecraft, and each gifted with marked personality. These were Giuliano della Rovere, Ascanio Sforza, and Rodrigo Borgia. Giuliano was the candidate of France, Ascanio of his own brother, the Duke of Milan, and Rodrigo owed his strength to the riches which he had accumulated as Vice-Chancellor. Seeing that THE SECULAR PAPACY 289 France and Milan could be played off against each other, Rod- rigo Borgia set to work to buy up the Papacy by a judicious distribution of his palaces, his offices, and his goods. To the Colonna Cardinal he gave the Abbey of Subiaco, to his Orsini rival a Roman palace, and two villas ; for the rest of the Cardi- nals there were gifts in due gradation, while Ascanio Sforza's support was won by a promise of the post of Vice-Chancellor, supplemented by four mules laden with gold and silver. Thus Rodrigo became Alexander VI. (1492-1503), and the transaction is characteristic of the man. To attempt an apology for Alex- ander's pontificate is now unnecessary and impossible — un- necessary, because the case for and against him has been probed to the foundations, and impossible, because the principle on which any possible justification rests is in itself unjustifiable. The question is whether in an age of fraud and immorality he was more or less fraudulent and immoral than other conspicuous examples of these tendencies. But the answer does not dispose of the charge, even if we admit that there were worse men than he among the rulers of Italy, for the accusation against him is not personal, but official. It is not that he degraded himself, but that he degraded the Papacy. Whether the Borgian Papacy was an outrage on the age or a characteristic example of Renais- sance State-life — whether we regard it as a catastrophe or as the culmination of a decline — the calamity lies in the travesty, which it presents, of the ideal which had given the Papacy its magnificent claim on the mind of Europe. There was no skeleton in the Borgian cupboard in 1492. It was so well-known what kind of a man Rodrigo was that Bishop Creighton is able to contend that " the exceptional infamy that attaches to Alexander VI. is largely due to the fact that he did not add hypocrisy to his other vices ". There was certainly no reticence among his contemporaries as to his way of life, neither was there at first much condemnation. His simony provoked scandals, but not his sensual vices. His family was taken for granted and his children were treated with deference. He is described by a contemporary at the time of his coronation as " a handsome man with a pleasant look and a honeyed tongue, who lures women to love him, and attracts those on whom he casts his eyes more powerfully than a magnet draws iron " (Gas- parino of Verona). Pius II. had reproved him in his youth for taking part in an orgy in a Sienese garden at which a young Cardinal was certainly out of place, and " shame forbids mention of all that occurred ". Since then he had watched the moral ideal of the Papacy decline through four pontificates, and life 19 290 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY had not taught him moral restraint. He had two illegitimate children before the year 1473, when he began his connection with Vanozza de Catarei, a " quiet and upright woman," who bore him three sons and a daughter. The Vanozza liaison had ended some time before Alexander's election, but her children were conspicuous at the Vatican for their beauty and their princely education. The eldest, Giovanni, had succeeded his half-brother in the duchy of Gandia, which Rodrigo had bought for his Spanish son, who died in 1488. Cesare was being edu- cated as a priest and already held many benefices which Sixtus IV. had bestowed on him in his infancy. Lucrezia was already beautiful, with her quick smile and her famous golden hair, and Giuffre, the youngest, was as yet a child in 1492. Rodrigo was nothing if not a devoted father, and he had provided honour- ably for "la felice e infelice madre, Vanozza Borgia," as she describes herself in a letter to Lucrezia. Rodrigo's children are individually important for the great part which they played m his policy and collectively as the motive force which actuated everything which he did. Their aggrandisement was his sole aim, and in his passionate fatherhood lies the reason why, according to Gregorius, " his entire pontificate shows not a single great idea, either in Church or State, either as priest or as prince ". , • r i Alexander first had to pay his debts. The chief quarrel among the Italian princes, on his accession, was between Milan and Naples. Milan was represented in Rome by Ascanio Sforza, brother of Ludovico il Moro, and to Ascanio, Alexander owed his election. Alexander had his own quarrel with Naples too, for Ferrante had pressed forward the sale to the Orsini of certain territories belonging to Franceschetto Cib5, in the hope that they would be " a bone in the throat of the Pope with which the Orsini might strangle him at their desire ". Venice, Milan Mantua, Ferrara, and Siena joined Alexander's anti- Neapolitan alliance. Spain, too, adhered to it, for Alexander had just confirmed Ferdinand's sovereignty in the New World. The bonds were drawn closer with Milan by the marriage of Lucrezia Borgia with Giovanni Sforza, lord of Pesaro, and twelve new Cardinals were created in order to defray the ex- penses of her wedding. Among them were Cesare Borgia, now aged eighteen, and Alessandro Farnese, brother of Giulia, who was recognised as Alexander's mistress at the time of Lucrezia's wedding. The beauty of Giuha, with the hair " which reached to her feet and shone like the sun," was perpetuated in one of Finturicchig's Madonnas, by order of the Pope, THE SECULAR PAPACY 291 Alexander's first Italian policy gave way in 1494, before the announcement of Charles VIII. 's invasion of Italy for the con- quest of Naples. The astounding success of the French army terrified Alexander ; his worst enemy, Cardinal della Rovere, was in Charles's camp ; the vacillation of Piero de Medici had given Florence to Charles for an ally, and the French King had once or twice mentioned the word Council. Alexander there- fore turned from Milan to Naples, and married his son Giuffre with some difficulty to Sancia, daughter of Alfonso II., now King of Naples. He dared not openly oppose France, so, ignor- ing Naples, he pretended to look on the expedition as a Crusade against the Turk. At the same time he disgraced himself by appealing to the Sultan to subsidise the papal army against France, on the plea that Charles if he succeeded would capture Djem, and invade Constantinople in his name. Bajazet sent 40 000 ducats for use against the " crusading " forces of France. It is now known that he sent another embassy at the same time promising a further 30,000 in return for the dead body of Djem, " wherewith your Highness may buy lands for your sons ". Meanwhile, the French party among the Cardinals urged Charles to break with the Pope and summon a General Council. But this line of action did not appeal to the King, who realised that " Alexander might be unfit to be Pope, but that he (Charles) was equally unfit to say so " (Creighton). Alexander answered the attack of the hostile Cardinals on his character with logic which was irrefutable : " Let slanderers tell what tales they will, Alexander is holier, or at least as holy, as he was at the time of his election ". This was true enough, but meanwhile Charles had advanced to Rome without opposition, although Alexander had refused to give him safe-conduct through the papal states. Charles finally entered Rome under the shelter of an emergency peace and encamped on the farther side of the Tiber. When he left the city, on January 25, he took with him as hostages, Cesare Borgia and Djem. Charles was unlucky in his hostages. Cesare escaped five days later from the French camp, and thus proved the extent of Alexander's good faith. The forlorn Oriental ended his tragic life a month later, and strangely enough by a natural death, although the theory that the Pope had poisoned him before he left Rome was pro- duced as a matter of course, and believed by those who wished to believe it. The " miraculous " success of the French culminated in the conquest of Naples, and Savonarola saw in it the fulfilment of his vision of Charles, " Missus a Deo ". But behind him, Charles 292 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY left a trail of suspicion and dread, which found expression in Alexander's league for the expulsion of the French in March, 1495. The Pope had every reason for opposing Charles, who had listened to the truth about his own character, who had allied himself with unfriendly Florence, and who now threatened him with that bugbear of the Papacy, a strong and united Naples, hostile to Rome. His feelings were shared by Ludovico Sforza, now alarmed at the fire which he had lighted, and painfully conscious of the claims of Louis of Orleans on his duchy of Milan. The terror of the lilies spread to Venice, prompted by fear for her maritime greatness — to Spain, apprehensive for Spanish Sicily — to Maximilian, jealous as one " preux cheva- lier " of the military glory of another. In July, the battle of Fornovo saw the end of the vainglorious Charles and his de- moralised army. His successes had awakened Italy from her aesthetic slumber, and the honour, such as it is, of resisting the "scourge" is due to Alexander. But the attempt to find anything deeper than a coincidence of personal motives for the combination of the Italian states against France fails when we consider that Florence, the most enlightened of them all, held aloof from it. A national ideal, if Italy had been capable of formulating one, would have found its best chance of .acceptance in Florence. But the Florentines clung obstinately to their alliance with France, in spite of all Alexander's efforts to detach them. The benefits which Charles had promised them — the exclusion of the Medici and the reduc- tion of Pisa — seemed of greater importance than the privilege of being " Buoni Italiani ". Savonarola, one-sided politician as he was, felt that Florentine liberty was a bigger cause than the exclusion from Italy of the avenging foreigner. Italy, in his eyes, was not worth saving until the " scourge " had fallen upon it. Alexander's opposition to the " chattering friar " was there- fore reasonable and deliberate. He was indeed surprisingly patient with him in the early part of the quarrel, and bore him no grudge for his invectives against him as a " broken iron ". He was determined to keep the quarrel on a political footing — a hard thing with an enemy so fearless and deadly in his use of personal weapons. In 1496, he suspended him from preaching, and when this failed he bribed him with a red hat. At the same time, he encouraged the hostility of the Roman Domini- cans, and later of the Franciscans, against the friar. When, in 1497, a party hostile to Savonarola arose in Florence, Alex- ander took the opportunity of excommunicating him, but the "Burning of the Vanities" on Lent testified to the continued THE SECULAK PAPACY 293 strength of his opponent's hold on the city. All the time the Pope was concentrating on the one object of dissociating Flor- ence from France, and when finally the execution of Savonarola became a political necessity, Alexander reluctantly gave his consent. He was not responsible for his death, which was due to the rhetorical challenge of one of the friar's friends, but he had consented to it, and his opposition to Savonarola's politics had brought it about. But it was one of the things which this strange Pope always regretted, although it had brought him an immediate political advantage, and in spite of the fact that it delivered him from a personal enemy who might have become dangerous if the French menace of a Council had been put into effect. The interest of Alexander in resisting France was not in any sense national, for it was reversed by the death of the Duke of Gandia in 1497. On June 14 the body of the Pope's eldest son was thrown into the Tiber by two masked men, directed by another on horseback. A charcoal burner who witnessed it, when he was asked why he did not report it at once, replied that he had seen a hundred or more bodies thrown into the river in his day, but never one that had been asked for again. The circumstances of the Duke of Gandia's death were so mysterious that the guilt cannot be assigned with certainty to anyone. But its political importance was enormous, for it set at large the sinister eflficiency and ambition of the Pope's younger son, Cesare Borgia. Alexander had loved Giovanni, but he feared Cesare and was dominated by him, to the extent perhaps of condoning his fratricide. At anyrate his grief for Giovanni spent itself in six months, during which he talked of reform, and kept Cesare at a distance. At the time of Giovanni's death, he said to the Cardinals — "We no longer value the Papacy or anything else. If we had seven papacies we would give them all to restore him to life." A year later, we find him embarked in fresh schemes for his children, this time concentrated on the "dark designs " of Cesare. At this period the family chronicle of the Borgias moves rapidly, and scandal rampages round the events. Lucrezia's divorce from Giovanni Sforza was a necessary first step in the change of policy which was to substitute France for Milan as the family ally. Lucrezia was too exquisite a prize to be thrown away on the policy of a moment. Moreover, it was possible to annul the marriage and set Lucrezia free at the expense of Giovanni's pride. Giovanni could, and did, retaliate by an appalling, but at that time obvious, counterstroke against 294 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY Lucrezia's father, but the Italians of his day preferred to laugh than to condemn, and the joke against Giovanni pleased those who would hesitate to believe " so great an enormity " of the Pope. But " whatever may be the truth," wrote the Venetian envoy in relating the scandal, " one thing is certain : this Pope behaves in an outrageous and intolerable way ". Six months later, Lucrezia was married to Alfonso of Biseglia, " the hand- somest youth ever seen in Rome ". He was the natural son of Alfonso II. of Naples, and his hand brought the alliance of Federigo, the last and most reputable of the House of Aragon, who had restored his dynasty after the withdrawal of the French from Naples. In August, 1498, Cesare Borgia was dispensed from the cardinalate " for the salvation of his soul ". In December he went to France, a magnificent layman, to buy the alliance of Louis XII. in order to conquer the Romagna with the help of French troops. With him he carried a dispensation from his father to enable Louis to marry the desirable Anne of Brittany and to divorce his present wife Jeanne of France. Louis XII., in return, gave to Cesare a French dukedom and a royal bride. " Le voil^ due de Valentinois," say the French historian, Miche- let, " avec une compagnie de cents lances Fran^aises, c'est-^-dire le drapeau de la Fra,nce, la terreur de nos lys, affich^s h cot^ des clefs pontificales. C'^tait le livrer I'ltalie." In May, 1499, Cesare married the beautiful Charlotte dAlbret, who lived with him for four months, loved him for ever, and never saw him again. Cesare, the most striking of the Borgias, is described as a very handsome young man, florid perhaps and vulgar, but "a gallant youth," according to Castiglione. Capello tells us that he had a splendid head, with long-shaped narrow eyes, from which a hard and serpentine glance seemed to shoot fire. His relations with his father were curious. Widely different in temperament, they shared only the thoroughness of Borgian self- seeking. Both Alexander and Cesare "did but will a thing and it was done " : both owed their successes to their clear knowledge of what they wanted, and their failures to the short cuts which they were obliged to take in getting there. A chronicler records the irritation of Cesare at the incurable outspokenness of his father, and in Florence a proverb was coined that " II Papa non facera mai quello che dicera, e il Valentino non dicera mai quello che facera ". Alexander was the child of the day, Cesare of the night, and with the ascendancy of the son over the father, from the year 1499, darkness lowers over the picture of Rome, and revelry gives place to terror. THE SECULAK PAPACY 295 Cesare's first exploit with his French army in Romagna was the capture of Imola and Forli from Caterina Sforza in January, 1500. The Pope's relations with Naples had been disturbed by the French alliance, but this did not cloud his joy when he re- ceived his triumphant son in Rome in the year of Jubilee. He laughed and cried at once, he led Cesare in procession with the captive Caterina in golden chains, he watched his hero kill six bulls in the Piazza, and diverted him with gorgeous spectacles and fabulous indecencies. The news of the capture of the Sforzas by the French increased the joy of the Borgias, for it opened new vistas of conquest for Cesare. Either as a stepping- stone for further exploits in which Lucrezia could be a useful decoy, or in gratification of a private vendetta, Cesare found it necessary to murder his young brother-in-law before he left Rome. Alexander hushed the afi'air up as far as he could, but Lucrezia had loved Alfonso and loudly lamented him. She was sent away to dry her tears or to drown them in new splendours, for a third and greater destiny awaited her. In 1500 the Kings of France and Spain formed a partition treaty for the division of Naples. Alexander went to Naples to confirm the treaty, and in his absence left Lucrezia as his regent, with a Council of Cardinals, in the Vatican. It was a clever stroke, for, in spite of the scandal involved, it gave Lucrezia a certain personal im- portance in afifairs which successfully overcame the pride of the House of Este. In 1501 Lucrezia married Alfonso d'Este, and her political importance ends at the age of twenty-two in her happy life at the ducal Court of Ferrara. The character of Lucrezia Borgia has emerged from four centuries of execration. In spite of the brilliant and lurid setting of her youth, she was probably merely a tool of Alexander and Cesare — a beautiful girl with the Borgian love of life and a taste for literature and art. She was not interested in the Borgian schemes, in which she played a passive part, and for politics she had no particular capacity or ambition. She took her morals from her environ- ment : her married life at Ferrara was above reproach, and her children were admirably brought up. Before she left Rome two children were provided for by Alexander, one Rodrigo, an ille- gitimate son of Lucrezia, and the other the mysterious " infans Romanus," who is mentioned in one document as the son of Cesare and in another as the son of the Pope. Here was more material for scandal, and the utmost was made of it. Cesare was busy waging war in the Romagna ; Rimini and Pesaro had been wrested from their lords : Faenza held out for six months in the name of its boy ruler, Astorre Manfredi ; but his body was 296 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY found one day in the Tiber. Cesare was Duke of Romagna, and a series of picturesque crimes had made him the hero- villain of Italy. As Lucrezia passed through the Romagna on her wedding journey she found it necessary, in passing through many cities, to wash her hair as an excuse for retirement. But the rule of Cesare Borgia was popular on the whole, and Machiavelli's ad- miration for him has considerable justification on that account. In Rome meanwhile the fear of the Borgias grew, and the death of the richest of the Cardinals excited further sinister suspicions. Poisonings were not as frequent under the Borgias as contemporaries are anxious to make us believe, but since in one case, that of Cardinal Michiel, the guilt of Alexander can be all but proved, it is not unreasonable to suspect him of repeat- ing the profitable expedient. Two further stains on Cesare's political reputation — the assassination of Giovanni da Fermo by his nephew in the name of Cesare, and a treacherous attack on Urbino — deepened the universal panic. " The dead of night covered all things," and the fatal luck of the Borgias never seemed to fail. But the end was not far off. The arrival of Louis XII. in Italy in 1502 was the signal which drew the enemies of Cesare together. He had grown suspicious of his captains, who com- plained of him to the French King. The duke had been alto- gether too active and successful in Romagna to please his former patron, and Louis was irritated by his attitude towards Florence. The presence of the French, therefore, put heart into the dis- contented condottieri and rallied the dispossessed lords of Romagna. Cesare's coup d'etat at Sinigaglia was the last of his great crimes. He lured the four chief condottieri to his camp, professing to have pardoned their temporary lapse from allegi- ance. Oliverotto and Vitellozzo were strangled on the spot, after dinner ; the two Orsini a few days later. Alexander meanwhile seized Cardinal Orsini, who died conveniently in prison, and laid hold of the family castles. Meanwhile, the partition treaty of Naples had broken down, and, to the intense relief of Alexander, the French were expelled from Naples. " If the Lord had not put discord between France and Spain, where should we be ? " was the remark of the Pope, who had seen himself between two fires. A network of new intrigues with France, with Maximilian, with Spain, and with Venice was spread across Europe for the further aggrandisement of the insatiable Cesare, when the ac- cident of death brought the Borgian fortunes to a collapse. One night in August, 1503, Alexander and Cesare were both taken ill after dining with Cardinal Adrian in the Borgo Nuovo. They THE SECULAR PAPACY 297 were all three struck with fever, and on August 18 the Pope died. Of course people said that he was poisoned with a potion which he had prepared for Cardinal Adrian, but the medical evidence disposes of the suspicion. Alexander had lived too abnormally to be accredited with an ordinary death, and yet it is impossible to feel that he really rises to the height of villainy at which posterity has placed him. He was too exuberant and ingenuous to live up to the Machiavellian ideal which was ful- filled in his son. He liked to be pleasantly unpleasant, and he trod lightly the path of treachery and evil. But if we exonerate him from the deepest guilt he must also forfeit the admiration which we cannot withhold from daring criminality. The modern estimate of Alexander paints him less black than formerly, but it ranks him lower in the scale of sinners. His crimes of sensu- ality lack the dignity of mental wickedness ; there is no glamour in indecency, and his Vatican orgies lack the inspired touch of splendid sin. Alexander's rule in Rome deteriorated as his pontificate wore on. " Never was Rome so full of criminals," says Cardinal iEgidius ; " never was the multitude of informers and robbers so audacious. People could neither leave the gates of the city, nor dwell within it. To own money or valuable property was equal to high treason. There was no protection either in house, sleeping-room, or tower. Justice was effaced. Money, power, and lust governed everything." And yet the author of all the trouble was Alexander of the "joyous nature". He was assiduous in his adoration of the Virgin, regular in his devotions, interested in sending missionaries to America, and the origina- tor, it is said, of the Angelus, that most poetic of Catholic practices. It was the extreme paradox of an age of contra- dictions, in which religion had grown apart from life, and the Chxirch was one with the world. All that the Borgias had built up in the ten years of Alexander's pontificate fell to pieces on his death. Cesare was ill and could not rally his forces. Pius III., the best candidate he could secure to the Papacy, lived only twenty-six days, and was succeeded by Giuliano della Rovere, Cesare's bitterest opponent. Julius II. (1503-1513) tried to keep on friendly terms with him, but he was determined to destroy his power in the Romagna. There was not room for two such men in Italy, and Cesare was imprisoned when he refused to give up his castles. On his release he was used as a condottiere, but soon imprisoned again. In Spain he escaped from a third captivity, and died bravely in battle on March 12, 1507. The value of Cesare 298 A SHOET HISTOBY OF THE PAPACY Borgia's career in history was that he defined and accentuated the tendencies of the age. Machiavelli used him as a foundation on which to build his ideal state, in which success is substituted for ethics. The mediaeval Papacy was the great symbol of the oneness of religion and power. In theory it stood for the spirit of world-wide love as opposed to the instinct of national hate. In becoming a secular kingdom the Papacy lost its symbolical significance, and in the story of the Borgias we see the result. CHAPTER XXV JULIUS n. AND LEO X. : THE PAPACY AMONG THE DYNASTIES, a.d. 1603-1521 JULIUS II. came to the throne with a fixed aim, and a mind in tune with it. He could therefore afford to "be the slave of every one " provided that he could achieve his end. In this spirit he made the alliance with France in 1504 against Venice. He must be lord of the Romagna at all costs. With Cesare Borgia out of the way, Venice was his chief danger. Louis XII., less clear-sighted, did not forsee that in helping to restore the Romagna to the Papacy he was creating the power which should destroy the schemes of France in Italy. The Pope's first negotiations against Venice ended in a clever peace, which enabled Julius to keep what he had won, and left the future conveniently insecure for his foes. The triumph was all the greater considering that France had already withdrawn her support, and absorbed herself in other diplomatic interests. Julius had too much to do to allow the peace of Italy to endure, and the next step in the making of his kingdom was an attack on the papal vicars of Perugia and Bologna. The two cities had long ago forgotten their ecclesiastical allegiance, and the ruling families regarded themselves as independent lords. The Baglioni of Perugia were tyrannical and unpopular; the Bentivogli of Bologna were autocratic but beloved. Both cities fell before the sudden attack of the Pope. Perugia was held without much difficulty, but Bologna was a perpetual trouble. For the moment, however, Julius had made himself feared, and with an eye still towards Venice, he took up the threads of diplomacy, and began to weave the ruin of the great sea power. The league of Cambria in 1508 was the result of the accumu- lated selfishness of the states of Europe, skilfully manipulated by the craft of Julius II. It was signed by representatives of France and of the Empire, but it included in its schedule of benefits the interests of the Pope, the King of Aragon, Hungary, Savoy, Ferrara and Mantua. Venice was called upon to meet the combined attack of all her enemies and rivals. At the 299 300 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY battle of Vaila she was defeated, and the humiliating terras imposed on her were devised to ruin her trade for ever. Julius followed up the victory of the league by an outrageous course of ecclesiastical bullying. He refused to remove the Interdict until a quarrel with Louis XII. and dissatisfaction with Maximilian forced him to do bo, and then only on terms of uttermost submission. The peace, which was not signed until February, 1510, gave very little satisfaction to either side: it was frankly a concession on both sides to necessity. Julius followed up the envoys' act of submission with apologetic remarks. The Doge left on record a formal protest against the terms, disavowing their binding character on the ground that he had acted "through violence and fear". The Pope described the document as a " dagger in the heart of the French King". It marks the end of the preliminary period and the beginning of the serious business of his reign. The territories which he had regained from Venice, added to those previously taken from Cesare and from the papal vicars, already formed the kernel of the strong middle kingdom which was to prevent for ever the formation of a French kingdom in Italy uniting Milan and Naples in one coherent whole. Un- fortunately for Julius, the "dagger" miscarried. He was not well served by his generals, or rather, he trusted in his own amazing energy to supply the defects of his commanders. He became a warrior, grew a soldier's beard, and cultivated the language of the camp. The fashionable military oaths of his day had always come to him readily, and the transformation was successful enough. The campaign against Ferrara opened hostilities with France. There were ecclesiastical claims on the province which afiforded a pretext, the real cause being the close alliance of its Duke with the King of France, which made it an act of open hostility against Louis XIL A further cause lay in Duke Alfonso's salt mines, which had unwisely competed with the papal mines at Cerria. The savage bull against Alfonso was the measure of the Pope's martial vigour. Julius owed every- thing to his impetuosity and nothing to his discretion. He had counted on the Swiss, but they had failed him at every point. His able Swiss agent. Cardinal Schinner, could not restrain them from accepting French bribes. Without their co-operation the Venetian fleet could not succeed in the attack which had been planned on Genoa. A fatal habit of using bad generals was still more disastrous to the fortunes of Julius. The Marquis of Mantua and the beloved Cardinal Alidosi were both suspected traitors : at Bologna, where Julius fixed his head-quarters, these JULIUS II. AND LEO X. 301 generals were said to be in communication with the French commander Chaumont. Only the vacillation of the French King saved the papal forces from utter disaster. Louis XII. allowed the moment for a vigorous counter-offensive to pass by. The Pope's rashness seemed to imply a reserve of power, and the French King failed to appreciate that willingness to take *' oflf-chances " which is so characteristic of Julius. The sudden arrival of Spanish and Venetian reinforcements for Julius saved him from capitulation, but the defections of his generals made a direct attack on Ferrara impossible. Accordingly, in the middle of winter, January, 1511, he took the field himself and laid siege to Mirandola, the strongly fortified outpost of Ferrara, which was held by the Amazon-daughter of Trivulzio, the French general. Julius submerged his ecclesiastical personality in the life of the camp. He put heart into the soldiers and became the " bon camarade " of the Venetian generals. He threatened the beleaguered town with awful penalties. When at last its brave defence was broken down, he entered it through a hole in the wall, and received the submission of the splendid duchess as one great soldier from another. He was a merciful conqueror, and he sent the dispossessed duchess away with an honourable escort, establishing in her place her nephew, who was among his own supporters. Successful as he had been, it was obviously impossible for Julius to remain at the head of his forces in person, and he had neither money, men, nor generals to carry on the campaign. But peace was equally impossible on the terms proposed by the Bishop of Gurk, the Imperial Minister, in the name of France and Maximilian. In the renewal of war which followed, Miran- dola was recaptured by the father of the duchess. The Benti- vogli were restored to Bologna with the utmost ease — the town had never submitted with grace to the Pope's rule, and the papal governor, Alidosi, had been both disloyal to his master and un- popular with the citizens. The murder of Alidosi by the Pope's nephew swamped the political misfortunes of Julius in private grief. Julius had loved Alidosi, knowing him to be untrue ; he vowed vengeance on the Duke of Urbino, who may have vainly hoped to play the part of Cesare in his uncle's court. Three days later, Julius received him back into favour, and owned that Alidosi was worthless, and his death a good riddance. Such revulsions of feeling seem to have been characteristic of him, as the familiar story of his relations with Michelangelo bears out. The psychical moment had arrived for the outbreak of 302 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY ecclesiastical opposition. Stifled by the noise of battle, the rumble of the reform movement had not been silent during the earlier years of the pontificate, and it now broke out under Cardinal Carrajal in the clamour for a council. The Council of Pisa which now opened had little chance of attracting much atten- tion in a Europe so entirely absorbed in dynastic moves and counter-moves. No age was less interested in religion than that which preceded the Reformation. The older reform movements had become discredited, and the classical Renaissance had won over its natural leaders, and by its indifference rather than its opposition to religion, culture had replaced dogma as the focus of intellectual interest. If the Council of Pisa was still-born, so was the outbreak of Roman democracy under Pompeo Colonna, which occurred in the summer of 1511, during a serious illness from which Julius II. unexpectedly recovered. The strong will of Julius could override obstacles which a more sensitive mind might have combated with less success. He simply had no time to attend to them, and consequently he made them seem unim- portant. For since he had left Bologna Julius had not paused in his designs on France. He was at work consolidating the opposition which crystallised in July, 1511, into the Holy League. Arrayed against France with the Pope were Spain, Venice, Eng- land, and the Empire. Louis on his side had the ecclesiastical opposition, but Henry VIII. had brought discredit on this party by ascribing its activities to the personal animosity of the rebel Cardinals. The French successes against Bologna, which had followed the Pope's victories, were largely due to the inactivity of the Spanish forces, who were under orders to do as little as possible. The battle of Ravenna in April, 1512, was a decisive victory for France, but the death of the three brilliant French generals rendered it abortive. Venice and Maximilian combined with the Swiss to drive out the French, and by August, 1512, the question of the disposal of Milan was brought before the Con- gress of Mantua. Each member of the League had its own views for the Lombard duchy, with the result that the weakest claim- ant was the most successful. The influence of the Swiss was responsible for the award of the duchy to Massimiliano Sforza, a weak prince, who was likely to be an inoffensive neighbour. He was also the candidate of the Pope, who preferred him to the other nominee, Charles, grandson of Maximilian and of Ferdinand, whose future importance was not likely to recommend him in the eyes of Julius. Julius had succeeded in ridding himself of French interven- JULIUS XL AND LEO X. 303 tion, but he had still to reckon with the Spaniards before he could feel secure in his predominance in Italy. He could not, however, quarrel with Spain until Florence had been shaken in the neutrality to which she clung with such irritating tenacity. The last round of the contest consisted, therefore, in an invasion of Tuscany by the Spaniards, headed by the two Medici, the overthrow of the Florentine constitution, and the restoration of Medici rule. Julius II. failed to recognise that he had fallen out of the frying-pan into the fire. Florence, neutral and even friendly to France, was less dangerous than Florence allied to Spain. The one good friend which the League had brought to Julius was Maximilian, but the picturesque Emperor was disqualified by his temperament from usefulness as an ally. Both Maxi- milian and Ferdinand opposed the Italian policy of Julius : the Emperor had his own claims on Ferrara. which the Pope disre- garded. Ferdinand was afraid of the growing power of Julius, and declared that " no power in Italy should help him to take Ferrara, and make of the Duke of Urbino a second Cesare Borgia ". On the last point he misjudged the Pope ; Julius had not the desire, nor his nephew the ability, to reproduce the relationship between Alexander VI. and his son. Julius used his nephew as a convenient instrument with which to carry out his schemes for the Papacy, and there was little trace of personal feeling in the relationship between the two. The nepotism of Julius sprang from his politics, and not from his passions. His con- temporaries, appreciating the impersonal ends for which he worked, and contrasting them with the baseness of Alexander's ambitions, thought the policy of Julius more noble than it really was. His achievement was slight, for he died before he had made it good, and his triumphs melted away before he had consolidated them. His death, in February, 1513, made a deep impression in Rome, which was shown by the unusual restraint of the mob. The sudden cessation of his marvellous energy stunned the men round him, and it seemed as if the world had stopped with him. What he had actually done for the Papacy was to give it a place among the dynasties, and save it through the stormy years to come by reviving its political importance. Of Julius, as of so many of his great contemporaries, it is true to say that the world owes more to the expression of his ideals in art than to the ideals themselves, so imperfectly carried out in his career. As the patron of Bramante and Michelangelo he could pour forth his splendid energy in the adornment of Rome, g.n(J leave a monument to himself greater and more 304 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY enduring than his conquests. He had struggled to make the Papacy felt in Europe, but his schemes fell to pieces with his death, while his mightiness lives on in the masterpieces which it undoubtedly inspired. In the conclave which met to appoint Julius' successor, the usual strife of parties was overruled by the general longing for rest and ease. The older Cardinals wanted a venerable man of peace, while the younger ones looked for a young and magnifi- cent person, free from martial ambition, and unlikely to trouble the college with strenuous political activities. In the election of Giovanni de' Medici at the age of thirty-eight, the counsel of the younger men prevailed. Young, tolerant, and splendid, Leo X. expressed in his personality the fulfilment of Renaissance aspiration. He had had a long training in the particular kind of knowledge of the world which made a successful ecclesiastical prince. He had natural qualities of mind and temperament which ensured the sympathy of his contemporaries. He further inherited the Medici tradition of cultured magnificence, which impressed the world around him and created an atmosphere of easy well-being which delighted his fellow- Cardinals with its promise of a future of golden leisure. The " wise " son of Lorenzo the Magnificent was a many-sided person, and the court which surrounded him as Pope was brilliant and heterogeneous. He combined a scholar's passion for antiquity with the genial- ity and love of life which made him an excellent boon companion. It would be difficult to say which he loved best, a day's hunting or a learned discussion. He seemed to be equally capable of appreciating the coarse buff"ooneries of Fra Mariano and the delicate beauty of Raphael's inspiration. The religious nature of his office hardly seems to have dawned on the " Athenian " Pope. His attitude towards Christianity, like that of the men about him, was chiefly negative : Christ seemed so much less important than Plato, and the Gospel narrative supplemented the legends of Greece as a quarry for the material of artistry. We have to look, for the importance of Leo's pontificate, at the personal aspect rather than the political forces at work. It is in the character of his court, the efl'ect of his aesthetic and his social influence, above all, in his family projects, that Leo X. leaves his mark on papal history. His political ambitions, as compared with those of Julius, were subordinate ; they were most successful when they were least explicit. He was better at juggling with other men's schemes than at constructing policies of his own. The advancement of the Medici was the one constant factor in his diplomacy, and for this he was pre- JULIUS 11. AND LEO X. 305 pared to forego the larger game which Julius had played among the powers and to play oflF the invaders of Italy against each other so that Florence should share the spoils of the stronger or receive the bribes of the weaker combatant. It soon became clear that the Papacy was to be run on Medicean principles. " Let us enjoy the Papacy, since God has given it to us," are the words which Leo is reported to have said to his brother Giuliano, soon after his election. At his corona- tion, in April, 1513, splendour, adulation, and culture were combined to announce that the glories of Florence had come to crown the magnificence of Rome. A triumphal arch bore the inscription : " Once Venus reigned, then Mars, now comes the reign of Pallas ". " I, Venus, will always reign," was the im- proved version placed by a goldsmith on a statue of Venus in the next street. But the reign of Pallas was at first particularly obvious. Leo was called upon at once to face the political situation, and he did bo resolutely in the interests of peace. He joined the renewed Holy League against France, because France at that moment was planning an invasion of North Italy. But when, after her defeat at the battle of Novara, France ceased to be the aggressor, Leo showed plainly that he had no desire to crush her, since she could be useful to him as a foil to Spain. Before Julius died, he had opened the Lateran Council in response to the feeling which had produced the rebel Council of Lyons. The sixth session of the Council was in full swing in the first months of Leo's reign, and he made use of it now as a means of reconciliation with France. The opposition Council of Lyons was prepared to give in, and the Cardinals Carrajal and Sanseverno who had supported it were as ready to submit to their old comrade as he was to accept their submission. Their forgiveness was half-way to the pacification. The submission of Louis XII. sealed Leo's efforts as a peace-maker : it did not add to his reputation as Head of Christendom, and neither on the whole did the further proceedings of the Council. For Leo had pardoned Louis on the dangerous ground that his quarrel with Julius was a personal one. Once admitted that the Pope could quarrel as man to man with a prince who set his authority at defiance, the fabric of the spiritual supremacy was under- mined. It would not be long before the ingenuous admission of Leo would be turned against the Papacy, and it would be possible for the other side to insist that ecclesiastical duels should be fought on secular ground alone. In other directions Leo showed a dangerous laxity in enforcing his prerogative. Free discussion of the immortality of the soul was a fashion in 20 306 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY intellectual; circles'm Leo's day, and the Pope's denunciation of this ecclesiastical danger was so mild that it seemed to show too plainly his sympathy with the offenders. His Reform Edict was useless by reason of the same defect. Such efforts were not in keeping with the character of Leo. He was a man of the world, and he had cultivated the gentle cynicism which he in- herited from his father. Too worldly to condemn worldiness and too discreet to condone it, he soothed the reformers with half- measures and chid the offenders with a smile. Having settled the affairs of France, Leo inaugurated his family policy by creating two young Cardinals in the Borgian manner, for family reasons alone. Giulio de' Medici was the illegitimate son of Giuliano, brother of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Leo took great pains to establish his legitimacy by a legal fiction, for, unlike Alexander VI., he was always careful to keep on the right side of prejudice in such matters. Nobody believed in Giulio's legitimacy, but, in some way, it shocked public opinion less when it was screened by a lie than when it was openly declared. Giulio was able and unscrupulous, and he served his cousin well in the political field ; his good looks and distinguished bearing made him an ornamental figure which Raphael loved to perpetuate. The other young Cardinal, Inno- cenzo Cybo, was Leo's nephew, and some scandal attended his creation by reason of his youth, for he was only twenty-one, and his appointment was a flagrant assertion of Leo's family policy. In the same year, Giuliano de' Medici — rightly described by Lorenzo as his " good " son, in contradistinction to the " wise " Giovanni and the "foolish" Piero — was brought to Rome with great honour, created a Roman baron, and established in great splendour at the Pope's right hand. The reason for this move was that Leo saw in his brother's honesty an obstacle to his own schemes for Florence. Giuliano would be an admirable figure- head for the Medici House, but the young Lorenzo, son of Piero, was a more promising instrument for the government by corrup- tion and craft which was the basis of Medici power in Florence. Giuliano, meanwhile, was useful in his way, as Cesare had been to Alexander, as an eligible bachelor whose hand could be bought by a promise of friendship to the Pope, supported by a substantial dowry. After various negotiations, Giuliano was married to Filiberta of Savoy, was made Duke of Nemours, and, for a moment, he became the link which held the Papacy in alliance with France. But before the death of Giuliano in 1516, the link had already failed to hold. One of the articles of Leo's political faith was that " when JULIUS II. AND LEO X. 307 you have made a league with any prince, you ought not, on that account, to cease from treating with his adversary ". As soon as Louis XII. had submitted to the Papacy, the Holy League began to break up, and Leo put his precept into practice by negotiating with each separate State, and entering into secret understandings with France, the Swiss, Ferdinand, and Venice. In 1515 events began to move, when Francis I. and Charles V. came on the scene in France and Spain respectively. Francis was at that time the more dangerous of the two, and Leo accordingly made the alliance which Giuliano's marriage was to seal. But the young King of France was not prepared to conquer Naples for his Medici uncle-in-law, and, the marriage notwithstanding, Leo arranged a league against France, pivoting on England, in consequence of which the English minister, Wolsey, became a Cardinal. In August, 1515, the great battle of Marignano re- vealed to Italy the might of the new chivalry of France under the influence of the chevalier-king. Leo's skill and lack of scruple was never better shown than in the peace which he made at Bologna with Francis in the following December. With Florence ever uppermost in his mind, he undertook to restore his Ferrarese conquests to Francis in return for leave to seize the lands of the Duke of Urbino. For this wanton plan of aggression Leo could plead a certain measure of right : he taxed the Duke with the murder of Alidosi, and made the most of his past animosity to the Medici. But the dying Giuliano rightly condemned the project as a crime, and in vain begged his brother to refrain. Giuliano died before the conquest of Urbino was carried out, but he must have known his brother too well to hope that his pleading would avail. Leo succeeded in taking his duchy from Francesco della Rovere, and the exploit did him no credit. In the enterprise of Maximilian against Milan, undertaken in the same year, he showed still further his skill in "playing marvellously with both hands" (Letter to Wolsey). He sent Cardinal Dorizzi as a mediator between Maximilian and Francis, giving him secret instructions to act in the interests of France, since the Austro-Spanish House was more dangerous to Medici prospects than the French King. He counted, at the same time, that " it seemed good to him to proceed by temporis- ing and dissembling like the rest". It would be unprofitable to follow too closely the shifting grounds of Leo's diplomacy. In the great game, of which Machiavelli had laid down the rules, he played an inconspicu- ous and inglorious part. In response to the alliance between Francis and Charles, he intrigued with Maximilian and Henry 308 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY of England for the defence of the Church, and signed the peace of Noyon. The instability of Maximilian — always a factor to be reckoned with by his friends and foes alike — led to the. loss of Urbino after eight months' warfare in 1517. Meanwhile, pre- occupations of a more engrossing nature held Leo's attention in Rome. The historian Michelet describes Leo as "unrieur, un farceur," and perhaps, after all, the comedy element pervaded his reign more persistently than any other. It is impossible to discover how far Leo was serious in dealing with the so-called "conspiracy" of the Cardinals in 1517. The situation itself seems to have been half a farce and half a tragedy, in which the actors are alternately burlesque and sinister, moving us to horror, pity, and ridicule as the grim joke unfolds. The growing influence of Giulio de' Medici, the failure of the enterprise against Urbino, and an increasing political activity at the papal court had made Leo unpopular with a group of Cardinals, of whom old Rafaello Riario was the leading spirit. A private quarrel between Leo and the boy-Cardinal of Siena, in which the old hostility of Florence against the neighbour city is traceable, led to some rash words. An absurd plot to poison the Pope, by means of bandages to be applied to the Pope's sore place by an assassin-doctor, was revealed, and the Cardinals Petrucci and Sauli were imprisoned. The Pope acted up to the crisis, the gates of the Vatican were barred, and a Consistory was called at which two other Cardinals who were said to be implicated were driven by terror to confession. The most sensational arrest was that of Rafaello Riario, for rumour declared that Leo was at last about to avenge himself on the nephew of Sixtus IV. for the part which he had played in the Pazzi conspiracy. But Leo contented himself with extorting vast sums of money from Cardinals Riario, Soderini, Sauli, and Hadrian di Costello. The Medici vengeance was reserved for young Petrucci and his accomplices. Alfonso Petrucci was strangled in prison because he had no powerful friends to intercede for him. The doctor and the secretary who had engineered the plot were dragged through the streets on hurdles, torn with hot pincers, and gibbeted on the bridge of St. Angelo. Paris de Grassis, the Master of the Ceremonies, who understood Leo better than any- one, maintained that the affair had not really perturbed the Pope. He had made a great deal of money out of it, he had struck terror into the College — a peculiar pleasure for an easy- going man — and he had paved the way for the creation of thirty- one new Cardinals. This last stroke would have provoked criticism if anyone had dared to criticise at such a moment. It JULIUS II. AND LEO X. 309 beat the record of previous creations, it gave immense power and security to the Medici House, and it brought money and new services to Leo. This new instrument of power helped Leo's family projects. Reinforced by a new and complacent Curia, he sent the young ruler of Florence to France to obtain a royal bride. The stu- pendous presents which Lorenzo took with him from Leo im- pressed even the magnificent Francis, and the marriage treaty was soon arranged. Poor little Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne — " trop plus belle pour le mari^ " — was the victim chosen to be the wife of the diseased and dissolute young Medici. The marriage was both a tragedy and a failure. Madeleine died in a year, after giving birth to the little " Duchessina," who was one day to be Queen of France. Lorenzo died soon after her, and with him Leo's hopes for the Medici. Giuho alone remained, and two little bastards of doubtful parentage — Ippolito and Alessandro. The ill-fated little Caterina brought " all the catas- trophes of Hellas " to the mind of Leo when she came into his presence. Henceforth Leo ceased to scheme for his family, and the crafty mind of Giulio directed his policy. The Pope turned to his hunting and his buflfoonery for distraction, and for consolation to his artists and men of letters. The foreign policy in these last days of Leo was more tortuous than ever. On the death of Maximilian in 1519, Charles, King of Spain and ruler of the Netherlands, inherited the Empire. For two years the Medici Pope vacillated between Francis and Charles, and finally settled into an alliance with Charles in 1521. Charles undertook to restore Parma and Piacenza, now in the hands of France, and Leo's sole desire beyond this was to maintain his hold on Urbino and Modena. The maintenance of the States of the Church had supplanted his family schemes, and beyond this, to his credit it must be said, he was anxious to free Italy from her invaders by playing off France against the Empire. The fortunate Pope may be said to have died of joy. News was brought to him at his villa of the complete defeat of the French, the seizure of Milan by Charles's general, and the fulfilment of the undertaking about Parma and Piacenza. Leo had been out hunting, and the excitement of the news following on the day's labours caused a bad chill. Incompetent doctors did the rest, and in a week Leo died, in his forty-sixth year, a comparatively happy man in spite of the catastrophe which had overtaken the House of Lorenzo. On the whole Leo had succeeded in "enjoying" the Papacy. He had surrounded himself with the poets and artists whom he 310 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY delighted to honour; he had lived a spacious and genial life, giving and taking all that good fellowship could offer and more than the Papacy could afford. He had the faculty of ignoring the things which should have disturbed his peace, and he chose to regard the warnings which reached him of the religious un- rest in Europe as a little disturbance beyond the Alps which would subside if it was not unduly noticed. It is significant that Leo disappointed those whom he might have satisfied. He was "a prince," said a contemporary, "who greatly deceived the high expectations entertained of him when he was raised to the Papacy, since he therein displayed more cunning and less good- ness than the world had imagined of him ". In other words, they had not reckoned on his family ambition. Goodness in the ordinary sense was hardly expected of a Renaissance Pope, and the description does not imply any reflection on his morals. All the charges of viciousness brought against Leo break down upon inquiry, and if he failed to condemn these things in his court, it cannot be said that his personal life set a bad example. Most probably he looked on morals with the same indulgent cynicism that he adopted towards life in general. In religion, too, he tolerated any degree of atheism in the men about him, while he was personally punctilious in his performance of his religious duties, and his love of beautiful ceremonial was well known. Leaders of Protestantism have labelled Leo the " Pagan Pope " and the " Papal Maecenas ". More is read into their con- demnation than the facts admit. It is true that he dined with courtesans and consorted with atheists, but these things do not necessarily imply anything worse than excessive tolerance. And yet the verdict against Leo is a just one, for his failure to con- demn was treachery to the great principle which the Papacy held in trust for the world. His way of life, although it was not vicious, was often unedifying, and his standards, if they were not as low as those of Alexander VI. or as perverted as those of Julius II., were more utterly frivolous. The supreme example of a great dilettante, he could rise at times to heights of genuine patriotism, but Italy, in common with other noble ideals, "divided his attention with manuscripts and sauces, painters and falcons" (Macaulay). CHAPTER XXVI THE REFORMATION, a.d. 1517-1650 THE soul of the Papacy woke slowly from the magic sleep of the Renaissance to the waking reality of the Reformation. The reform movement never seemed more utterly dead than in the year 1517, which brought the Lateran Council of Leo to its inglorious end. And yet, in the same year Luther fixed his ninety-five theses against indulgences to the door of the Church of Wittenberg. Leo took the affair lightly, and in spite of warnings from Maximilian and from others who saw further than he, persisted in looking on it as a "monk's quarrel". Even when he felt obliged to summon Luther to Rome on a charge of heresy, he was not seriously troubled. He sent Cardinal Cajetan to extort Luther's sub- mission without in the least appreciating the issues — or the man. Cajetan was a good theologian, but he approached the situation from the ^vrong point of view. He came in the might of the Catholic faith to crush an heretical monk, and when Luther asked for discussion, his Italian mind accused him of wanting a tournament. The situation was significant, and so were the steps which led Luther into open revolt against the Papacy. Luther's career belongs to the history of Protestantism, but the principles bound up with it and the forces which it set in motion produced the greatest crisis which ever faced the Papacy. Since the time of Marsiglio of Padua political theory had not played a practical part in the making of papal history. In the fourteenth century, Louis of Bavaria happened to find in Marsiglio the philosophy which he wanted to give a creed to his party. In Luther the same views, differently stated, happened to be allied to unusual qualities of character in the career of a political reformer. Between Marsiglio and Luther lay the conciliar movement, which had failed because it had identified itself with a political system which was not strong enough to assert itself against the restored Papacy, on the one hand, and the growing monarchies on the other. The federal idea, to which the Councils anchored themselves, had no chance against the 3U 312 A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY personal monarchies of the fifteenth century. The power of Martin V. had overruled the decree Frequens, and his successors had held their own against the conciliar menace from various motives and in diflFerent ways. Even Eugenius IV. had managed to defeat the Council of Basle, by the spurious prestige which he acquired by the so-called union of East and West. But the spirit which made the Councils dangerous had never died. It was carried across the Alps to sterner climates, where it gained a wider freedom. Signs of its life appear in the fear which haunted Alexander VI., in the courage of Erasmus and Reuchlin, and in the simple fervour which inspired the German renaiss- ance. In a sense, Luther owed little to the Councils. He was first and last an individualist, having little in common with the federal democracy which was the conciliar ideal. His associa- tion with the territorial party, as against the peasants, on the one hand, and the Emperor on the other, was the result of political necessity combined with his inherent respect for law and order. Circumstances drove him into politics, and at the Diet of Worms, in 1521, the individual drama becomes merged in the European crisis. Luther, the excommunicated monk, passionately sincere, heart-broken, and still Catholic in spirit, is confronted with the young Emperor Charles, anxious to stand well with the Pope, but equally anxious to safeguard his own honour. Behind Luther stands the party which has adopted him, headed by Hutten and Sickingen, ready to go to all lengths of rebellion, and to drive their leader to the logical conclusion of his temerity. The moderate party, which centred round the neutrality of the Elector Frederick, plays the part which moderation is apt to play in the heat of conflict. The Edict of Worms confirmed the Bull of Excommunication, and Leo, on his death-bed, was not seriously disturbed by the state of things which he left in Germany. The successor of Leo was a Professor of Louvain who had been the tutor of Charles in his Netherland days. Adrian VI. was a complete contrast to his predecessor, and much might have been hoped from his election if he could have been given a free hand. But from the time of his arrival in Rome in 1522 until his death in the following year, disillusion and unpopularity followed everything which he did. He was an ardent reformer of the conservative and academic type, but the practical opposition which he met with was too much for him, and his schemes melted away in the fervid atmosphere of M^dicean intrigue which stifled him in Rom^. THE KEFOEMATION 313 The attitude of the papal legate at the Diet of Niirnberg was typical of Adrian's ideas. Luther had reappeared, after a short retirement, and was preaching at Wittenberg in defiance of the Bull and the Edict. Adrian demanded that the Diet should enforce the Edict. The legate spoke in a conciliatory manner of the services which Luther had rendered in pointing out the need for reform. Luther, he said, was right in condemning the corruption of the Church, but wrong in his theology : therefore Luther must be put down before the reforms could be set in motion. The refusal of the Diet to carry out the Edict of Worms proves the strength of the hold which Luther's views had gained in the last few months. Adrian could not take any further steps because Charles was too strong to oppose, and Charles had demanded the non-interference of the Pope in German afi'airs as the price of his support. The fall of Rhodes, which the Turks had captured, gave Adrian special need of Charles's help. Troubles with Francis, who was threatening the conquest of Milan, were a further cause for anxiety. Adrian's last failure was the sacrifice of his neutrality in the great Hapsburg-Valois duel which was looming over Europe. His alliance with Charles and Henry VIII. was the final proof that politics had over- whelmed his religious aspirations. Adrian's death was tragic in its loneliness. He had not made a single friend in Rome. The Cardinals of the Medicean court despised his unworldliness and took advantage of it. The old Flemish woman and the two Spanish pages who formed his household were a cause of ridicule. He was a foreigner and an outsider, and he does not seem to have tried to be otherwise. Life as he found it in Rome must have been uncongenial in the extreme to his simple and severe nature. But there is greater pathos in the ruin of his aspirations. No Pope held loftier ideals than Adrian VI., but none probably achieved less. The fault was partly in his own will, which was firm to a point, and apt to give way at the wrong moment; but the chief cause of his failure was the unequal strife between the forces of religion and politics which rocked the Papacy in the early days of the Reformation. The return of the Medicean Papacy in the election of Clement VIL (Giulio de' Medici) delighted the Romans, who welcomed the prospect of " a flourishing court and a brave pontificate ". There was little doubt which of the two forces would dominate the new reign ; the only question which remained doubtful was as to which side Clement would take in the Hapsburg-Valois struggle. The situation depended a good deal on the see-saw of 314 A SHOET HISTOEY OP THE PAPACY influences exerted over him by Giberti and Schomberg, the am- bassadors of the rival courts. He found the Papacy allied with Charles, and at first it was convenient to let this alliance hold. Cardinal Campeggio attended the Diet of Nui'nberg in' 1524, and gained, with the support of Charles and his brother, Ferdinand, a promise that the Edict against Luther should be enforced " as well as they were able, and as far as possible ". This rather un- satisfactory undertaking was the utmost that Campeggio could ob- tain : it was clear that the struggle was no longer against Luther but against Lutheranism, which was not to be trifled with. The proposal of the General Council to be held in Germany, and to be preceded by a preliminary Diet at Speyer, was a cause of acute anxiety to Clement. The character of Giulio de' Medici, the bar sinister which branded his name, the relation- ship which he all but acknowledged to the boy, Alessandro, titular Duke of Florence, and the well-known indiscretions of his youth, were each a suflQcient reason for his reluctance to face the moral inquisition of a Council. But there seemed to be no way out, short of immense loss of allegiance in Germany. The reforms brought forward by Campeggio, in the hope of holding the moderate party, were insufficient and merely irritating. They aimed at the suppression of heresy rather than the con- cession of papal prerogatives and the enforcement of higher moral standards. The boycotting of the University of Witten- berg was a tactless blow at the territorial dignity of the Elector. But Campeggio's reforms, inadequate as they were, mark the beginning of the conservative reformation, in which lay the best hope of the Catholic Church. The alliance with Charles had served its purpose, and Clem- ent's mind turned back to the Medicean schemes of neutrality favourable to the interests of Florence. He began to detach himself from Charles, entered into secret understandings with Francis, and allowed the Medici captain, John of the Black Bands, to take a French command. But the battle of Pavia, in 1525, brought the unexpected defeat and capture of Francis, and the downfall of Clement's hopes. Charles never trusted Clement again, but he came to an understanding with him, and contemptuously acceded to the Pope's "bargaining for small gains". At this moment Clement might have put himself at the head of an Italian league, and reclaimed Italy from the ravages of the rival powers. But he had no desire to be a national Pope. Schomberg pointed out to him that Florence had more to fear from the Italian States than from external power, ^nd the reflection took root in his mind. In January, 1526, THE REFOKMATION 815 he gave his support to the Treaty of Madrid, which gave Francis his freedom, on the understanding that the French King would not keep faith with Charles. Four months later the League of Cognac was made between Clement, Francis, Venice, and Milan for the defence of Italy against the Emperor. The Imperial Minister, Moncada, did his best to break up the League, but the Pope stood unwontedly firm, and Charles prepared his armies. From the beginning the League of Cognac was unfortunate, and the course of events showed it to be clumsily put together and badly engineered. Its general, the Duke of Urbino, was hostile to the Pope. France and England soon made it clear that they meant to be sleeping partners. Cardinal Colonna, whose influence had secured Clement's election, was a strong Imperialist, and, therefore, a declared antagonist. Clement heard with terror of his growing friendship with Moncada, the Imperial Minister, and the news of the strong Neapolitan- Colonna force which was being raised led to a momentary truce. The news of the battle of Mohacs, which overthrew the kingdom of Hungary, and brought the Turks to the Danube, startled Clement into a display of public spirit, and led him to open negotiations for the reunion of Christendom. Moncada's raid on Rome with the Colonna forces interrupted all larger en- deavours, and opened the eyes of the Pope to the unpopularity of his civic rule. For the Romans failed to rise in his defence, and left him to " settle his own quarrel ". His first idea was to receive the rebels, like Boniface VIII., in full pontificals, but a misgiving, perhaps, as to his fitness for the part led to his flight at the last moment to St. Angelo. The Spanish soldiers who were with the Colonnesi plundered the Vatican '• like Turks despoiling the churches of Hungary," and brought Clement to terms with Moncada. He agreed to forgive Cardinal Colonna and his family, and for a month he kept his word. But as soon as he had had time to collect a suflicient force to retaliate, a barbarous vendetta expedition destroyed the Colonna castles and the villages which they sheltered. After this prelude, events moved quickly. Screened by diplomatic negotiations, Charles poured his armies into Italy. The Spaniards, under Bourbon, had already garrisoned Milan : another force of 10,000 landed at Gaeta under Lannoy, Frunds- berg was crossing the Alps with 12,000 Lanzknechts, on fire with Lutheran fanaticism. The Duke of Urbino tried to attack Bour- bon and Frundsberg at once, and failed in both directions. John of the Black Bands was killed in a skirmish, thus depriving the League of its most brilliant leader. Alfonso of Ferrara broke 316 A SHOKT HISTOKY OP THE PAPACY with Clement owing to his fatal habit of bargaining at a crisis, and led out his forces in the name of Charles. In his panic Clement showed himself at his worst. The Imperial deluge swept from the north towards Florence. All the Medici in Clement prompted him to save the city of his House at all costs — even at the expense of Rome. The truce which he patched up with Lannoy was madness, for it merely revealed his weak- ness when it was too late to stem the tide. But the concentra- tion of Urbino's army before Florence saved the city. The news of the Pope's truce fired a trail in the Imperial army. Starving and ill-paid, it was already on the brink of mutiny ; and, powerless to hold it, Bourbon decided to give it rein, Clement watched the crisis approach with characteristic help- lessness. The French General, Renzo da Ceri, tried to organise the army of resistance, and did so to some effect. He counted on the demoralisation of the invading force and the strength of his artillery. The storm broke against the walls of Rome, was beaten back, approached again, and gained a hold. A fog helped the attack, and foiled the Roman artillery. Bourbon's death inspired a supreme effort, and the city was gained. Meanwhile, Clement on his knees in his chapel was doing the right thing at the wrong time as usual. He had thought of going out to rally his soldiers, of cheering the civilians ; before that he had thought of bribing the invaders ; when the time for this had passed by, he did violence to his conscience by selling five cardinalates for a perfectly useless sum of money. At last he made for St. Angelo, too late for safety or for dignity, sheltered under the violet cloak of an episcopal friend. The surrender of the city on the next day was only the beginning of the calamity which was still to come. The sack of Rome, which followed during three days, is one of the nightmares of history. Of the three armies which took part in it, " each nationality among the soldiers contributed its worst qualities to the utter depravation of the rest ". German profanity, Spanish cruelty, and Italian guile combined in villainy which has never been exceeded. After three days they grew tired of violating women and muti- lating priests, and drunken brawls and riots drowned the cries of tortured treasure-storers. For a month Clement held out in St. Angelo, hoping every day to be relieved by the Duke of Urbino. When at last sup- plies began to give out, he signed the capitulation. He remained in the castle, virtually the Emperor's prisoner, until December, when he contrived to escape to Orvieto. The situation had not been without its difficulties for Charles. There was the question THE REFORMATION 317 of how he was to deal with his great prize, and plenty of advice was offered on all sides. Some suggested the reduction of the Papacy to a pui-ely spiritual office, others its removal from Rome. Gattinara's counsel opposed these suggestions, fearing the designs of France and England. " It would be best," in his opinion, " to keep the Apostolic Seat so low that your Majesty can always dispose of it and command it. . . . The Pope and Cardinals have asked me to inform your Majesty on this point, as they think your Majesty does not want the Apostolic Seat to be enthely ruined," Charles's comment on the news of the surrender of Rome is more cautious and characteristic of him. " I do not know what you may have done with the Pope," he writes to Bourbon, not knowing of his death, " but what I desire is a good peace." At Orvieto, Clement was more uncomfortable, if anything, than in the castle of St. Angelo. Two English bishops, Gardiner and Foxe, visited him there to demand the dissolution of Henry's marriage from Catherine of Aragon. They describe the cheerless poverty and cold of Clement's apartments, and the wretchedness of his suite, adding that " it were better to be in captivity in Rome than here at liberty ". In the circumstances it was impossible for Clement to do what Henry wanted. Catherine was the aunt of his vanquisher, with whom he had yet to make terms. But he contrived to satisfy the English King with a vague promise of future concession. Meanwhile, the attempts of Francis on Lombardy brought Charles, in 1529, to the treaty of Barcelona, and an alliance, at the expense of Florence, was made between the Emperor and the Pope. Charles had decided that the Pope could be more useful to him if he were not too deeply humiliated in the eyes of Europe. Florence had revolted against the Medici, and her liberties were to be overthrown in order that Clement should aggrandise his worthless son. The siege and smrrender of Flor- ence in 1530, hastened by the treachery of her general, was an act of reparation on the part of Charles, whose attitude to the Pope had changed since 1527. This change was the result of the interplay of German and Italian affairs. In Germany, the Peasants' Revolt in 1525 had changed the position of Luther, and made him more dangerous than ever. For it had driven him definitely on to the side of law and order, and identified his party with the territorial princes and lesser nobles, who were infinitely more dangerous to the Imperium than the helpless rabble of Mlinzer's following. To this period belongs the growth of Lutheran liberties, expressed in the Recess 318 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY of Speyer, which was the result of the influence of the Lutheran princes and the weakness of the Catholic party. To it also belongs " Ein feste Burg ist enser Gott," the Marseillaise of the Reformation, as Heine calls it. All the splendour of spiritual revolt found expression in Luther's hymns. Protestant exalta- tion had become articulate ; its appeal to the imagination could be set against the poetry of Catholicism. In the events which led up to the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, Luther's philo- sophical position became clear. Dissociated from the "robbing, murdering peasants " on the one hand, and the Empire and Papacy on the other, Luther is the founder of a new spiritual kingdom. We have already noticed the essential one-ness of the mediaeval theory of the world. The Pope and the Emperor are two lights in the one firmament, two officials of the one Civitas Dei. They strive together, not as rival systems, but as rival exponents of one system. The reason why Luther is not the successor of the mediaeval opponents of the Papacy is that his attacks are directed against the system itself. He pulls down the firmament, with the two lights and all the stars, and sets another in its place. The new " Civitas Dei " is not like the old, ecclesiastical and traditional ; it is essentially secular, and yet equally essentially religious. " The sanctity of lay power is Luther's innovation " (Figgis), and his insistence on this principle is the cause of his aloofness from the peasants. The result of Luther's political creed travelled far in the region of political theory. We find it in Hooker and the theory of Divine Right, in the State religion of Louis XIV., and in the national Churches of modern States. Luther's insistence on the rights of the territorial prince, which found its political expression at last in the principle of " Cujus regio ejus religio," was the death-blow of the federal system which the Councils had adopted ; it left no room for extra-territorial rights, and the results are seen at the Council of Trent in the repudiation by the Pope himself of the idea of voting by nations. We have left on one side the doctrinal revolution which was the soul of the Protestant movement, because the political aspect of the Reformation alone concerns a short history of the Papacy. But it must be remembered that the opposing theories of justification and the rival streams that flowed from them have a deeper influence than the political forces to which they were allied. One of the efl'ects of the Reformation is the separation of the spheres of history and religion. In 1530, Charles was crowned at Bologna by the Pope, who was still to all intents and purposes his captive of war. In THE REFORMATION 319 return for the discomforts of his position, Clement regained Florence for his family, and soothed his pride by the marriage of the unlovable Alessandro with Margaret, the Emperor's illegitimate daughter. Two years later, a second meeting of Charles and Clement at Bologna saw a modification of the situation. Charles was anxious to hurry on the proposed Council in Germany, which Clement was equally anxious to delay. Clement meanwhile had made overtures to France, and a marriage was proposed between the little " Duchessina " and the second son of Francis. Charles did not believe in the likelihood of this marriage or he would have taken definite steps to prevent it, for Francis was on good terms with the Protestants, and the co-operation of the Pope in Germany was essential to the suppression of the Lutheran princes. But in spite of the Valois pride on which Charles had counted, Caterina de' Medici made the first real royal marriage of her house. There was great rejoicing at the magnificent wedding solemnised by the Pope at Marseilles, and the sumptuous presents of the Medici once more astonished the court of France. Only the unhappy Caterina remained a pathetic little figure, and looked out on the splendid scene with dark eyes of tragedy. It was said that she left her heart in Italy with the " comely and courteous" Ippolito, her cousin, whose popularity in Florence had stood in the light of Alessandro, and who was driven in spite of tears and prayers to adopt a clerical profession for which he was entirely unsuited. The familiar quarrel with Henry of England was the final disaster of Clement's reign. Since the time when Henry's ministers came as suppliants to Orvieto, the attitude of the King had changed. It became clear that Charles was master of the situation, and that he would not tolerate the divorce. In summoning the case to Rome, Clement was merely declaring his real intention not to give his consent. The series of strata- gems by which Henry tried to circumvent the Pope's opposition are well known. The inaction of Clement, his refusal to give way or to strike effectively for Catharine, irritated Henry, and, at the same time, made it possible for him to defy the Pope in practice without committing himself to rebellious language. Perpetual remonstrances arrived in England, urging Henry to give up living with Anne Boleyn and to take back Catharine. Francis supported Henry in refusing to go to Rome. Temporising on both sides enabled Henry to undermine the papal authority in England before the arrival of the Bull of Excommunication. The fall of Wolsey and the rise of Thomas Cromwell had marked 320 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY a change in Henry's policy which led step by step to the alienation of English obedience. It was a personal quarrel between two politicians : no doctrinal questions were involved, and Henry was as Catholic in mind after the breach as before it It was true that he borrowed the courage to defy prejudice and tradition from the Protestants, and occasionally it became necessary, as at the time of the passing of the Ten Articles, to make common cause with his fellow-rebels in Germany. But he did so reluctantly, and soon retracted whatever doctrinal concessions he had been persuaded to make. In the autumn of 1534, Clement VII. closed his inglorious career. "The very sport of misfortune," it is almost impossible to pity him, for he brought his troubles on himself by his particularly unattractive faults. Even his family had disappointed him. The quarrels of Alessandro and Ippolito, who had been rivals from their birth, had caused him great annoyance, and if Alessandro was indeed his son, as is supposed, he cannot have been proud of him. Stories of his brutality and unpopularity saddened the last year of Clement's life, and must have made him feel that he had lived in vain. The election of Alessandro Farnese (1534) seemed to recall for the Cardinals the good days of the Renaissance, and they welcomed him as a man of genial culture, who bore about him signs of his education at Lorenzo's court, and promised to restore the classical tradition of Rome. His first act as Paul III. indicated higher aspirations. He appointed six Cardinals, some of whom were entirely unknown to him, for their virtue and distinction alone. All these six men belonged to a party which had grown up in Italy and from which the Papacy had much to hope. The Reformation, in its wider aspect, was not a purely German movement. In Italy there were many who sympathised with the doctrines of Luther, and who longed for the purification of religion. The " Oratory of Divine Love," founded in Rome in the days of Leo X., became a nucleus of renewed spiritual life. Men of difi'erent temperament and divergent aspiration met together to discuss the purification of the Church. The gentle Gsetano da Thiene, and Carafi'a, the fervent zealot, who together founded the priests' order of the Theatines, were among the leaders of the Oratorian party. Its influence spread to Venice and attracted Contarini and Cortese. Other prominent thinkers of the Oratory were Reginald Pole, Giberti, Morone and Sadoleto — all men of mental distinction and all devoted to the principles of reform. The reform movement in Italy had a character distinct from Protestantism, although the doctrines THE KEFORMATION 321 which it made its own had ninch in common with Proteptant teaching. But the Itahan reformers were fundamentally loyal to the Papacy. They held that "no corruption can be so great as to justify a defection from the sacred union" So far Ihey were all agreed, and the report of the commission of 1537 for which they were responsible, unler the auspices of Paul III was ridiculed by the Protestants as a half-measure. As the Catholic reform movement advanced, it showed a tendency to split in two; there was the extreme Catholic and conservative party, of which Caraffa was the typical representative, and there was the compromise party, eager for reunion with the Protestants and willing to give gi'ound in certain directions if it could be met in the same spirit by the opponents. The hope of the ''liberal" Catholic reformers is revealed at the Congress of Ratisbon— of the "conservative" wing at the Council of Trent The election of Paul III. seemed to bring the Catholic reform party into its own, but, in fact, his pontificate was a disappoint- ment. His character was a subtle blend of good and evil, and his motives were seldom pure. A genuine interest in reform and a private life which badly needed it had somehow to be brought into harmony. Gradually his weaknesses choked his good intentions, and in the end he became a sower of tares His politics were dictated by Borgian principles. He strug-led to keep the peace between Charles and Francis in order to'' in- crease the power of his sons and his grandchildi-en. He married his grandson Ottavio to the Emperor's daughter, the widow of Alessandro de' Medici. He seized Camerino to give him a duchy and plotted a larger enterprise against Milan. Another grand- child was married to the Valois Duke of Vendome, to keep the balance of his friendship true to its impartial ideal. Paul III found himself in the gratifying position of peacemaker between the Valois and Hapsburg rivals. The meeting between Charles and Francis, which he had arranged in 1538, was so successful that 1 aul became jealous of the friendship which he had made. The truce which had been arranged for ten years endured for three and Charles had plenty to do in the short respite. Dangers be- set him in Germany from Catholic princes as well as from Pro- testants. The Protestant League of Schmalkald had asserted Its power against the Imperial Council. The ecclesiastical princes of the Catholic party were on the verge of joining the Lutheran confederacy for the purpose of opposing the authority of Charles The Emperor's hands had been so full with his French and Turkish campaigns that he had let Germany slide, and great care was needed in getting back his hold. The confusion of 322 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY parties — the divisiong among the Catholics and the temporary union of the Protestants — resulted in the first real approach to union at the Congress of Ratisbon in 1541. The persuasive gentleness of Contarini at Ratisbon was the outcome of the " liberal " reform movement. He and his op- ponent, Melancthon, found themselves in complete sympathy on the four leading points of dogma which were under discussion. Never was there a controversy carried on with such genuine de- sire of the combatants to meet each other half-way, and yet for this very reason the Congress of Ratisbon failed. Perhaps there was too much readiness to give way on Contarini's part ; perhaps the sterner spirits among the Protestants detected the dilettante element which prevented the liberal Catholics from taking any great part in the remaking of Christendom. Two things are certain, that the Pope was not enthusiastic at the harmonious results of the Congress, and that the " conservative " Catholic reformers were definitely displeased. Pole's letter to Contarini, saying that "When I observed this unanimity of opinion I felt a delight such as no harmony of sounds could have inspired me with," contrasts curiously with the verdict that "His Holiness neither approves nor disapproves ". The explanation of the failure at Ratisbon was fundamentally a political one. . Peace with the Protestants would be too great an advantage for Charles, and neither Paul nor Francis desired reunion at such a price. Henceforth it is possible to trace in Paul's policy a fantastic tendency to wish well to the Protestant cause. In the wars of Charles against the League of Schmal- kald the Pope hardly disguised his disappointment at the Emperor's success, and after Charles's victory of Miihlberg, Paul wrote to Francis an exhortation to support such of the Protest- ant princes as still held out. The summons issued by Paul to the Council of Trent for the following year was an attempt to reassert the sole right of the Pope to assemble a General Council, and at the same time to forestall any attempt of Charles to do the same. It was clear that the Council must be held, and it behoved the Pope to choose his opportunity. Some delay in the preliminary business allowed the propitious moment to go by, and the Council did not really open until December, 1545, when a renewed breach between Charles and the Protestants favoured Paul's policy once more. For the farther Charles and the Pro- testants could be kept apart, the better were Paul's chances of driving a good bargain with him. In the interval between the first summons of the Council and its actual opening, the tension between Paul and Charles was very marked. The renewal of the THE REFOEINIATTON 323 war with France not only made the Council an impossibility, but it revealed the Pope's partiality for Francis and irritated Charles into an almost P]nglish attitude of independence. He showed a tendency to deal with the Lutherans himself in German Diets ; he even tried to have the Council transferred from Trent to a more definitely German city. The Pope's counter-threat to hold it in Rome or Bologna brought him to a more amenable mood, which Paul seized upon for the opening of proceedings in Trent. Paul HI. could reasonably plead that a Pope of nearly eighty was too old to preside at a Council. His three presidents were representative of the three chief Cathohc parties. Del Monte personified the old regime— worldly and unregenerate, and, as such, opposed to reform. Cervini belonged to the narrow, con- servative, high papal party, zealous for reform but still more so for definition. Reginald Pole represented the humanistic and tolerant reform party, which still clung to the hope of reunion with the Protestants. His influence was slight and his party was ineffective, in spite of, or because of, its touch of subtlety and its intellectuality. Opposed to these three parties on politi- cal grounds was the Emperor's party, from which the Pope had much to fear. The Imperial programme was simple enough: the reform of the Church " in head and members ". To circum- scribe its influence became the chief object of the Pope, and of all who felt that the undiminished authority of the Papacy was essential to the well-being of Christendom. In the preliminary business the issue between Charles and Paul was brought to a head in the contest over the order of procedure. The papal party contended that the definition of dogma should precede reform ; the Spanish Bishops, under Charles's orders, stood out for the precedence of reform. A compromise determined that the two should first be dealt with at the same time in separate commissions, and then each should be heard alternately in Council. The advantage lay with the Pope, who, through the legates, could prolong the dogmatic discussions at his will. The importance of the first period of the Council (December, 1545— March, 1547) is shown by its two most striking features'. The first is the absence of the Protestant element, and the second is the prominence of the Jesuits. The Protestants had nothing to hope from a Council held under the auspices of a Pope who wanted nothing less than reunion, and an Emperor who was at war with them. The nearest approach to Protestant- ism is found in the speeches of .Seripando, the mental successor of Contarini, in his controversy with the Jesuit Laynez on the justification problem. Seripando was no more successful than 324 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY Contarini had been. Laynez brought the battery of his positiv- ism to bear on the delicate framework of Seripando's compro- mise, and foiled the last attempt to bridge the gulf between Catholic and Protestant doctrine. It was the first great victory of the Company of Jesus, and it established its right to bear the standard of restored Catholicism. The spiritual genius of Igna- tius Loyola had already created his band of personal followers into the organism of "subordination and mutual supervision" which was to rule the Catholic world. In 1540, Paul III. had established the " Company " as an Order under certain conditions ; having tested its value, he confirmed it unconditionally in 1543. The strange blend of militarism and mysticism in the soldier- saint is reflected in the wonderful spiritual discipline of the Jesuits. Their vow of absolute obedience to the Pope made them the natural "fighting force" of the new Catholicism. Ignatius had looked on the Council of Trent chiefly as an oppor- tunity for advertisement. The Jesuits were to vindicate their claims in the eyes of the world : they were to preach, but not to contend, to mix with the world and not to off'end it with excessive asceticism ; above all, they were never to support any view which had the appearance of an innovation. The conspicuous successes of Laynez and Salmeron had the desired eff'ect, and at Trent the Jesuits came into their kingdom. In Spain they became the confessors of the Court ; in Louvain, Peter Faber laid the founda- tions of the Jesuit empire of education, which was the firmest of all their strongholds. St. Francis Xavier had already sailed for the East Indies to become the Apostle of the New World. The secret of the Jesuits, hitherto unknown in community life, was the combination of self-abnegation with free development of individuality. The Jesuit was an instrument of the finest work- manship for highly-specialised use, never to degenerate into a clumsy tool, never to foil the hand of the Master. The Council had not been entirely amenable to papal influ- ence, and Paul had some cause for apprehension. The question of the residence of Bishops in their dioceses had produced a discussion of papal as against episcopal authority, in which the Spanish Bishops had taken a leading part. Moreover, the situa- tion in Germany was becoming inconveniently favourable to Charles, and Francis was playing adroitly on the fears of the Pope. At last Paul tried to transfer the Council to Bologna on the pretext of an epidemic at Trent. Charles was furious ; he ordered the Spanish Bishops to remain at Trent, and published an Interim in Germany by which ecclesiastical aff'airs were to be arranged until the revival of the Council of Trent. Paul found THE REFORMATION 325 that his Council of Bologna was ignored, so he suspended it in September, 1549, and fell back on the old plan of reform by a commission of Cardinals. Troubles of another kind were darkening the last days of the old Pope. Among the many ways in which he had oliended Charles, none was more serious than his grant of the towns of Parma and Piacenza to his son, Pierluigi Farnese. His attempt to prove that he had indemnified the Church by giving up Camerino and Nepi in exchange had fallen rather iiat. Moreover, Pierluigi was a worthless person who had become the nucleus of anti- Imperial feeling in Italy. The assassination of Pierluigi in September, 1547, and the supposed complicity of the Imperial Governor of Milan brought things to a climax. Paul arranged, but did not actually sign, a close treaty of alliance with France, and, at this point, Charles published the Interim. Paul's ulti- mate decision to restore Piacenza to the Church (and to its overlord, the Emperor) led to a rebellion against the Pope by his grandson, Ottavio Farnese, which reduced the old man to grief and fury. The discovery that another and favourite grandson was also implicated in the revolt broke his heart, and, after a stormy interview with the offender, he died. Cardinal del Monte was elected, after a long conclave, by the French and German parties, combining in unwonted harmony to advance the claims of peace. Julius III.'s pontificate (1550- 1555) was an undistinguished interlude in the period of Catholic reconstruction. He had shared the anti-Hapsburg views of his predecessor, and he was not likely to be the friend of reform. And yet Charles had supported him, because from a knowledge of his character he hoped that he would be politically harmless, and he was not deceived. In the new period of Italian wars be- tween Charles and the son of Francis, Henry II., Julius took the Emperor's side, and sent troops to help him to besiege the French gan-ison of Mirandole. Meanwhile, the Council of Trent had been reopened, and the old difficulties with the Spanish bishops were likely to endanger the new friendship between Pope and Emperor. Troubles, too, with the Protestant envoys had revealed the utter hopelessness of attempting any further mediation. The rebellion of the Elector Maurice against Charles was a timely relief for the Pope, and the Council was once more prorogued. From this point until his death in March, 1555, Julius was entirely absorbed in the building of a magnificent villa, and in entertaining there witli the old-fashioned geniality of bygone days. He made a truce with France in 1552, and after- wards ignored politics as much as he could. He provided for his 326 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY favourite and for his relations, but he did not embark on am- bitious schemes on their behalf, or put himself to any trouble which could be avoided. The successor of Julius III. .was his fellow-president at Trent, who took the name of Marcellus II. He was elected for his " goodness and matchless wisdom," but "the world was not worthy of him," and, on the twenty-second day of his pontificate, he died. With the election of Caraffa as Paul IV., the Catholic Re- formation began its independent life, free from the blasts of Protestantism, and untrammelled by the gentle winds of tolera- tion. The Papacy was no longer to spend itself in controversy with heterodoxy ; it accepted the situation in Germany, Geneva, and England, and left the sword to decide the debatable lands of the Netherlands and France. Catholicism in its new phase had no more to say to Lutheranism, since Luther had merged his cause in the party struggles of Germany. The struggle with Calvinism was more vital, for Calvin was a better states- man, if a lesser theologian, than Luther, and Geneva was a serious rival for the Jesuits in the field of education and influ- ence. From Geneva — " the mine whence came the ore of heresy" — France was drawing a steady supply of Protestant teachers, each of whom was a finished product of spiritual cul- ture. For Calvin, like Ignatius, used none but the best, and, unlike Luther, kept his system clear of parasite causes. By the second half of the sixteenth century the Protestant Reformation had finished its part in the history of the Papacy. It would be idle to deny the undoubted influence on the Catholic world of the saints of the Reformation. Catholics like Contarini were not slow to recognise "the finger of God " among the Protestants, and in a real sense the Papacy owed its salvation to its opponents. It needed the clarion of militant righteousness to waken the Popes from the dream of Renaissance beauty to meet the dawn of modern Europe in the might of restored religion. PART V THE PAPACY IN MODERN HISTORY T^ CHAPTER XXVII THE COUNTER-REFORMATION, a.d. 15B5-1605 HE election of Caraffa as Paul IV. in May, 1555, was the I opportunity for which the " conservative " Reformation party had been waiting, and which it had just missed in the pontificate of Paul 'III. Here at last was a reforming Pope whose character and opinions were not inconsistent. At the age of 79, though still young in temperament, he was the tried friend of the Oratory party, and his severe and unbending nature was an expression of the new Catholic ideal. He had helped to found the order of the Theatines, which was converting the worldly priesthood of Renaissance Rome into the self- sacrificing instrument of the new Catholicism. He had restored and presided over the Inquisition, which he loved and cherished as an artilleryman loves his gun. It was he who had sent St. Ignatius to Rome, and so ushered the Jesuits into history. He was one of the best haters the world has ever known. He hated every heretic with emotional intensity; he hated Reginald Pole for his moderation ; supremely he hated Charles V., on grounds religious, political, and personal. As a Caraffa, he belonged to a family which was traditionally anti-Spanish, and a personal quarrel with the Spanish ruling party had already brought Paul up against Charles, in consequence of which he had been ejected from the Neapolitan Council. A still fiercer antagonism animated his view of Charles's religious position, for Paul believed that the Emperor's zeal for reforming the Papacy was merely a desire to stand well with the Protestants and to play into their hands. Through the hatred which ruled the pontificate of Paul shot a nobler gleam of Italian patriotism, for he was an idealist, and he loved to recall tlie days of Italy's freedom when the harmony of the " four strings " — Naples, Milan, Venice, and Rome — was still undisturbed. In this spirit was conceived his alliance with France, " to free this poor Italy from the tyranny of Spain ". With this end in view Carlo Carafifa, Paul's unworthy nephew, went to France to 329 330 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY buy the intriguing parties. His hatred of Charles was made to cover a multitude of sins, and won for him the Cardinalate. Two other nephews adopted the same remunerative politics, and won for themselves the Colonna castles, while their mother dreamed of royal marriages for her daughters. So Paul became a nepotist, in spite of his ideals, not out of domestic affection, but out of political hate. The resignation of Charles V. had made no difference to his plans, for in Philip II. there was still a Hapsburg to oppose, and the quarrel was already a feud. The Pope's eagerness for war was not an indication of his readiness to make it. When Alva marched on Rome in 1556, the papal army fled, and only the scruples of the Imperial commander saved Rome from another sack. The arrival of the forces of France led to another expedition, with the papal army on the offensive. But Alva's success was more decisive than before, and the news of the battle of St. Quentin was followed by the recall of the French for fighting in France. Alva made the submission of a true Catholic in September, 1557, and the Pope was let off easily with the restoration of the Colonna castles ; but the might of Spain was held to be invincible. Thwarted in the one passion, Paul gave vent to the other. The ferocity of the Inquisition in the years 1558-1589 bore the impression of his own enthusiasm. The Holy Oflftce for the Universal Church was his own project, which he had persuaded Paul HI. to establish at Rome in 1542, on the Spanish model. Its functions had often been applied to political purposes, and for this reason it was already unpopular. Paul IV. did not recognise any definite line between political and religious offences : it would indeed have been difficult if not impossible to draw one. But he did not allow personal considerations to stand in the light of what he considered his duty. He gradually became aware of the bad conduct of his nephews, whose services he had relied upon against Spain. They were the scandal of Rome, and Paul's colleagues of the reform party spared him no knowledge of their misdeeds, when they found an opening for enlightening him. Suspicion deepened into certainty, and the Pope did not spare his own feelings or his own family pride. He denounced his nephews in a consistory, described their misdeeds, and banished them without pity, with all their dependents and belongings. He listened to no appeal, even from the old mother of the exiles. " He feels no pity : he appears to retain no memory of his kindred," was the comment of a courtier. In the last six months of his life, he gave himself entirely to the interests of reform. The court was reorganised, and useless THE COUNTER-KEFORMATION 331 offices were abolislied. A " post-oflice " for grievances was set up in a public place, and the Pope kept the key of it. Begging in the Churches was forbidden, and fasting was enjoined on the court. Services were beautified : pictures were censored. And week by week, on Thursdays, the Holy Office went its relentless way, by cross-examination, by torture, and by autos dafe, sparing no one — working the leaven of heresy out of the Church under the pitiless eye of the old Pope. Pius IV. was elected in 1559 as a protest against his predecessor. He was an easy-going person who had risen to influence as the satellite of an adventurer-brother. His natural inclinations were for peace at all costs, but in practice his policy was modified by the influence of the worthiest of nepotates, the sainted Carlo Borromeo. The bonhomie of the Pope reacted on the rigidity of his nephew, and the blend was not particularly eftective. On the whole, things went on very much in the same way as under Paul IV. The Inquisition did its work just as thoroughly, although the new Pope was less interested in its proceedings. Carlo was painstaking and efficient in the admin- istration, and resolute in his determination not to abuse his position. The unwonted quiet in Europe, which the peace of Cateau Cambresis had produced, remained undisturbed by the Papacy, in spite of the fact that it pointed undeniably to a Council. One solitary act of violence heralded the peace. The unfortunate Carafta clan were pursued with vengeance for their evil deeds, and we cannot doubt that the death of the Cardinal and his three relations — well-deserved as it may have been — was to a certain extent a payment of old scores. The reign of Pius IV. is chiefly important because it was the last and most vital period of the Council of Trent. The Council reopened under five presidents, three of whom were whole- hearted supporters of the papal autocracy, and two — the Cardinal of Mantua and Seripando — were broad-minded upholders of conciliation. No Protestant party appeared at all, and the business of the Council was purely Catholic and internal. The more liberal party was headed by the Emperor Ferdinand, and supported by the French Bishops. Their schemes were national and old-fashioned, based on the plans of Constance. They were inclined to insist on the rights of ambassadors as against legates, and they asked boldly for sweeping doctrinal concessions, the principal ones being the Communion in both kinds and the marriage of the clergy. To counteract them Pius, at the suggestion of his legates, poured Italian Bishops into Trent, and so outnumbered the petitioners. In the end the Papacy was 332 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY bound to win, for Philip's Spanish Bishops, although they shared the German views about the authority of the Pope, were alienated from them by the doctrinal questions on their programme. The views which estranged them were more vital than those on which they were united, and the result was that the discord grew, while each separately inclined towards peace with the common foe. By February, 1563, a point had been reached at which continual hostility and occasional bloodshed punctuated the treatises of rival theologians. It became obvious that " in Trent, opinions only met and fought ; their sources were at Rome and at the courts of the several Princes". If the Council was to be worth anything it was to make opinion, and so in April Cardinal Morone undertook a delicate mission to the Emperor. He found the Emperor angry and pugnacious, insisting on the freedom of ambassadors to introduce whatever subjects they pleased without submitting them to the legates. He rightly felt that the freedom of the Council depended on this. But Morone, with the Jesuits at work behind him, soothed Ferdinand and his party with compromises, and dwelt skilfully on the advantages of union with the Papacy. " The matter was," explained Morone, "to hit upon such decisions as might satisfy the Emperor without trenching on the authority of the Pope or the legates." In the end an agreement was arrived at, by which the legates were to bring forward any subject suggested by the ambassadors, and preparatory deputations were to meet in national com- mittees. In this way the initiative of the legates was safe- guarded, and the integrity of the Council preserved. From this point the Council "began to change its aspect and to be much more easy to treat with," according to Morone. The growing influence of the Guises in France and the importance of the Pope's favour to Philip in Spain contributed to the papal triumph. In December, 1563, the Council was dissolved amid " tears of gladness " for the restoration of Catholic peace. The importance of the Council of Trent, and its epitome, the " Tridentina," does not depend on the extent to which it was recognised. France and Spain clung to their Galilean liberties and royal spiritualities as before. The German Empire gave it no formal recognition. Elizabeth of England, whose coquetry did not stop short in the religious sphere, was behaving in a way to make the Catholic refugees at Lou vain appeal to the Council for her deposition. But the Council had dispelled for ever the darkness and obscurity of mediseval Catholicism. The work of doctrinal definition, for which the Jesuits at Trent were chiefly responsible, had shut a door in the face of the Protestants THE COUNTEE-REFOKMATTON 333 and given the Catholics within a now sense of patriotism. Tt armed every CatlioHc layman with a new assurance, and sent him forth to the wars of Religion. It meant for Europe the mobilisation of Catholicism. For the Papacy, the victory was shown in the fact that reorganisation had supplanted restriction as the watchword of reform, and the change was all in favour of the Pope's prerogative. The hierarchy became more depend- ent through its changed decrees of consecration, the episcopal vow of absolute obedience, and the reforms introduced by the seminaries. A most important discretionary power was left with the Pope for the interpretation of the decrees of Trent, and the general finishing up of the work which was left over. Among these " finishing touches " was the compiling of the new Index, a most important piece of work, which was completed in 1564, and after one revision in 1596, became the standai-d until the eighteenth century. The reform of Church music was another legacy from the Council to the Pope and in the exquisite work of Palestrina we find the truest artistic expression of the Catholic restoration. After the Council of Trent the old Pope relaxed his good intentions : he became more fond of his dinner and more prone to make bad jokes. A conspiracy against his life, led by the fanatic, Benedetto Accolti, failed when it came to the point because the conspirators were over-awed by the outward majesty of the restored Papacy. Carlo Borromeo carried on the work of government faithfully as before and with undistinguished dis- cretion. When his uncle died, in 1565, Carlo managed to secure the election of one for whom he had a greater respect, and who was already well known in Rome for his piety and asceticism. The accession of Pius V. was a day of promise for the Catholic world — all the more so because the sanctity which won his recognition as " St. Alessandrino " was not of the kind which transcends the imagination of his contemporaries. He was gentle and good, with something of the same yearning after God which was seen in Gregory I. He was like him, too, in finding the Papacy a hindrance to the inner life of the Pope, as also in his sudden siirprising severity, and equally surprising tenderness. But Pius V. lacked the wide humanity of Gregory the Great, and above all, the grace of humour. He thought that men grew worse instead of better, and he punished them in later life with the Inquisition for the sins of their youth. He owed much to the devoted service of the Bishops, who now resided in their Sees according to the decrees of Trent. Among them were men like Giberti of Verona, whose life was a mirror of restored 334 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY Catholicism, and Carlo Borromeo, who, as Archbishop of Milan, dedicated his genius for loyalty to the Pope whom he had made. In the pontificate of Pius V., the eflTects of the Council of Trent became apparent, particularly in two ways. The first of these was the disregard of the heretic world, except as a field for Jesuit missions. In Germany, the Religious Peace of Augsburg (1555) tended more and more to become a landmark, although the Papacy persistently ignored it. The principle of " Cujus Regio ejus Religio" was too convenient to be lightly set aside, if only because it gave something definite to fight for. It imposed no degree of toleration, except in an international sense, while it sanctioned the "Divine Right" of Princes to establish their own religion and secure uniformity within their dominions by persecuting in whichever direction they pleased. France was absorbed in the three-cornered intrigue of the Valois, the Guises, and the Bourbons. The struggle between Catholic and Huguenot was caught up in the tangled skein of politics, and Pius did his best to hold on to the thread of papal interests. He sent an army to France under the astonishing order to give no quarter to Huguenots. In the same spirit he sent a hat and a sword to Alva as a token of gratitude for his bloody services to the true religion in the Netherlands. Pius has been accused of complicity in the darker designs which led to the massacre of St. Bartholomew, soon after his death in 1572. There is no evidence that he had any direct part in the crime for which his whole generation is branded, but it is unlikely that it would have troubled his conscience, or that of the average good Catholic or Protestant of his day. Although his successor, Clement VIII., spoke of it as the " most joyful day " for Catholics, it was a barren victory, too dearly bought, for which the Papacy has paid, perhaps, an unfair price. For if the sufi'ering of St. Bartholomew fell upon France, the injury was to Catholicism, while the shame can only be ascribed to the spirit of the age. It was the consequence of the monarchical theory which the Protestants had applied to religion by the "Cujus Regio" prin- ciple pushed to its terrible conclusion by the ruthless logic of France. In England alone the religious question was still open in the reign of Pius. While, on the one hand, the reign of Edward VI. had " worn the gloss off" the new theology," the persecutions of Mary had " lit such a fire in England as should never be put out ". It remained for Elizabeth " to keep the mean between the two extremes " (Preface to Prayer-book). This she con- THE COUNTER-REFOmrATION 335 trived to do until Pius lost his patience, and deposed her in 1570. The deposition was a fatal mistake, for its only eflect in Eng- land was to popularise the persecution of the Catholics in a peace-loving land. Scotland had already seceded, and with un- characteristic impulsiveness, which astonished even the con- verts, embraced the Calvinism of John Knox in 1560. " It is almost miraculous," said a Scottish Protestant, "to see how the Word of God takes place in Scotland." The second general result of the Council of Trent was the changed position of the Papacy in Europe. The Pope ceases henceforth to create politics on his own account : he is content, except in Italy, to influence them. The nepotates of the future no longer aspire to be independent princes of the Cesare Borgia type : they aim at power of another kind. The Cardinal- nephews of the end of the sixteenth century are hardly less prominent or less magnificent than their predecessors, but they are the confidential officials of the Vatican, and not the par- venu rulers of mushroom States. But the chief instruments of papal foreign policy in the restored Catholic States were the Jesuits. In the Empire and in Catholic Germany they absorbed State offices and reclaimed lost ground ; in France their influence threaded in and out of the Catholic parties. In Spain their power had brought them into collision with Philip, whose abso- lutism was always at war with his fanaticism. No Hapsburg could tolerate an " Imperium in imperio," and the Spanish Jesuits were not diffident of claiming to be outside the royal prerogative. Like the Jesuits, Pius V. was united to Philip by his Catholi- cism and estranged from him by his politics. The power of Spain in Milan and Naples was a perpetual reminder of the sack of Rome, and it drove Pius into a close alliance with Florence. Cosimo de' Medici was an unsuitable friend for a Pope given to sanctity, but Pius chose not to think of this when he made him Grand Duke of Tuscany and adopted him as an ally. Cosimo proved his Catholic zeal by the surrender of his friend Carnesecchi to the mercies of the Inquisition. Carnesecchi was the last of the liberal Catholic reform party, the friend of Giulia Gonzaga, and the leader of the dwindling coterie which had once held the hopes of the reunion of Christendom in its keeping. He and his friends had drawn nearer to Protestantism as the Catholic reformers receded behind their own barriers, but neither his goodness nor his popularity could save him from the retributive justice of Pius. He was imprisoned, tortured, and condemned on charges of which he had been acquitted long 336 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY before, and in 1567 he was executed in spite of all Cosimo could do to save him. The greatest political achievement of Pius was his stand against the Turks. In face of the growing peril of Europe he contrived to effect an alliance between Spain and Venice, those deadly rivals of the sea, and he was rewarded for his efforts by Don John's victory of Lepanto in 1571, which stemmed the tide of Turkish success, and fixed the limit of infidel power in the Mediterranean. It was the great moment of his life, and he died before the glamour of it faded. Gregory XIII. (1572-1585) was an old jurist of Bologna with a doubtful reputation and a grown-up son. His pontificate was not a reversion to the old ways of the Papacy, for his education in the new principles was thoroughly undertaken and well carried out by the Jesuits and Theatines about him. They read him the edifying letters of Pius V., and stimulated in him a spirit of competitive holiness which passed very easily for personal piety. His relations were kept at first at a distance : even his old brother was forbidden to visit him, and reduced to tears of disappointment because he might not see the prosperity of his family. His son Giacomo, happily not an ambitious person, was at first ignored, and later allowed to become a noble of Venice and to marry into a noble house. Two young nephews became Cardinals while the Jesuits looked the other way, but even they were used rather than favoured. His policy was deep, but it worked in hidden ways and showed no conspicuous features. His was the era of papal plots in England and Ireland, which really lit the candle of anti- Popery in this country more than the fires of Oxford. In days when none would seriously complain if the Pope or anyone else chose to burn heretics, England conceived a deep hatred for the disturbers of her peace, and it was more than suspected that Philip's designs against Elizabeth were drafted in Rome. Gregory's firm alliance with the Guises in France was a further source of suspicion, for the Guises were the mainspring of the plots which emanated from Scotland, and the go-betweens of Philip and Mary Stuart. The close connection with the Guises established by Gregory through his Jesuits was the foundation of the Catholic league, which first showed its activities in France in 1576. In his home government Gregory had to face troubles which had been a long time brewing in connection with finance. The work of Catholic restoration was expensive, and the reformed Papacy had fewer ways of getting money within its reach than THE COUNTER-KEFOKMATION 337 in the unregenerate days of the Renaissance. Gregory spent lavishly in every direction and on the worthiest objects. Educa- tion absorbed huge sums : the Jesuits' College in Rome blossomed out into a '-seminary of all nations". The Pope endowed a German college and founded an English one. He also endowed a Greek college, in which national customs were preserved, so that the Greek boys should go back to their own people as Catholic missionaries without the hindrance of a broken tradi- tion. Still larger sums went to the wars of religion— to Charles IX. for the suppression of the Huguenots— to the Grand Master of Malta for use against the Turks. The "congregation" of Cardinals which dealt with finance had to find a new revenue to meet the new expenses. The reform of the Pope's household, which Pius V. had conscientiously carried out, cost much more than it saved, for the corruption under the old regime was profit- able beyond belief. The new methods of raising money which the Curia adopted were those which were fashionable among the new monarchies of Europe, but they were always dangerous, and in the case of the Papacy— unsupported by any large or reliable army— nearly fatal. Old privileges were abolished or confirmed in return for heavy payment. Forgotten feudal claims of the Popes were revived and suddenly enforced. Confiscations were made on the pretext of escheat. The result was that dispossessed or ofi'ended nobles took to the countryside and became bandits. They terrorised the March of Ancona, and swept across the Campagna in defiance of civilisation. Gregory sent his son Giacomo and Cardinal Sforza against the banditti, but without success. When the banditti were pressed by the papal forces they crossed the border of some neighbouring State where their griev- ances met with sympathy from others Avho had shared them. For Gregory had offended all his neighbours by his impolitic extortions. Even Cosimo de' Medici turned against him, and compelled him to pardon the most dangerous of all the bandits, a Piccolomini who had paralysed Gregory's action by threatening the life of Giacomo. It took a stronger man than Gregory to combat the wind which he had sown. His successor, Sixtus V., dealt with the bandit problem in the drastic and competent way in which he faced all the problems of his short and brilliant pontificate (1585-1590). He conciliated the neighbour States by removing the burdens which Gregory had placed on them, and then, having cut off their retreat, he faced the bandits boldly. In two years he freed Italy from the curse of outlawTy. He executed the most awe-inspiring of the robber chiefs and all who had helped them. He spread terror in the papal cities by his 338 A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY severity in the maintenance of order. He condemned four youths to death for carrying arms and another for resisting the police. People were horrified at his measures and gratified by the results. " This security is of great good to the peaceful public," said an eye-witness. The early life of Sixtus V. was a vigil, from which he came forth prepared for action. All his life he had been conscious of the call of God: in his peasant-childhood it had led him to become a Franciscan; as a young man it had made him the popular preacher of Rome, and had involved him in trouble with the Inquisition through mysterious and disquieting experiences in the pulpit. As he believed in himself, so others believed in him : he won over the Chief of the Holy Office, and he gained the confidence of Pius V. He became General of the Franciscans, Cardinal di Montalto, and Bishop of Fermo. Towards Gregory X;iII. he had a deep antipathy, and during his predecessor's pon- tificate he stayed in his See, brooding, writing, and thinking deeply. When he became Pope at the age of sixty-four he lost no time in putting thought into action. There was nothing tentative about his policy, as his deahngs with the bandits proved. The difficulty was that it was expensive, and Sixtus was unwilling to adopt the unpopular financial measures of his predecessor. Instead of these he instituted the system of Monti, or public loans, which were to be the basis of papal finance for many years to come. These funds, supplemented by others de- rived from the sale of offices and from very heavy taxation, gave Sixtus a large revenue, but economics was not his strong point ; they failed to pass the standard of criticism even of his contemporaries, who drew attention to the absurd gold hoard which it was his pride to heap up in St. Angelo, while the Monti loans crippled him by their weight. The main objects for which Sixtus wanted money were the wars against the Turks and the heretics. Round these two objects his pohtics turned. Spain was necessary to both; and therefore Sixtus was careful not to ofi'end Philip, although he was just as much afraid of Spanish influence in Italy as his pre- decessors had been. France was likely to be the bone of contention, for Philip of Spain had everything to gain by prolonging the Wars of Religion in France, whereas Sixtus knew that a strong and united France was necessary to curb the power of Spain. A further and more fantastic aim which Sixtus had in view, and which also en- dangered his relations with Philip, was the conversion of Eliza- beth. He had conceived an admiration for the indomitable woman, so like himself in her attitude to her enemies, of which he THE COUNTER-REFOEMATION 339 was the chief. To restore England to Catholicism by transforming il^hzabeth Hito a " second Countess Matilda," to whom lie should play Hildebrand, was a project which Elizabeth would liave de- lighted to play up to, but it was based on a complete misconcep- tion of her character. In the end Sixtus found out his mistake and, after playing off the English designs of France against Philip's schemes of conquest, he finally supported the Spanish Armada with all his might. But he was never very sanguine about 1 hihp s enterprise : he alternately scolded him for procrastina- tion and encouraged him with sums of money. The death of Mary Queen of Scots was Elizabeth's challenge to the Pope, and the Armada was the answer. When the Armada fell to pieces Sixtus shared tlie defeat of an ally whom he despised and feared by an enemy whom he respected and knew to be the stronger. Towards the struggle in France Sixtus was very guarded. At first he seemed inclined to follow Philip in his support of the Guises, and in 1585 he declared Henry of Navarre and Conde to be excluded from the succession as heretics. The Italian States —and particularly Venice— were anxious to reconcile Sixtus with the King of Navarre, because Henry was anti-Spanish, and his succession to the throne would put an end to Philip's interference in French politics. But the revolt of Paris and the murder of Cardinal Guise pledged Sixtus more deeply to the League It was not until the battle of Ivry in 1590 gave the victory to Henry, who, at the same time, showed an inclination to be converted' that Sixtus reversed his policy. At the time of his death, he was allied to Henry of Navarre, to the consternation of Philip and the rejoicing of the Italian States, who saw in his French policy a patriotic step towards emancipation from Spanish leadership Many Popes since Clement VII. had been accused of being "Spanish chaplains," and the Hapsburg bonds were hard to break. Even Sixtus dared not quarrel with Philip or with his German cousins. He had to preserve a rigid neutrality in Poland, where the Archduke Maximilian was at war with Sigis- mund of Sweden. In his relations to the Emperor Rudolf II. he was less cautious, and the support which he gave to the League nearly produced serious trouble. It was in Itahan affairs that Sixtus was seen at his best. In spite of Philip, he clung to his alliance with Venice as a bulwark against the East. He sustained the friendship with Florence which Pius V. had made. Fortified by these two powerful aUies, he took up the causes of smaller Italian States ; at the risk of offending France, he supported the Duke of Savoy in his seizure of Saluzzo. In the Papal States he embarked on admirable 340 A SHOKT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY improvement schemes. He undertook the irrigation of the marshes at great expense, and he planted mulberry trees for the encouragement of the silk industry. He opened out the port of Ancona, and he built galleys to protect the Mediterranean coast. Under Sixtus modern Rome began to look like itself. He laid out the upper part of the city, and joined it to the lower. He gave it an improved water supply by restoring the aqueducts. He added the dome to St. Peter's, as a fitting symbol of the glory of the restored Papacy, and he set up the obelisk in the Piazza as a tribute to the triumph of Christendom over Pagan- ism. He reformed the constitution of the Curia by the intro- duction of the "Congregation" system, by which he divided the Cardinals into committees for dealing with special purposes, such as the Inquisition, the Segnatura, and the Vatican press. He fixed the number of the Cardinals at seventy, and he was careful in his choice of candidates. Sixtus was the first Pope who failed to appreciate the Jesuits. Like Philip, he found his own prerogative menaced by a corpora- tion which was in itself so autocratic. For the first time we find the mechanical obedience of the Jesuits indicated as a source of danger to society. Sixtus wanted to reform their constitu- tion, and Cardinal Caraff"a was appointed to conduct the pre- liminaries. But Caraff'a was the friend of the Order, and nothing definite was done before the Pope's death. The Jesuits have been accused of saying and thinking many things which the average criminal would disavow. Their influence has been de- tected in crimes of the period with which they had nothing to do, and their more dangerous doctrines have been misstated in con- nection with events for which they were in no way responsible. But it is certainly true that so great an influence as theirs could hardly have been used without abuse, and that in the time of Sixtus, Jesuit politics were of a subterranean and explosive character. In an age which was permeated by the theory of the Divine Right of Kings, the Jesuits were inclined to preach the sovereignty of the people. They found that strong monarchies were inherently anti-papal, and in the attempt to exalt the Pope they were prepared to lower the standards of monarchy. Their own difl'erences with Philip II. were an added impulse in this direction. Mariana's famous book, in which he defends the madman who assassinated Henry III., caused a good deal of discussion, and the Jesuits were afterwards accused, on its account, of favouring tyrannicide. At the time, however, Mariana's views were sanctioned by the Sorbonne and supported by the legate. Even Philip found it convenient at the moment THE COUNTEK-KEFORMATION 341 to accept them, for, as a good Catholic, it was to his advantage to do so. Sixtus himself was much more in sympathy with the rival theory held by the national party in France, who wanted a strong King, a united France, and the exclusion of Spanish influence. The Catholics of this party only waited for Henry IV. to become a Catholic, which the Politiques were not slow to arrange, and the result was that the accession of Henry led di- rectly to a persecution of the Jesuits. The death of Sixtus, in 1590, was welcomed by the Romans in spite of the benefits which he had bestowed on them, for Rome was still Rome, and it never could forgive the ruler who gave it order. There is a completeness about his pontificate which is rare in the annals of the Papacy ; and it was due, it seems, more to his powers of direction than to his creative facul- ties. The three Popes who succeeded him died before they left their mark on the world. Urban VII. reigned only twelve days. Gregory XIV. was an ethereal character who was too simple and sincere to fathom the intrigues of the Curia. During his ten months' pontificate he carried on a direct and eff'ective policy in support of the League. He and his successor, Innocent IX., were elected from among a selection of Cardinals to whom Philip 11. had pledged his support. With the accession of Clement VIII. (1592-1605) another decisive epoch begins. Clement VIII. was the youngest of four excellent middle- class brothers called Aldobrandini, and he had all the energy and resource of a man who had had his way to make in the world. Sixtus V. had been drawn to him by his talents and his piety, and had made him a Cardinal. As Pope, he was dis- tinguished, in an age of high standards, for his exemplary life. Every day he confessed himself, and every day he shared his simple dinner with twelve poor men. The first problem which confronted him was the French succession question. He had meant to conciliate both parties while he awaited developments, but he found himself pledged by his legate to the Catholic League party. It was not until July, 1593, that Henry IV. decided that " Paris vaut bien une messe," and seized an absolution with a crown from the Catholics in France. Clement's formal act of absolution two years later, in front of St. Peter's, was the recognition of a fait accompli. It meant for the Papacy the freedom from Spanish control for which so many Popes had waited. France had at last put itself into the hands of the strong Bourbon King who knew how to heal her wounds, and who could face the Ilapsburgs again in the might which the Valois had lost. Once more the Pyrenees 342 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY would hold the balance which the Popes had so long struggled to restore. The question of Ferrara gave Henry IV. an opportunity to prove his untried loyalty to the Papacy at the expense of the traditional friendship between France and the House of Este. Troubles had been looming in Ferrara ever since it became clear that Duke Alfonso II. would die without an heir. As a fief of the Church it would escheat to the Pope, and Pius V. had made this inevitable by a Bull in which he made it illegal for a Pope to grant reinvestment in cases of probable escheat. Alfonso II. had secretly left his duchy to his kinsman Cesare, who promptly took possession when he died in 1597. The situation was very complicated because the jealousy of Alfonso had kept Cesare a stranger to the court during his lifetime, and the Este traditions were associated with Alfonso's brilliant sister Lucrezia, of whom Ferrara was justly proud. Lucrezia hated the unfortunate heir, and conspired against him with Clement's nephew, Cardinal Aldobrandini, to whom she left all that was hers to leave of the Este heritage. The Italian States supported Cesare and his rights against the Pope, but they were not prepared to fight for him, and Henry IV., to whom he appealed, was at the moment too new a Catholic to venture to oppose Clement. Henry had his reward, for Clement called him a second Charlemagne, and the Pope's support was necessary to him in his struggle with Philip. But the fortunes of Ferrara were betrayed into the hands of the Pope, and the court of Ferrara, which had been the glory of Italy and the pride of Tasso, sank into oblivion at Modena, to which it was transferred. Clement's excommunica- tion brought Cesare to his feet, and Ferrara became a papal city with a strong new fortress on the site of the Este palace. A schism in the Jesuit camp brought the Order into greater prominence than ever in the early days of Clement VIII. The young Neapolitan, General Aquaviva, of whom it was said that " one must love him if one only looks at him," had come into opposition with the Spanish branch of the Order. Clement ordered a General Congregation, and Aquaviva was triumphantly vindicated, but the opposition was taken up by Philip II. and by the Dominicans, and a new phase of the free-will controversy was the outcome. Aquaviva and his party had stood for a wider " Rule of Studies " and a freer field of theological discus- sion than the Spanish party were willing to concede. Some critical comments by the Jesuit theologian Molina on the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas called forth the Dominican counterblast. As the theory of the sovereignty of the people THE COUNTEK-REFORMATION 343 had got the Jesuits into trouble in France, so their liberal theology brought them opposition in Spain. It was a curious and significant phase in Jesuit history that, while tliey were being driven out of France for their Spanish sympathies, they were being attacked by the monarchical party in Spain. The explanation lies in the fact that they were better Churchmen than politicians, or, as Macaulay puts it, " Inflexible in nothing but in their fidelity to the Church, they were equally ready to appeal in her cause to the spirit of loyalty and to the spirit of freedom ". Clement, who had listened to the opposition in Spain, supported the Jesuits in France. Henry IV. made his peace with them, recalled them in 1600, and took the Jesuit Cotton for his confessor. The influence of Clement was just then at its height. In 1593 he had healed the breach between France and Spain by arranging the peace of Vervins. The balance was now so true that there was no need to rock the scales. The last phase of Clement's policy was marked by the rivalry between Cardinal Farnese, who was leader of the opposition in the Spanish interest, and Cardinal Aldobrandini, Clement's tal- ented nephew, who was the guardian of the French alliance. Clement had not carried on the "constitutional" government of Sixtus by means of the Congregations. He preferred a more autocratic method, and as long as he ruled in person all went well. But the growing influence of the Cardinal-nephew brought a revival of French intervention in Italian afi'airs and the con- sequent hostility of the Spanish circle. The administrative aspect of Clement's pontificate has been made notorious by two of the world's causes celebres — the execution of Beatrice ,Cenci and the burning of the scientist Bruno. The cause of Beatrice, as Shelley pleads it, rests on the provocation for her crime, which seems to have been beyond dispute. The case against the Papacy is the alleged profit which it derived from her father's evil deeds. It is to be feared that miscarriages of moral justice stain the records of papal history no less than those of contemporary England or France. The victims, of whom Beatrice and Pompilia are the poetic types, paid the price of the crude judicial theory which held it to be more important to punish evil than to do justice to the evildoer. The death of Bruno belongs to another ethical category. It is true that he died as a martyr to scientific truth, but he had not lived in a manner worthy of his mission, and there was some justification for his condemnation by the Inquisition as an example of the evil moral efi"ects of ■' heresy ". 344 A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY By the death of Clement VHI. the triumph of the Counter- Reformation was established. When historians have set forth the causes of the victory and traced the steps by which it was achieved, the recovering power of Catholicism remains to astonish the world. It is true that the Protestant princes were often degenerate, like Henry IV., or half-hearted, like Elizabeth. It is also true that the " local militia " of Protestantism was no match for the trained " foreign service army " of the Jesuits. But Catholicism had at least as great an advantage in the personal character of the Counter- Reformation Popes. Politics more often reflect the worst than the best of the men who make them, and it is not easy to give personal holiness its due on the crowded historical canvas of the sixteenth century Papacy. But the closer we look into the lives of the men who led the Catholic faith to victory, the more profoundly we give them our homage. History cannot linger in the byways of biography, but the story of the great recovery of Catholicism is written more clearly than elsewhere in the zeal of Paul IV., the good deeds of Pius V. and Clement VIII., and the moral energy of Sixtus V. CHAPTER XXVIII THE SKVENTEENTH CENTURY MACAULAY ascribes the success of the Catholics chiefly to the faculty possessed by Catholicism of using and directing enthusiasm. The supreme instance of this is the work of the Jesuits in reclaiming Germany. They were led and supported by Catholic princes whom they had taught and filled with the divine fire. Since 1587 Sigismund III. had restored Poland to Catholicism, armed with the weapon of royal patronage, and strengthened with papal subsidies. He might have been King of Denmark if he had been a less uncom- promising Catholic. Meanwhile, the Jesuit colleges turned Poland into a nursery garden of the Catholic faith in which strong young plants were nurtured for the neighbouring German States. In Germany proper the ecclesiastical princes led the way to restoration by banishing the Protestants from their territories, as they claimed to be allowed to do by the Religious Peace. In 1597 Ferdinand II. took a solemn oath before tlie shrine of Loretto to root out the Protestants from his duchies of Styria, Carinthia and Carniola. His cousin, the Emperor Rudolf II., followed his example in Austria and Bohemia. Maximilian of Bavaria, with the help of the great Jesuit College at Ingolstadt, played the part of " a fervent missionary wielding the powers of a prince ". With France in the strong hands of Henry IV., whose religion was his policy, and Spain, Catholic as ever, under Philip III., but humbled a little by the triumph of the Jesuits, Paul V. (1605-1621) might be expected to pitch his prerogatives high. Paul's pretensions were inclined to exceed his grasp, and a series of successful disputes at the beginning of his reign had not taught him to discard his narrow and pedantic autocracy. He had got the better of the Neapolitan government in a judicial dispute, of the Knights of Malta and of Savoy in investiture quarrels, and of Lucca and Genoa on questions of ecclesiastical rights. A struggle with Venice taught him to walk more warily. There was a strong party growing up in Venice — the oldest and proudest of city States — which, under the leadership of Sarpi, set 345 346 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY itself to oppose the new trend of Catholic opinion, and especially the revived power of the Pope, as it was taught and enforced by the Jesuits. Venice had several grievances against the Papacy, and Paul's attempt to claim judicial rights over two' priests was made a test case. In a rash moment Paul excommunicated the Signoria, and threatened the city with the Interdict. Venice remained coolly indifferent, and retorted by expelling the Jesuits. The Pope appealed to Spain, and Venice to France, and the affair ended in a compromise, which in relation to his claims amounted to a papal defeat. The priests were handed over to Paul, and Venice was absolved in secret, but the city had safeguarded its pride throughout, and refused to receive back the Jesuits or to repeal the laws which had caused offence. The sting lay in the fact that Venice had successfully braved the Interdict, which was never again used. Europe was moving steadily on towards the Thirty Years' War, which was " the last of the Crusades ". As far as the trouble was religious, it turned on points which were left over from the Religious Peace of 1555. The Protestants were obliged to make a stand against the aggressive policy of the Catholics, who interpreted all the disputed clauses of the Peace in their own favour. But the condition of Protestantism was very unlike that of the Catholic world, for while " the whole zeal of the Catholics was directed against the Protestants, almost the whole zeal of the Protestants was directed against each other " (Mac- aulay). Lutheranism alone had any status in Germany, and no Lutheran had any desire to struggle for toleration for a Calvinist. The Protestant union of 1608, which Christian of Anhalt organ- ised under the leadership of the Elector Frederick, was a con- federacy formed by the Calvinists in self-defence, and the Lutheran princes held aloof from it. On the other hand, Maximilian of Bavaria's Catholic League of 1609 had behind it the full force of the Catholic reaction. Maximilian devoted to it his wonderful powers of leadership and his large resources ; he also gave it a brilliant Catholic general in the Belgian Tilly. The Emperor and Ferdinand of Styria joined it, and Paul V. gave it his keenest support. Philip III. did it good service by keeping James I. of England out of the struggle as long as possible by the bait of the Spanish match. Rudolf's troubles in Austria and Bohemia, and the revolt of Cleres, gave the Protestants a good start, but when Ferdinand II. came into his own in 1617 as ruler of all the Hapsburg territories and Emperor-elect, the Catholic cause was certain to go forward. The revolt of Bohemia was the outcome of his militant Catholicism ; it formed the prelude of THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 347 "the most desolating of modern wars" (1618-1648). Paul V. did his best to follow the gleam of religion among the storm- clouds of conflicting policies. The battle of the White Mountain, which gave Boliemia to Catholicism and to Ferdinand, was a Catholic even more than a Hapsburg victory, after which the '• Winter King" Frederick melted away as the Jesuits had fore- told. Paul was fortunate enough to die at the full tide of Catho- lic success, surrounded in Rome by the streets and squares and gardens which he had planned on the massive and grandiose scale which was the mirror of his mind. His greatest pride was the pretentious but effective fagade of St. Peter's which filled his contemporaries with joy, and seemed to the seventeenth century esthetes an improvement on the designs of Bramante and Michelangelo. Paul's successor was Gregory XV.— an old and delicate man, who left the government chiefly in the hands of his energetic young nephew, Ludovico Ludovisio. His pontificate saw the continued success of the Catholic League in Austria and the Empire, and the energetic reclamation of Bohemia by the Jesuits under Carlo Caraffa. In 1623 the Palatine electorate was given to Maximilian of Bavaria, whose arms had wrested it from Frederick. This gave the Catholics a majority of five to two among the electors, which was a sign of the times. In France a steady decline of Protestantism had set in, as a result of internal dissension, co-operating with the vigorous policy of Richelieu which was beginning to make itself felt. On the whole the person who had least cause to rejoice in the Catholic successes was the man who had sacrificed most to bring them about. "Ferdinand II.'s aUies served him so well that they threw him into the shade" (Acton). Tilly's successes were the successes of Bavaria, and Maximilian was becoming a dangerous friend. So Ferdinand hired a general of his own, and commis- sioned Wallenstein to make the Austrian army. Meanwhile the Hapsburg fortunes in Italy had brought them up against their Bourbon rivals. In order to establish communi- cations between Spanish Milan and Austrian Switzerland, Philip took possession of the Alpine passes in the Valtelline. This was regarded as an act of aggression by their neighbours, who appealed to their natural protector, France. Both sides referred the matter to the Pope, and asked him to garrison the Alpine fortresses with his own troops while the question was being decided. After some hesitation, Gregory accepted the dangerous compHment, and the independence of Vahelline was admitted by every one. At that point Gregory died. His successor. Urban 348 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY VIIT., was not trusted as his predecessor had been. The papal garrison gradually became Spanish ; it was fed from Milan and paid by Spain. In 1624, France and Venice drove.it out of the fortresses, and restored them to the Grisons peasants of the valleys below. Urban shrank back into neutrality, and in 1626 arranged the peace of Monzon, which gave the Valtelline nominally to the Grisons and virtually to Spain. France, who had her own ends to serve, was prevailed upon by Urban to begin her career of selfishness by the sacrifice of the small allies who had trusted her. Urban played into the hands of Richelieu, who wanted peace with Spain in order to deal with the Huguenots, and so sacrificed Italy to the ambition of France. Urban VIII. (1623-1644) had risen by his wits as Matteo Barberini, and made his name on a successful embassy to France. He was elected by French influence, and he never forgot that he was Pope in the interests of France. Nor did he allow France to forget it, as the affairs of Mantua were soon to show. The heir of Mantua was a Frenchman, Charles, Due de Nevers-Rethel, but he had a possible rival in a German girl who belonged to the house of Hapsburg. Urban, who was radically anti -Hapsburg, connived at a secret marriage between the rivals, gave Charles a dispensation in order to make it legal, and appealed to France to support his action against the inevit- able opposition of Spain and Austria. Richelieu was preoccupied at that moment against the Huguenots, but after the siege of Rochelle Louis XIII. came readily enough into the fray. The humiliation of Ferdinand II. was the next move in Richelieu's game for the aggrandisement of France. But the afi'air of Mantua only showed how strong Ferdinand had grown since the White Mountain. A French success against the Spanish forces besieging Casale was more than redeemed by Wallenstein's victory against Mantua itself. Ferdinand had declared that he meant " to show the Italians that there is still an Emperor, and that he will call them to account". By 1630, Wallenstein was master of Mantua, Venice was trembling at his approach, and Rome anticipated another sack. Ferdinand wanted to be crowned at Bologna, but Urban made excuses and looked confidently to the designs of Richelieu to deliver him. In 1629, a split in the Catholic camp made it possible for Richelieu to weave the web round Ferdinand which was to be his ruin. Maximilian of Bavaria placed himself at the head of a party in opposition to the so-called military tyranny of Wallen- stein. The action of the Jesuits in taking over the monastic property which was recovered from the Protestants aggravated THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 349 the antagonism, and at the Diet of Ratislion in 1630 it was expressed in the refusal of the Catholic princes to sanction the election of Ferdinand's son as King of tlie Romans. Ferdinand fell into the trap. He sacrificed Wallenstein, and with W'allen- stein all that he had gained in Italy. At that moment a new and more formidable champion of Protestantism came victorious into Germany. The successes of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden brought him at last to the Italian border, and his death in 1632 saved Urban from tlie worst dilemma of his life. Behind Gustavus Adolphus were the schemes of Richelieu, wlio — Catholic and Cardinal as he was — did not scruple to enlist Protestantism in the cause of France. Behind Richelieu, screened by false goodwill to Ferdinand and infinitesimal subsidies to the Catholic arms, Urban VIII. concealed his an- tipathy to the most diligent of Catholics, and pulled the wires which were working the downfall of the Papacy. After the death of Gustavus Adolphus. the last phase of the Thirty Years' War, and the definite intervention of France, abstracted the religious element out of the struggle, and gave Urban a plausible pretext for neutrality. In the quarrels of one Catholic power against another — the dynastic rivalries of Haps- burg against Bovirbon — the Pope could claim that lie had no concern. As long as Ferdinand was facing the consequences of the Edict of Restitution, which his Catholic zeal had dictated, and as long as the opposition was headed by the chief of heretics, it was necessary for Urban to act the part of head of Catholicism. After his sorrowful '• Te Deum" for the Imperial victory of Nordlingen in 1634, he gave up the pretence, and filled with bitterness the Catholic soul of Ferdinand. The price which the Papacy paid for the neutrality of Urban came to light at the Peace of Westphalia. The Catholic assembly at Miinster, which discussed the preliminaries of peace, paid no attention to the demands of the Pope, and the legate, Chigi, who presided, could only influence it by obstruction. The real maker of the peace was Christina of Sweden — at that time the most modern of Protestant queens, and later the most broad-minded of Catholic converts. She presided over the Protestant assembly which framed the peace almost as it was adopted by both sides at Westphalia in 1648. In politics, the peace roughly defined the modern map of Europe ; in religion, it wisely drew the line where it was already traced. The greatest loser was the Pope, not only tlurough the many articles which were unfavourable to the rights of the Papacy, but still more through the loss of in- fluence which was never regained. 350 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY And yet, Urban, who had lost so much, claimed to be a Hildebrand, and used the most extravagant language about his prerogatives. His disastrous enterprise against Parma was really a war of etiquette. Odoardo Farnese, Duke of Parma, claimed to be the head of the Italian nobility, and supported his claim with an ostentatious arrogance which offended Urban's relations, and provoked the anger of Urban himself. The Pope and the Barberini opened a " money market war " on the Farnesi by buying up the " Monti " of Parma, which they had previously cheapened by a papal warrant forbidding the export of grain from Parmese Castro. This gave an economic pretext for the seizure of Castro by papal arms, and the excommunication of Odoardo. The three neighbour states of Middle Italy took up the cause of Parma, and the " Four Dukes " — Parma, Tuscany, Modena, and Venice — made an entirely successful war on the Barberini. By negotiating at the wrong moment the Farnesi lost a chance of crushing the Pope, and the peace of Venice left things as they were before the war. But the immense expense of the campaign crippled the papal States for years to come. Nor was the war of the Barberini, as it was called, the only cause of economic trouble. Urban was the most extravagant of Popes. He had a passion for building expensive and unneces- sary fortifications, some of which, like the Bologna Fort Urbano, were intended rather to impress the countryside than to defend it. The escheat of Urbino, on the death of the last of the Delia Rovere, was a new source of revenue, but it was swallowed up in the ocean of debt which accumulated from the Monti. Added to this, the new nepotism was as large a financial drain as the old. Since Bulls now prevented the alienation of Church lands, the relations of the Popes were compensated for the dignities which might once have been theirs by a convention which allotted to them the sums annually left over from the papal revenue. In this way the new families who ruled Rome rose to power through money. The Peretti, the Aldobrandini, and the Borghesi were all parvenus of the early seventeenth century, and now the Barberini joined the throng, richest and most influential of all. Urban himself was shocked when he discovered how much his relations cost him, and in 1640 a financial inquiry re- vealed the extent of the evil. Before he died, in 1644, the ex- haustion of his credit led him to make the inglorious peace which ended the disastrous Castro war. The ideal of Urban was to rule as a temporal prince in the interests of France. It was not the ideal of the Catholic revival, with which he had little in common, and in breaking away from THE SEVENTEENTPI CENTUllY 351 it he brought the Papacy to an end as a European power. An amateur soldier and a minor poet, of boundless conceit and con- tradictory habit of mind, Urlian gives the impression of a second- rate personality dealing with great forces which he can neither appreciate nor control. He posed literally as a man of iron : he wished to have a statue forged in iron : he made an armoury at Tivoli, and an arsenal in the Vatican vaults. He covered St. Angelo with an iron breastwork. His table was strewn with military plans interspersed with books of modern poetry. In reality he was a shadow man, playing with the toys of power. The protest of his successor against the formal publication of the Peace of Westphalia announced to the world his failure. For the Peace put the clock back to 1624, taking the first year of Urban's pontificate as the standard measure by which the terri- tory of Europe was apportioned to the two religions. It is true that the Peace of Westphalia marked the triumph of Catholicism over Protestantism, and that it left the Church of Rome " victori- ous and dominant in France, Belgium, Bavaria, Bohemia, Austria, Poland, and Hungary ". But the victory had been won in the fifty years before Urban VIII. began to reign, and the last twenty years had been years of stagnation implying decline. The great finale, which ends the Wars of Religion, brings us to a new phase in the history of the Papacy in which the Popes are at war with movements within the Catholic borders. The rise of the Jansenists, the first of these, was a legacy from the theological disputes of the Council of Trent. Jansen and his friend, Du Verger, two students of Louvain, adopted the strict Augustinian view of the doctrine of Grace, as opposed to the wide Jesuit theory which Bellarmine had formulated, and the Council adopted. Jansen, as Bishop of Ypres, and Du Verger, as Abbot of St. CjTan, gathered round them a group of disciples, among whom the leaders were the influential Arnauld family. The holiness of St. Cyran made him a power in Paris, and the social circle of the Arnaulds widened into a school of thought which had its centre at Port Royal. Jansen's book, " Augus- tinus," gave it a formulated creed, and St. Cyran's influence, which his imprisonment by Richelieu, and his death in 164.3, in no way lessened, created a spiritual force. They worked for the inner regeneration of Catholicism, and deprecated the em- phasis which the Jesuits laid on outward restoration. The deep- ening of personal religion, the freedom of the will, and the con- sciousness of the love of God, were the sources from which they drew. ''S'humilier, soufi'rir, et dependre de Dieu est toute la vie chr^tienne". Le Maitre, the first orator of the Parlement, 352 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY Arnauld d'Andilly, the intimate friend of Richelieu, and other men of influence, joined the unmonastic community of Port Royal — half-spiritual, half-literary, and wholly devout — where Racine developed his classical perfection, and Pascal unfolded his genius, in the atmosphere of mystical Quiet, which afterwards gave them a name. The powers of Angelique Arnauld enlisted the influence of women, and her brilliant leadership of the nuns of Port Royal is one of the glories of Jansenism and of France. There was nothing Protestant about Jansenism, except what its purity and zeal had in common with the earliest leaders of Protestantism and every sincere religious movement. Jansen protested against Richelieu's Protestant alliances, and the mind of Port Royal, as it is expressed in its publications, is utterly Catholic and loyal to tradition. It was indeed an impulse of loyalty which led Port Royal to refer certain doctrines, held by Jansen in spite of papal condemnation, to Innocent X. Innocent was not a theologian, and he tried to avoid dealing with an un- congenial problem. But in 1653 he was persuaded to plunge in, and the result was his condemnation of the Five Propositions in which the Jansenist doctrines were summed up. The man who had persuaded him to do it became Pope himself two years later, and so was unfortunately pledged against the Jansenists, who now denied that the Five Propositions were Jansenist at all. When Alexander VII. upheld them as being contained in Jan- sen's book, the Jansenists retaliated by denying his right to say so. In other words, they denied the Pope's authority ex cathe- dra to determine questions of fact. Alexander condemned them again, and Louis tried to enforce their submission by requiring them to sign formularies drawn up on the model of the Bulls. But the Jansenists had become a party, with the strength and the faults of a political organisation. They had also, against their natural inclination, become heretics, with the courage, the pertinacity, and something of the self-righteousness of heresy in their attitude to their opponents. Pascal's " Provincial Letters " gained for Jansenism " a sweeping victory of human wit " against the Jesuits. The system of casuistry was never more unfairly represented, and no Jesuit ever combined craft and stupidity as ludicrously as Pascal's imaginary opponent, but the "Provincial Letters " did their work with a deadly effectiveness. By the time that outward peace was patched up by Clement IX. in 1668, a large section of the Catholic world was laughing with Pascal against the ill-formulated Jesuit theories which he so mercilessly ridiculed. Irony tells in proportion to its truth, and Pascal — partisan THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 353 and puritan as he wap — knew that he was not fighting in the air. Tlie Jesuits were not the splendid army wliich tliey had been, and their sway was not undisputed. Aquaviva'a successors had relaxed the discipline which held them together, and, in 1661, the Superiors of the Order managed to change the constitution by associating a Vicar with the General, who limited his power and brought in an element of oligarchy. The blow was directed against Goswin Nickel, an unpopular General, who had combined misgovernment with discourtesy, but the change reacted upon the Order by its tendency to check reform. There were two chief ways in which the Jesuits began to forfeit their empire in the seventeenth century. The first of these was their submission to the mercantile spirit, and the second, their misuse of the most delicate of all prerogatives, the direction of conscience. Their shortcomings in both directions have been exaggerated, and much has been laid to their charge for which they were not ex- clusively to blame. But even if their aims have been misunder- stood and their failings unfairly caricatured, the Jesuits must be judged by their own high standards, and by these they cannot be acquitted. They took to merchandise at first as earlier Orders had taken to agriculture. But the first abuses came in when they began to do business for their relations as unpaid solicitors. At the same time they began to bring their possessions into their Colleges with them, and to accept presents from rich pupils. They held fairs and money-exchanges, and they maintained a cloth-market at Macerata and a wine trade in Portugal. Side by side with their growing commercialism, their spiritual administration deteriorated. Their opponents accused them of making the way of transgressors easy, and the burden of sinners light. They pointed out the convenient vagueness of the theory of Probabilism, and likened its upholders to doctors who put pillows under the shoulders of sinners. Their defenders denied that the system of casuistry was intended as a code ; it was merely an attempt to classify sins in a way which the Pope's penal powers made necessary. They pointed to the bold atti- tude of the Jesuits to the Grand Monarque, whom they "cha- grinait tous les jours" — to the heroism which led them to martyrdom in China, and to death in plague-stricken Orleans. There is truth in both points of view. History shows that the Jesuits were for the most part moral and devoted in their lives ; many of them were brave and a few heroic. Undoubtedly they were unfortunate in not having a Pascal in their ranks ; they were careless and unskilful in self-defence. But there are many instances of their " tortuous aberrations of a subtlety subversive 23 354 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY of all morality" (Ranke). They were not free from an "obliging and accommodating" tendency to extend their authority by softening the severity of evangelical Christianity. Bossuet, a fairer judge than Pascal, called them in 1663 " des esprits vaine- ment subtil . . . des astres errants . . , (qui) confondent le ciel et la terre and melent Jesus-Christ avec Bdlial". The strength of Jansenism and the deterioration of Jesuitism — dangerous as both were to the Papacy — were less menacing than the third peril of the age which was personified in Louis XIV., "the trial and terror of the Holy See," who tried to cover his jealousy of the Pope by his zeal as a persecutor. Ever since Gerson and d'Ailly had struggled for the claims of nationality at the Council of Constance, there had always been a " Galilean party " which had coloured the Church in France. Francis I. had nearly followed his rival Henry VIII. in his separation from Rome, for the Valois, like the Tudors, recognised the inherent antagonism between absolutism and Catholicism, which was the moral of the Middle Ages. The Valois, as we have noticed, took no interest in the Council of Trent, and the Tridentine decrees were never confirmed in France. Under the Bourbons, the Galilean tendency was still more strongly marked. Richelieu and Mazarin frequently opposed papal policy, the Peace of West- phalia was arranged in spite of the Pope, and France had more than once made and unmade the Popes of the seventeenth century. And yet the ascendancy of France had its glories for Catholicism. The great Catholic heroes of the seventeenth century are Frenchmen, and its saints are the saints of France. Port Royal alone, out of favour no less with the Court than with the Curia, contributes its severe melancholy to the beauty of the picture. If it was true of the doctrines of Jansenism that " elles y otent de la religion ce qui nous console ; elles y mettent la crainte la douleur, la desespoir " — France gave back to Catholi- cism in St. Francis de Sales the tenderness and warmth which Port Royal had taken away. While St. Francis taught men and women to "pray by labours of love," St. Vincent de Paul, himself a peasant, became "the great missionary of the common people ". The new Order of Ursuline nuns took the young girls of France into its care, while St. Maur provided a Catholic education for the boys of the noblesse. Against this we have to set the picture of conventional religion as it prevailed at the court of Louis XIV. A better wit than Louis made him say "L'dtat c'est moi," but if he had said it, he would certainly have included religion within the scope of the epigram. What is more, the French clergy, with Bossuet at THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 356 their head, would have agreed with him. They condemned Port Royal less for its heresies than for its failure to regard Louis as a second Pope. They supported Louis in his persecution of the Huguenots, which culminated in the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, because freedom of conscience, as far as the Edict admitted it, was inconsistent with passive obedience to the Crown. The influence of Madame de Maintenon, before and after her marriage with the King, and her obvious good sense and high principle, established religion as a fashion at the inconsistent court of the Grand Monarque. It was an easy kind of religion, with which the man of the world, with the help of the Jesuits, could keep pace. The motto of it was, " II faut s'accommoder c\ I'humanitd" (D'Aubigny), and its justification is expressed by St. Evremond — " Ceux qui n'ont pas assez de consideration pour I'autre vie sont conduits au salut par les ^gards et les devoirs de-celle-ci ". The religion of the Court of Versailles, supj>orted by the Jesuits, opposed by the Jansenists, and upheld by the national pride of the Gallican clergy, was foredoomed to opposition from the religion of Rome. It is characteristic of the new era, which begins with the close of the Wars of Religion, that the movements in France are more important to the Papacy than the policy of the Popes. Innocent X. (1644-1655) brought the court of Rome into disrepute by his domestic troubles, and the financial corruption which was the result of them. He was ruled entirely by his rich sister-in-law, Donna Olimpia Maidalchino, whose quarrels with her step- daughter and other rivals grew into Curial faction-fights. Rumour, of course, alloted to Olimpia a more interesting and scandalous connection with the Pope than that of domestic tyrant. But the truth seems to have been that she had financed him in his youth, as the rich woman of the family, and that, finding him a successful investment, she meant to 'share the profits. He was elected as a harmless nonentity, because " il parlar poco, simulare assai, e non far niento " (Venetian envoy). He had no nephews, but his government followed the caprices of Donna Olimpia, her rivals, and his own favourites. His policy, as far as he had one, was pro-Spanish, and his attack on the Barberini in 1646 was against the wishes of Mazarin. Alexander VII. (1655-1667) proved to be another nonentity, though better things had been hoped of him. He did, however, reform the administration of the Curia by reviving and reorganising the Congregations of Cardinals, which Sixtus V. had employed, and giving them real administrative pov/er in their different departments. Alexander had really meant to avoid nepotism, but the 356 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY corrupt influences which he found among Innocent's courtiers tempted him to break his resolution. He therefore sent for Flavio Chigi, who became " Cardinal Padrone," and took the uncongenial burden of government away from his uncle. The institution of the Congregation of State, with the office of Secretary of State, had given the Papacy a Prime Minister, and with the growth of order and system in the administration, the govern- ment became less haphazard, less cosmopolitan, and more aristocratic. Offices were given to men of good family in accordance with Alexander's cvirious principle that as kings preferred noblemen to wait on them, so a priesthood of gentlemen must be "pleasing to God". With the good offices of Flavio Chigi and the Secretary of State to relieve him from his duties, Alexander sank into literary ease and cultured leisure. He was very proud of the conversion to Catholicism of Christina of Sweden, whose master-mind had capitulated to the logic of the Jesuits. He disapproved of her unladylike behaviour when, after her abdication, she travelled about Europe, rejoicing in her emancipation, and flaunting her eccentric temperament before a half-admiring and half-scandalised Europe. But Alexander welcomed her warmly, and encouraged her to settle down under his own eye. Since his benevolence flattered her she complied with his desire, and became the centre of a salon-academy, a patron of art on a grand scale, and a secret service agent in the Catholic interest. Alexander was succeeded by his Secretary of State, who, as Clement IX. (1667-1670), continued the negative tradition in politics of his predecessors. He was a good, kind, and edifying person, whom his contemporaries likened to a tree in full blossom which bore no fruit. His pontificate is chiefly mem- orable for the struggle between the Jesuits and the Jansenists, in which he exercised a moderating influence. He met the Jansenists half-way by requiring only the minimum of refutation of the Five Propositions as a condition for their absolution. But Port Royal knew that the victory was theirs, and history proved that a stronger force was needed to suppress Jansenism than the waning power of the Papacy. For the moment, however, the Jansenists were eclipsed by a struggle in which as mystics they had no part. The election of Clement X. (1670-1676) was followed by the outbreak of troubles with Louis XIV, Clement leaned towards Spain in his European policy, and Louis therefore encroached on the rights of the Papacy in France. In his attempt to extend the rights of Regales beyond the territories which belonged to the Crown he challenged Clement to a contest THE SEVENTEENTPI CENTURY 357 which had long been imminent. He followed thit; up by further attacks on monastic orders, on clerical immunities, and on donations to Rome. Two Bishops with Janeenist leanings, who were opposed to the Jesuit influence at court, appealed to the Pope, and in so doing made the quarrel constitutional. The accession of Innocent XI. (1676-1689) was unfortunate for Louis, for he now had to meet an opponent who was too good for him. Innocent followed up Clement's ineffectual protest with three strong admonitions to Louis, which drew down on him the wrath of France, and brought Louis to his climax. In 1682, he summoned the clergy to St. Germain, and after long discussions a declaration of Four Articles was drawn up, to which the assembly was required to subscribe. The Four Articles were an epitome of Gallicanism. They aflirni (1) that sovereigns are not subject to the Pope in temporal things ; (2) that a General Council is superior to a Pope ; (3) that the power of the Pope is subject to the regulations of a Council, and that the Pope cannot decide anything contrary to the rules and constitutions of the Galilean Church ; (4) that decisions of the Papacy are not irrevocable. No Pope who was conscious of his responsibilities towards Catholic unity could let such a declaration stand. Innocent condemned it in a Bull, and refused to ratify the appointment of thirty Bishops who were responsible for framing it. The situation was very like the troubles with England under Henry VIII., except that Louis wanted nothing from the Pope and so could afford to wait, whereas Henry in his urgency to obtain the divorce was, obliged to push on to extremes. Louis was careful to temporise and keep on the right side of the law, and thirty French Sees remained unshepherded. This was the moment which he chose for his persecutions of the Huguenots, which were intended to prove his orthodoxy to French Catholics who might have qualms about it. The eloquence of Bossuet, the winning powers of the Jesuits, the loneliness of emigration, and the cruelty of the "Dragonades" were the weapons by which Louis tried, and tried in vain, to stamp out the harmless Huguenots whose industrious existence was an offence to his religious and to his monarchical pride. Innocent's magnificent protest against the un-Christlike " conversion by armed apostles " is the glory of the Papacy. Fresh bitterness was added to the quarrel by the overbearing behaviour of the French Ambassador, who appeared in Rome in 1687 with an armed retinue, and offended the papal court by his arrogant hostility. Innocent's fearless and calm determination 358 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY to "walk in the name of the Lord" irritated Louis into further aggression. He appealed to a General Council, attacked Avignon, which was still papal property — imprisoned a nuncio, and threatened to create a patriarchate of France. Innocent re- mained unmoved, for he knew that the day of reckoning was at hand. Louis had aroused the antagonism of Europe, and in 1687 he was threatened by a combination of his enemies in the League of Augsburg. The Papacy gave its secret support to the League, and found itself once more in alliance with Pro- testantism against a Catholic power. It was not without some justification that the Galilean party called Innocent the Protest- ant Pope. It was reserved for another Innocent, of a more accommodating disposition, to receive the submission of France. The war with the League of Augsburg and the influence of Madame de Maintenon combined to bring Louis to his senses : he had learnt the impolicy of alienating two large sections of his sub- jects at once — the Protestants and the Jansenists — by his cruelty and severity ; the Catholics by his insults to the Papacy ; and both sides by his alliance with the Turks. In 1697 Innocent XII. satisfied himself ])y an apology in which the Galilean Bishops assured him of their "inexpressible grief" at the Declaration of 1682, Louis privately withdrew the four resolutions, which had become the law of the land, but he afterwards swore to their validity in a less chastened moment. He was worsted, but not humbled. Innocent XL was a man of whom even his enemies found it hard to speak evil. He was strong enough to make many enemies, and honourable enough to silence them. His reforms were far-reaching and determined, especially in respect to finance and nepotism. At the beginning of his pontificate the Papacy was threatened with bankruptcy, for corruption and impolicy had combined to raise the expenditure above the revenue. By a careful reform of the whole financial system he managed to re- store the revenue, and by reducing the interest on the Monti, in spite of protests, he gave it a sound economic basis. But he realised that he must go deeper still for a radical cure. He entirely gave up nepotism, and kept the nephew whom he loved at a distance from Rome. In spite of his financial difficulties, Innocent gave large sums to Austria for the wars against the Turks, who had once more pressed forward and laid siege to Vienna. A man like Innocent was bound to be misunderstood by his contemporaries, and it is extraordinary that he was not worse calumniated. As it was, his financial reforms were regarded as parsimony, his austerity as inhumanity, and his gentleness THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 359 towards heretics as the taint of heresy. His broad and etates- nian-Hke views condemned alike the arrogance of Louis XIV. and the bigotry of James H. of England. He hated with im- partial intensity the futile persecutions of the court of Versailles and the impolitic concessions to Catholicism which brought James II. to his ruin. His reward was that Catholics of both courts called him a heretic, while William III. claimed him as an ally. Tlie short pontificate of Alexander VIII. (1689-1691) was im- portant only for the formal close of the quarrel with France by a papal manifesto of 1691 declaring the Articles of 1682 to be in- valid, of no effect, and not binding even on those who had sworn to observe them. He restored nepotism in spite of the good example of his predecessor, but — fortunately perhaps — he died before much harm was done. Innocent XII. (1691-1700) brings the seventeenth century to an honourable end. His high ideal, his blameless character, and his love of justice are described by Browning in " The Ring and the Book". Browning's beautiful portrait of Innocent is history expressed in terms of art : it fills in the historical outline without violating the tracery of truth. His election was the work of the French party, who wanted a peaceable man, and found one. He put an end to nepotism for ever by fixing a financial limit to the offices which might be held by the relations of a Pope, and he " reduced the power of money" by forbidding the sales of certain lucrative ofiices. Perhaps he was sometimes made a tool of, and perhaps his goodness of heart was imposed upon by his courtiers. The public audiences which he gave to the poor seem to have given more consolation than redress, and it was said that his ministers played on his charity to distract him from further projects of reform. "If he could always act for himself," says Contarini, "he would be one of the greatest Popes." The seventeenth century, with all its great upheavals, its political experiments, and its religious changes, was rich in such men. In the modern state system there was no room for the Papacy, but the gradual withdrawal of the Popes from European politics was the emancipation of the Catholic character. Great churchmen were still great politicians, and sometimes corrupt ones, but, on the whole, the type of Bossuet and F^ndlon tended to supersede the type of Richelieu, and the last two Innocents created a tradition which effaced the moral relapse of Urban VIIT. and Innocent X. CHAPTER XXIX THE CENTURY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT, A.D. 1700-1846 IN the eighteenth century a succession of innocent Popes suffered humiliation at the hands of a world of sinners, and the Papacy had to face the consequences of all the moral shortcomings of its history. All the currents of hostile opinion which had been gaining force in the seventeenth century beat against the Rock of St. Peter in the eighteenth. In the end they broke themselves upon it, but meanwhile it offered an unresisting front to the attacks of wave upon wave of the great tide of the " Enlightenment". The moral of the wars of the Spanish Succession, with which the century opens, was the same as the moral of the Thirty Years' War. It showed that the Popes must pay as dearly for not taking a side as the Popes of earlier days had paid for doing so. Clement XI. (1700-1721) was a good and upright man who tried, from the best of motives, to be neutral in the great struggle, and drew down on himself in consequence the hostility of both sides. He was naturally inclined to take the side of Louis XIV. — now a chastened Catholic — who wanted to give Spain to his second son, the adopted heir of the last Hapsburg. There was more than one reason why the Popes should favour this Bourbon candidate. It was still a part of their policy to prefer French to Spanish power in Naples, so as to avoid the uncomfortable position of being between the two fires fed with the same Spanish fuel — Milan and Naples. This consideration had led Innocent XII. to approve and perhaps to suggest the adoption of Philip of France by Charles II. in his will. Lastly, the Peace of West- phalia had torn the Empire and the Papacy asunder, and the alliance of Austria with the leading Protestant in Europe, William III., widened the breach. In spite of all this, Clement would not commit himself to the recognition of Philip as King of Naples, and an Austrian army found means of forcing him to accept the Archduke Charles. At the Peace of Utrecht, 1713, neither side had any special interest in gratifying the Pope, and the result was that his rights were 360 THE CENTURY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT 3G1 set aside in Naples, in Sicily, in Parma and Piacenza ; the new kingdom of Sardinia was given to Savoy without any reference to the Pope. Spain's sudden occupation of this island defeated Clement's scheme for a Crusade, by which he had hoped to restore his prestige. The fleet which he had persuaded Spain to contribute was used by Alberoni, the Spanish minister, for Sardinia, and the eyes of Austria were turned by it from the East. The new King of Sardinia said of Clement that "he would always have been esteemed worthy of the Papacy if he had never attained it". His pontificate occurred at one of those dangerous moments in history when an age which has worn itself out is passing away. The last phase of the Grand Monarque in France was a time of surging intellectual movement, held under by the militant orthodoxy of the old King. The crushing and unfortunate Bull "Unigenitus" was issued by Clement against the Jansenists in 1713, "pourfaire plaisir au roi". The progress of Jansenism in the years leading up to " Unigenitus " was due to the opposition which it had met. Louis's bout of orthodoxy found an outlet in the destruction of the Port Royal Convent in 1709. Before that he had extorted a milder form of the " Unigenitus " Bull from Clement which gave him power to proceed against the nuns. Even Fe'ndlon had approved of this earlier Bull, for the Jansenists were now ubiquitous and defiant. But persecution had the usual effect, and in 1710 F^n^lon had to own that the Jansenists were everywhere — in society, at the Sorbonne, and among the Clergy and the religious orders. At the time of the death of Louis in 1715, France was divided into two camps ; the Jansenists had the majority, but the Jesuit — or "Unigenitus" — party dominated the court. The question at issue turned on the "Infallibility" of the papal Bull, which the Jansenists disputed and the Jesuits afiirmed. Under the Regency, the Jansenists were at first tolerated, owing to their strength, and the general relaxation of the government. But the peace with Spain produced a revival of the Jesuit influence, and in 1723 a Jansenist says that " Rome rules over us more than ever it did". The young King's confessor was a Jesuit, and the " Chambre du Pape" exercised a censorship over Jansenist literature. The im- moral but not altogether incapable Dubois bought his way to the Cardinalate by his zeal against the Jansenists as President of the Clerical Assembly. Finally, in 1725, Louis XV. was married to a Polish princess who bore the significant nickname of "Unigenita". But the opposition was no longer confined to a group of unruly 362 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY and unorthodox mystics. In 1721, Montesquieu published his "Lettres Persanes" — a cold-blooded and obscene piece of litera- ture with which the age of reason opened its direct attack on the Papacy. The Pope, according to Montesquieu, was an old idol worshipped from habit, and only worth attacking because of his magician's power of making people believe absurdities. Montesquieu was not the first to throw the stone, but he was the most skilled in hitting the mark. Like his contemporaries, he borrowed his negations from Montaigne, his ethics from the "Libertines" of the seventeenth century, and his irony from Bayle (1646-1706). These things were what is called " in the air," which means that they were latent in the unconscious life of the early eighteenth century. The thin veil of religion under the Maintenon regime barely hid the atheism which was the intellectual fashion. In the same way the propriety on the surface of Louis's court life half- revealed the "moral chaos "- which broke through under the Regency. In political philosophy, too, the defenders of absolutism, like Hobbes, passed the most vital part of their theory to the upholders of constitutional government, who found a leader in Locke. It is possible to regard the eighteenth century as the age which unmasked hypocrisy : at anyrate it must be exonerated from the charge of pretending, to be other than it was — irreligious, defiant, and licentious. Clement XL was followed by three successively inconspicuous Popes, under whom the alliance between the eighteenth-century philosophers and the Jansenists gained ground unchecked. Inno- cent XIII. (1721-1724) was kind-hearted and feeble ; Benedict XIII. (1724-1730), a " bonhomme fort pieux, fort faible, et fort sot," gave the forces of unbelief fresh grounds for blasphemy by the favour which he showed to the scandalous Cardinal Coscia, who revived the practices of unregenerate days by trafficking in spirit- ual privileges ; Clement XIL (1730-1740) was dominated by his nephews and by Cardinal Alberoni, the leader of the so-called " Zelanti " party, which had elected him. A fierce and intricate struggle over the antiquated investiture question absorbed Clement's pontificate, the outcome of which was the election in 1740 of Lambertini, a man of compromise, whose temperament was a surety for peace, as Benedict XIV. (1740-1758). Walpole said of him that he was " loved by Papists, esteemed by Pro- testants, a priest without insolence or interest, a prince without favourites, a Pope without nephews ". The picture is a negative one, and inasmuch as it is true it condemns the subject. For the times demanded other qualities in a Pope than those which THE CEKTUKY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT 3G3 the '' merry witty Bolognese " had to offer. His policy in Italy and in Spain was based on compromise and concession, and it might be claimed that his lack of interest in temporal politics was at least as much a virtue as a fault. But the mind of Europe was now centred in France, and a policy of drift among the contlietinq; currents there was disastrous for St. Peter's ship. The Pope was fatally addicted to literature, and as the personal friend of Voltaire and patron of Montesquieu it was hard for him to stand aloof from the " Esprit philosophique " which was so closely allied to the twin monsters of atheism and Jansenism. The Jesuit spirit, on the other hand, was uncongenial to him, although he was the personal friend of the General of the Order. In 1742 Voltaire dedicated his drama " Mahomet" to Benedict XIV., and the Pope thanked him for the compliment, in spite of the fact that its publication was forbidden in Paris. In 1748 he gave the author of the "Esprit des Lois" a dispensation from fasting, but the Jesiiits and Jansenists combined for once in an outcry which compelled him to put the book on the Index, in spite of which it ran through twenty-one editions. The publica- tion of the Encyclopedia— the " Bible of unbelief "—containing articles on all the debatable points which Catholicism had omitted to defend, gave fresh impetus to the atheistical move- ment. The career of Madame Pompadour, in her character of reUgious arbiter between the Jesuits and Jansenists, supplied the necessary moral indignation without which the crusades of anti- religion inevitably miss the mark. Against the worst danger which Catholicism had ever had to face from without, the forces of the Church were not only divided but subdivided into hostile camps. At the moment when the Jesuit and Jansenist duel had broken out with renewed vigour, at the end of the pontifi- cate of Benedict XIV., the Jesuits were divided against them- selves into two rival parties by the question of reform. The spirit of worldliness had found its way through the vulnerable points in the fortress of the Society of Jesus. Their connection with politics, and in particular the independence of the Jesuit State of Paraguay, involved them in political complications with Spain and Portugal. Their commercial rivals in the wine trade attacked them by demanding a Visitation of the Order. It was therefore highly necessary to them that a Pro- Jesuit Pope should be appointed to succeed Benedict and to defend the order in case of need. The election of Clement XIII. (1758-1769) was therefore worked by the Jesuits for their own advantage. But they poon found out that he was " Nathaniel— not an Apostle "—or in 364 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY other words a weak reed. It might have been impossible even for a strong champion to save the Jesuits at this time, for the storm-clouds were gathering fast against them. Weakened out- wardly by their contests with Jansenism, and inwardly by the wear and tear to their ideals, to which their intimacy with the world had peculiarly exposed them, the Jesuits had to face a Bourbon combination against them, based on the report of a hostile Visitation, and supported in France by a charge of regicide doctrine, and in Spain by supposed responsibility for a series of popular uprisings. In 1762 the Jesuit schools were closed in France, and two years later the Order was expelled from the country. Clement tried to save them, and the Bull " Apostoli- cum Pascendi" in 1765 was intended to ward off the anger of the King of Spain. But it was too late. The Jesuits had aroused too many storms of hatred for anything less than a strong and steady blast of Catholic enthusiasm to counter, and there was no quarter in eighteenth-century Europe from which such a wind could be expected to blow. Charles III. of Spain was not at heart antagonistic to the Jesuits, but his ministers were Jansenists and it was always easy to make the Jesuit doctrines responsible for anarchical movements. So in 1767, the Jesuits were expelled from Spain and their interesting political experi- ment in Paraguay came to an end. Before the end of Clement's pontificate something like a Jesuit war was being waged in Europe, and his death in 1769 meant life or death to the Order which he had striven in vain to uphold. The election of Ganganelli as Clement XIV. (1769-1744) was so great a disappointment to the Zelanti, as the Jesuit party were called, that they afterwards denied its validity on the plea that simony was involved. Clement loved peace and justice, and hated persecution. But he was wearied with the tedious com- plaints of the Jesuits and the importunities of their enemies the Bourbon princes. He gave concessions in order to gain time, and succeeded in delaying the official condemnation of the Order, for which Europe was clamouring, for four more years. But it had to come, and in 1773 the Bull was drafted which dis- banded the spiritual army of the Church. The Jesuits were ofi"ered pensions if they would give up their Order, but the unequalled discipline which Loyola had given to his followers stood them in good stead at the last, and the Society of Jesus survived even this last and most insidious of the many attacks which were intended to destroy it. It survived, and that was all. Its power was annulled and its influence relegated to subterranean channels and far-away haunts. But it held together in the THE CENTUKY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT 365 darkness and waited for the light which would surely break over the world when the glare of the "enlightenment" should pass away, and the dawn of a purer religion gladden the life of man. The herald of that dawn was already on the wing when America ''shouted to liberty" in 1776, and fifteen years later laid down the great amendment to the Declaration of Independence which announced the birth of religious freedom, miscalled toleration, in the New World. It is the glory of America to have discovered the great truth, which centuries of persecution had failed to bring home to the Old World, that the State cannot " tolerate " religion : the State can only recognise spiritual freedom. In maintaining that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press," America has made a stand in history for which all nations should call her blessed, and to which the Old World has capitulated, in more or less degree, ever since. But the truth which the New World had stumbled upon was not recognised at once in the Old. The Papacy, being weak, had to face a new access of poHtical opposition from Germ.any. An Erastian party, headed by Von Hontheim, Elector of Treves, demanded a National Church on a plan similar to that which Henry VIII. had wished to establish in England. The Emperor, Joseph II. of Austria (1780-1792), embarked on a policy of suppressing monasteries and dictating public worship. To make him desist Pius VI. set out from Rome and first earned the title of the "Apostolic pilgrim" by his unsuccessful mission. In France the gathering storm-clouds were beginning to swallow up the whole prospect, and sweep the various currents of philosophical dispute into the one vast and overwhelming force of the Revolu- tion. At first the Church in France supported the Revolution, but in May, 1790, it was alienated by a series of hostile enact- ments, and although some clergy submitted to them, the majority went into opposition and stood out boldly against the approach- ing madness of the Terror. An oath was imposed which the Pope condemned, and the King fled to avoid the apostasy of acquiescence. So that when the Monarchy fell in August, 1792, the Catholic religion fell with it, and the establishment of atheism in 1793 was the logical outcome of earlier events. The passing of the Terror brought no mitigation of the hostility with which the ruling powers treated the Church, and the only act of toleration which was passed was instantly withdrawn in 1797. One might have expected that Napoleon would have used the Church as an ally in the restoration of that good order which 366 A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY was necessary to military success. Such, indeed, was his pro- fessed attitude to it. "I regard religion," he said, "not as the mystery of the Incarnation, but as the secret of social order." And yet Napoleon's policy towards the Papacy was from the first hostile and aggressive. In 1796 the French armies invaded Bologna and the old Pope had to buy a truce on heavy terms which he could not fulfil. Having thus succeeded in putting Pius VI. at a disadvantage Napoleon pressed it home ; he seized Ancona and threatened Rome. Pius was compelled to make peace, and Joseph Bonaparte was sent as ambassador to Rome with orders to create discord. The Roman democrats were encouraged to invite French help in a revival of the republican movement, with the result that the papal troops found them- selves once more at war with the French. The French general, Berthier, entered Rome in the name of France and occupied the castle of St. Angelo while the Republicans took the city. The old Pope, now in his eighties, confronted the soldiers bravely and submitted to insult in the Vatican, and one may hope that he had the consolation of knowing that his victors had made the fatal mistake which throughout history had overtaken the oppressors of St. Peter. Pius VI. was sent away in a carriage to the Dominicans at Siena and thence to Valence, where in the course of the year 1798 he died of a broken heart. The lack of money had forced Napoleon into this first great indiscretion in hisi dealings with the Papacy. The lack of his- torical insight made it possible for him to go further in the same mistaken direction. At the time of the election of Pius VII. (1800-1814) there were signs abroad that a religious revival was about to set in. The Church in France had never lost its hold on the provinces, and under the Directory the priests began quietly to return to Paris. The so-called Constitutional Church, which had bent itself to the varying will of the revolutionary State, had forfeited the respect which it had never deserved, while, on the other hand, the priests who had remained loyal to the Papacy reaped the harvest of persecution in the love and reverence of sincere Catholics throughout France. The First Consul, although he professed himself frankly to be more a Mohammedan than anything else, declared his willingness to make Catholicism " dominant " in France. The wearied French Catholics and the sympathetic new Pope were alike unable to see the difl"erence be- tween the patronising ofi'er of Napoleon and the American system which their hearts desired. Even if it did not satisfy the more enlightened among them, it was acceptable on the grounds that half a loaf is better than no bread. So, in spite of suspicions on THE CENTURY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT 3G7 both sides, the terms of Napoleon were formulated and sent to Rome in the draft of the first Concordat. The words " dominant religion" were changed to the more non-committal "religion of the majority," and the minister sent to Rome to present the agreement was instructed to " behave towards the Pope as though he was in command of two hundred thousand men". The Pope stood out against certain features of Napoleon's offer, and par- ticularly in regard to four points. He opposed Napoleon's desire to recognise the "constitutional" clergy, by whom the papal authority had been set aside. He objected to the confiscation of Church lands on the system laid down by the Concordat. He insisted that the Bishops at present in occupation of the Sees of France should resign, and that the Catholic religion should be recognised as the State religion if the State was to claim the right to make appointments to vacant bishoprics. The Pope's delay in accepting his terms irritated Napoleon, but, after tearing up the Pope's reply, he eventually signed the document. The first Concordat, which was signed in 1801 and published in 1802, was in itself a good offer from the Catholic point of view. It safeguarded the honour of the French Catholics and of the Papacy, and, of course, Pius VII. accepted it. The difficulty was to make the compromise workable, and this obvious defect gave to the First Consul his opportunity to juggle with the Con- cordat to his own advantage. Under the guise of an appendix intended to fill in the details of its administration, Napoleon in- vented the so-called '^ Organic Articles," which, in practice, gave entire control of the Church in France to himself and " bound the Church by links of steel and gold to every French Govern- ment down to the year 1905". But the First Consul had once more gained the shadow and lost the substance of power. He pressed his advantage home to the uttermost. He demanded the creation of five French Cardinals to safeguard his influence in the Consistory, and he secured in 1803 a Concordat for the Italian Church on the same lines as that of France. But the total result amounted to something different from the First Consul's intention. The spirit of Catholicism, refreshed by the outward peace, gained strength to resist him, and the Gallican- ism which he wished to foster languished under his care, while the ultra-montane spirit revived, and, through the events which followed, burned with a steady flame of loyalty to the ill-treated Pope. In the course of the year 1802 Napoleon became First Consul for life, and it was clear that he was aiming at the Crown. In 1804 he became Emperor and desired papal confirmation of his 368 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY act. Pius set out for Paris to perform the Coronation, in ignor ance of the fact that Napoleon had already crowned himself, and to perform the marriage of Napoleon with Josephine. He returned to Rome without having secured a single privilege, and in the same year a further cause of hostility arose. Napoleon's " little brother Jerome" had contracted an awkward marriage with Miss Paterson of Baltimore, which, in view of a higher destiny, Napoleon wished to have annulled. The marriage being perfectly canonical, Pius refused to do so, whereupon Napoleon annulled it himself by imperial decree. A further quarrel in 1805 turned on the garrisoning of Ancona by Napoleon. This exploit of Napoleon's at the time of the Austrian war had caused a dispute between Austria, who thought that the Pope should have pre- vented it, but the Pope dared neither oppose Napoleon nor confess to Austria his inability to restrain him. The battle of Trafalgar in 1805 gave him the necessary courage to complain, and in answering him Napoleon adopted the Charlemagne tone, and declared that he had garrisoned Ancona for the defence of the Pope. Pius disclaimed both the obligation and the need of such protection, and expostulated further against Joseph Bona- parte's action in seizing the throne of Naples without regard to the papal suzerainty thereof. The Emperor replied as a mediaeval Emperor would have done. He niarched an army into the papal States, and gave the Pope's possessions in Naples to Talleyrand. Finding the Pope unshaken in spirit, he threatened in 1806 to occupy the whole papal territory. Pius still held out; he opposed Napoleon in Venice, and, in 1807, he offered to close the ports which Napoleon already held. Pius had a gentle Christian soul, but he had the courage necessary to maintain his dignity. He would be conquered if he must, but he would not submit, and in this he persisted through all his troubles to the great embarrassment of his oppressor. In 1809 the papal States fell to Napoleon, the papal army was absorbed into the French army, and the Pope was surrounded by Frenchmen. Finally, Rome itself was an- nexed, and the tricouleur replaced the papal banner. Pius still thundered his condemnation, and the Bull " Cum Memoranda " asserted the Papal supremacy in uncompromising terms, and the utter condemnation and excommunication of his enemies. His behaviour was both courageous and masterly. Napoleon carried him off first to Florence and then to Savona, wishing to exhibit to the world the humiliating position to which his power had brought the successor of St, Peter. But Pius turned his captivity into a catastrophe by refusing to perform pontifical acts. Na- I THE CENTURY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT 3G9 )oleon above all wanted his divorce, which Pius refused to give, rhe Emperor then tried, as others had tried before him, to do vithout the Pope, but his failure was assured. The so-called 'Gallican experiment" turned against himself. The Commis- ion summoned to endorse his ecclesiastical policy declared him n the wrong, and had to be dismissed. The 8enatus Consulta >f 181U decreed the adherence of future Popes to the Declaration >f 1682. The Cardinals were attacked for their refusal to nullify ■s^apoleon's marriage with Josephine, and dispense his marriage vith Marie-Louise. Tho);e who refused were degraded and be- ;ame " Black Cardinals '. Pius himself continued to hold out, md demanded his liberty before he would discuss negotiations. In January, 1811, a new Commission demanded the liberation )f the Pope. In June a National Council was summoned, which ihowed increased loyalty to Pius, and refused to act independ- sntly of him. An unsigned document, promising to appoint Bishops within six months or forfeit his rights to the Metropolitan, vas produced by Napoleon as coming from the Pope, but the ;:!ouncil had to be reformed before its ratification of the document ;ould be extorted. Even then the papal confirmation was lecessary, and, until September, Pius held out. But he finally ;ave way and signed it in a form which Napoleon thought to be 00 pontifical and insufficiently Gallican. It was, however, a ign of weakening. The old Pope was enfeebled by captivity, md, when he found himself carried ofi' to the lovely splendour of ^ontainebleau, his resistance for a time broke down. He signed he preliminary draft of the Concordat of Fontainebleau on Janu- iry 18, 1813, and thus abandoned his rights of institution in France. He afterwards retracted his consent, but his breach of aith was more deplorable than his momentary weakness. The year 1813 saw the sunset of the Napoleonic power, and n 1814 Pius VII. was free and on his vv^ay to Rome, having been iberated at the demand of the allies. The failure of Napoleon n his treatment of the Church might seem to be only incidental his failure to establish a permanent hegemony in Europe, but n reality the victory of the Church was a real victory, due to the imitation of the Emperor's vision. He had wanted the alliance )f the Pope, and tried first by agreement and afterwards by force ;o obtain it. He failed to realise that the alliance which he sought would be valueless unless it were bestowed by the free- vill of the Pope. The Church must be free or else it ceases to 36 itself, and it is in virtue of this axiom that it has always been ible to take captivity captive. The Rome to which Pius VII. returned after his exile greeted 24 370 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY him with the pathetic enthusiasm which was reminiscent of the Middle Ages. For Rome was now as ever a prey to the inevit- able spirit of faction, but in place of the greater duels of earlier times bands of robbers and organised brigands struck terror and admiration into the hearts of the inconsistent populace. Secret societies of all kinds flourished, and were classed under the head- ing of "freemasons". To cope with these disorders the Pope found himself faced with a totally inadequate revenue and a chaotic system of government. Napoleon had temporarily in- creased the papal revenue by selling Church property, but most of these funds were already spent and there were Congregations and Cardinalates to be endowed, in addition to the restoration of nearly two thousand monasteries and 612 convents. To help him in the superhuman task which confronted him the old Pope had at his side the master-mind of the Cardinal Consalvi. It was he who had strengthened by his presence and counsel the resistance of the Pope at Fontainebleau, and it was he who had upheld the power of the Papacy at the Congress of Vienna. Napoleon said of him, " This man, who never would become a priest, is more of a priest than all the others". Consalvi lived in the world the life of a man of the world, and it was inconsistent with his theories that such a man as himself should be a priest. He therefore refused to burden himself with the priestly office and remained only in the minor orders neces- sary to his acceptance of the cardinalate. On his return from the Congress of Vienna he became " the soul of the Pope," and in 1816 he put into effect his programme for the government of the Patrimony. The system which he favoured was a form of Napoleonic bureaucracy, known as the "Montuproprio". He divided the papal territories into twenty-one Delegations over which Cardinals presided, with Governors under them selected from the prelature. Consalvi's government never had a chance of success, for it depended on the existence of competent officials, and there were none to be found. Moreover, there was a vigorous opposition, headed by his rival, Cardinal Pacca, and supported by the reactionary element among the Cardinals and by those whose privileges were menaced by the revival of government. The opposition could point to serious defects and still more serious gaps in the work of Consalvi. His attempt to deal with the brigands by a treaty was ingenious but not practical. On the principle of "set a thief to catch a thief" he gave rise to a ghastly vendetta between two of the chief robber families, who attacked one another in the interests of the peace. A still more vital defect was the total lack of any system of education, for THE CENTURY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT 371 this undermined the whole structure on which his bureaucracy should have rested. The total ignorance both of the rulers and of the ruled produced injustice and incompetence on the one hand and lawlessness on the other. In guiding the foreign policy of the Pope, Consalvi showed a truer statesmanship. Dm'ing his absence at Vienna, Cardinal della Genga had persuaded Pius to repudiate all the agreements with France since 1797, on the ground that they had been extorted by force, and to reinstate the old Bishops in place of the " Eveques de circonstance," as the more accommodating Con- cordat Bishops were called. Consalvi realised that this was fatal and protested vehemently to Cardinal Pacca, proposing as an alternative that alterations should be made in the Concordat. In 1815, he drew up the alterations, which were duly ratified by Pius in June, 1817. But the evils which had been wrought by the attempted breach of faith could only be modified by the later and more honourable policy. In Germany, the influence of Metternich encouraged the national spirit at the expense of the Pope, especially in Bavaria, Hanover, and the Upper Rhine. But Consalvi watched his opportunities and in course of time, Metternich's growing Catholicism enabled him to make treaties with Bavaria, with Prussia, and with the Upper Rhine, and subsequently with Russia. In Italy, Consalvi was lenient to the nationalist movements and opposed to cruelty. King Victor Emmanuel of Sardinia was his close friend and ally, and the King of Naples was bought by the promise of papal support in his attempt to establish his absolutism. Consalvi was very friendly to England — more so than to Ireland, and he urged the Pope not to abandon the cause of the Catholic emancipation to please the lawless Irish. There was some trouble with Russia concerning the proposal to establish a Metropolitan Bishop at Vilna, but Consalvi made peace in spite of it, and conceded the right to the Czar Alexander — although schismatic — of nominating candidates to Catholic bishoprics in his dominions. In August, 1823, Pius VII. ended his long and weary pilgrim- age upon earth, and his heart-broken friend and adviser followed him five months later. In their lighter moments the two friends had worked together for the revival of art, and under their in- spiration a new wing of the Vatican was opened, and gave a symbol to the world of the restoration of holy religion. Pius VII. was succeeded by the old enemy of Consalvi, Cardinal della Genga, who took the name of Leo XII. (1823-1829). He put a summary conclusion to the work of his rival by a complete 372 A SHOKT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY reversal of his policy along the lines of extreme reaction. A rule of violent severity did much to foster the underlying current of liberalism which was, of course, strengthened into fuller life by persecution. Under Leo, Cardinal Rivarola condemned 508 "Carbonari," or members of secret societies, without trial, in three months, while 368 persons were placed under supervision and forced to keep spiritual observances. Forced marriages between rival sects, persecutions of the Jews, the supervision of education by the Jesuits, all tended to fill the same stream with the rising current of revolutionary discontent. The reaction continued under Pius VIII. (1829-1830), and the accession of the monk Capellari, as Gregory XVI. (1830-1846), carried it to its zenith. A sudden, violent, and short-lived revolution in the States of the Church led the Pope to turn for help to Austria and so to give away his hard- won independence. The result was that the European powers claimed the right to help the Pope to put an end to the misrule in his dominion, and demanded the participation of laymen in the government of the States of the Church. Gregory acceded, but afterwards went back on his con- sent ; this resulted in further intervention by Austria, and then counter-intervention by France at Ancona, which town became the rallying-point of the liberal cause. The cruelty with which the Pope's hired soldiers repressed the revolt, and the harslmess of the reign of reaction, led in 1845 to the Protest of Rimini, which was an appeal for the redress of grievances addressed by the Pope's subjects to the powers of Europe. But the Pope once more took refuge behind the buttress which Austria was only too ready to provide and remained in this attitude until his death in 1846. CHAPTER XXX CONCLUSION THERE have been moments in history when man's need of religion has seemed pecuUarly urgent. These are the moments of the greatest danger for the Churches. For if the old bottles cannot contain the new wine the energy of the human spirit will find new channels in ways apart. Such a moment was the first half of the nineteenth century, and it was no doubt partly to be ascribed to a reaction from the religious lethargy of the century of the Enlightenment. The romantic movement in literature turned men's minds to history — not so much to the critical and scientific study of the past as to the thrilling pageantry of historical continuity. "I belong," wrote Chateaubriand, "to the general community of mankind, who since the creation of the world have prayed to God." Others carried this consciousness further, and tried to dedicate the awakening of the religious temper and of the historical mind of Europe to the glorification of the Papacy. The old high papal doctrine at its most extreme and uncompromising was put forward by De Maistre in his famous book, " Du Pape," which directed men's attention to the oldest and most historical in- stitution in Europe at the very moment when their imagination was stirred by its spiritual appeal. The brilliant French theologian Lamennais borrowed De Maistre's extreme views of the powers of the Pope, and gave them a twist in the direction of democracy, finding the " perfect law of liberty" in the most absolute obedience to the Pope. The dominion of the Papacy was to his liberty-loving spirit a refuge from the encroachments on the rights of man by the revolutionary government of France. His followers, Lacordaire and Montalembert, fought the fight for religious education in France in the name of constitutional liberty and papal prerogative. Gregory XVI. deliberately set aside the opportunity ofi'ered to the Papacy by the awakening of the soul of Europe. He preferred the comfortable paths of reaction on old-fashioned lines. " This Abbe," he said of Lamennais, " wanted to give me 373 374 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY a power with which I should not have known what to do," and the Bull "Mirari Vos" condemned Lamennais' teaching for its supposed anarchical tendencies. Gregory greatly preferred— although he did not altogether trust it— the teaching of the so-called Neo-Gwelfs, whose views became identified in Italy with the party of moderate reformers. The romantic movement in Italy found a natural expression in the stirring of the cause of national unity and independence. A soul-stirring book of romance called "I Promessi Sposi," pubhshed in 1827 by Manzoni, ushered in the great epoch with which the name of Garibaldi is associated. But while " Young Italy " was as yet a dream, the Neo-Gwelfs borrowed from Gioberti the idea of an absolute Pope, raised to pre-eminence in Europe by an artistic and intellectual revival, and leading a federation of Italian States to national consciousness as a sort of combined Hildebrand and Julius II. This movement, founded on " I Promessi Sposi," was developed by the writings of Gioberti in 1843. Balbo, the historian of the party, concentrated on the " Speranza d'ltalia"— the liberation of Italy from foreign rule. Italy was now more than ever a "geographical expression," and not a nation. Lombardy and Venetia were Austrian, Piedmont and Savoy belonged to the vigorous monarchy of Sardinia; Tuscany was ruled by a Grand Duke, who was more or less under the tutelage of Austria, and there remained— in addition to other small lordships— Naples and Sicily, ruled by the worst dynasty which had ever troubled the turbulent South, and lastly the Papal States and the Patrimony of Peter. To get rid of Austria, and together with her the whole collection of petty lordships which broke up the North; to support rebelhon in Naples, and lead Italy to unity in some kind of federation under the Pope— this was the original scheme of Gioberti. But as his plan developed, he became increasingly interested in the unity of Italy, and the leadership of the Pope he came to regard as a mere means to that end. In his later book, published in 1846, he threw over the Pope altogether, and supported the idea of federation under the leadership of Piedmont. The " secret " sympathy of Charles Albert, whose kingdom included Piedmont, Savoy, and Sardinia, was already known and discussed among members of the moderate reform party. There was much to account for Gioberti's change of champions : Charles Albert's kingdom was the rising power, and it had the good fortune to possess not only a King with ideas, but also the wisest of European statesmen in Cavour. The Pope, on the other hand, was a man of limited outlook, reactionary propensities, and devoid of any real CONCLUSION 375 sympathy with the ideals of Italian unity except as a means of glorification of the Papacy. There was, moreover, another current of the reform move- ment more dangerous, and more definitely hostile to the existing order of things, and it was not easy at this stage to distinguish very clearly between them. Opposed to the Neo-Gwelfs, but sharing many of their views, was the party of extremists under Mazzini, whose book, " Young Italy," pubhshed in 1846, gave the whole movement a European setting. Mazzini's words were words of flame, and his teaching was the gospel of the dagger. The princes of Italy could coquette with the party of moderate reform, but with the followers of Mazzini there could be no compromise and no understanding. Such was the state of Italy as Metternich watched it with anxious attention in 1846. Such were also the conditions in which Cardinal Mastai-Ferretti was hailed with joy and gratitude, when he ascended the papal throne as Pius IX. (1846-1878). The pontificate of Pius IX., momentous in itself, covered a period of tremendous importance in history, and it is not possible to give an account of every point at which papal policy touched European affairs during his reign. Many of the events have still the vividness and the lack of proportion which belong to contemporary history. It is difficult in 1920 to write of recent history except in the aspect of a prelude to 1914. Pius IX. was a good man, ill-matched with his destiny. The enthusiasm with which his reign opened was due to his well- known sympathy with modern liberal views, and his first act was to pardon all the political prisoners who crowded the prisons. This general amnesty of July 16, 1846, increased his popularity, but while the populace hailed him with joy as "II Papa Angelico," the Pope himself did not share their delusions. " My God ! " he had been heard to exclaim, " they want to make me a Pope, who am only a poor country parson." The amnesty of Pius was not the bold initiation of the policy of a liberal Pope —it was the kind-hearted impulse of a righteous man. Other liberal measures followed it, but these were the outcome of his pliable nature, which had not yet decided where to take its stand. In 1847 he sanctioned an advisory Council of State, which was regarded as the first step towards a constitution. In reality it was the last willing concession which the Pope was ready to make. Events were moving very rapidly, and the Pope was carried along by the stream. " The revolution wants no making, it is made," wrote a foreign statesman to King Charles Albert. The first anniversary of the amnesty was the occasion of the 376 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY supposed Roman Plot. It was rumoured that Austria had planned an insurrection throughout the Papal States an favour of reaction, and had offered help to the Pope. As a result, Austria gained a pretext for the occupation of Ferrara, and a war with Austria seemed to be in sight. Pius IX. made a famous speech in February, 1848, warning the people against declaring war on Austria, but in the course of it he used the magic words, " God bless Italy ! " The crowd went its way rejoicing over the good Italian views of the Papa Angelico, and forgot the rest. In March, Pius was driven, by the success of a revolution in Naples, which had taken place in the preceding month, to give a constitu- tion to the Papal States. It was an unworkable scheme by reason of its extremely cautious and guarded character, but it confirmed the popular estimate of his supposed liberalism. Tuscany and Piedmont had already followed Naples to constitutional liberty, and Cavour was rapidly building up the vigorous constitutional monarchy which brought his King, Charles Albert, forward as the natural leader of the forces of liberty against the foreigner and the oppressor. A rising in Vienna and the flight of Metternich brought the opportunity for the Austrian war, which opened with the famous " Five Days' " revolution in Milan, followed a fortnight later by the proclamation of the Republic of Venice. The Pope seemed at first to be ready to fall in with the popular movement, but the Jesuits restrained him by working on his fears of a schism in Austria. He therefore held aloof from the opening of the war and kept the Austrian ambassador at his side. But the general of the Roman army called it a Crusade, and the Pope had to follow where the overwhelming enthusiasm of his subjects led. But the war of 1848, in spite of the patriotism which inspired it, was a failure, and the treaty of Salasco which ended it, restored everything to Austria except Venice, who continued to make good her resistance. The causes of the failure lay in the mental disunion of the Italian States. Before the union of Italy was accomplished, the leaders were arguing among themselves as to the form of government which should be adopted. The anarchy which had followed the revolution in Naples, and the suicide of the Nea- politan constitution had lost the South. When failure became apparent, Pius published an Encyclical denouncing the war. His subjects were already disillusioned by the failure of his constitution, which in the hands of the reactionary Secretary of State, Cardinal Antonelli, had proved to be a mockery of liberty. The Encyclical put him definitely at variance with his people, and did him no good with Austria. The Austrians CONCLUSION 377 had attacked Bologna on the pretext of the support given by the papal troops to Piedmont. Pius found himself between two firea. His friendship had no value for Austria, who therefore took no pains to get it, and he neither dared nor wished to identify him- self with the revolutionary movement, which was now avowedly Republican and Mazzinian. With the help of Rossi, the leader of the moderate reformers, he put forward a new version of tiie Neo-Gwelf ideal in a league of ItaUan princes. The answer to this was the assassination of Rossi on November 15, 1848, and the flight of the Pope to Gaeta. While Pius stayed away from Rome, a Republic was proclaimed, and two Governments strove for mastery, the one reactionary, under Cardinal Antonelli, and the other revolutionary, under Mazzini, and associated with Mazzini, the striking figure of Garibaldi. In April, 1849, France inter- vened on behalf of the Pope, and after a defeat by Garibaldi, the French army made an assault on Rome which gave it a dominant hold in the city. It has sometimes been thought that the Pius IX. who returned to Rome from Gaeta in 1850 was a different man from the Pope who had left it so hurriedly sixteen months before. But it is unlikely that Pius had undergone any great change of mind because his mind had never been made up. In the interval the issue had become clearer, and helped by AntoneUi, with his medieval views and his Machiavellian temperament, he had decided once and for ever to take his stand against liberaUsm in all its forms, and to avail himself of whatever foreign help should oflfer the best promise of permanent reaction. This at first seemed to be France, and the personal loyalty of Napoleon III. was at his service, as well as the support of the clerical party in France. But Austria was a more natural and permanent ally for the Pope in his capacity of ItaHan ruler, for Austria had a more fundamental interest in opposing Italian unity. The fusion of the two movements of hberahsm and of Itahan nationality was completed by the development of the power of Piedmont under Cavour. The accession of " II Re Galantuomo," the wise young Victor Emmanuel II., to the throne of Piedmont was the best hope of Italian patriots in the evil days of 1849. In putting his house in order he had, of course, to face what other national leaders had had to confront in aU ages, the task of emancipation from papal interference and clerical misrule. Under the influence of Cavour, "a free Church in a free State" was gradually secured. Tlie Siccardi laws in 1850 and the later laws of Rattazzi freed the young kingdom from the complications and injustices of clerical 378 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY immunity from civil law, and other forms of papal intervention in the government. This of course increased the antagonism which was already latent between the young kingdom and the Papacy. Piedmont was the protagonist of young Italy in the struggle against Austria. In the period of Austrian oppression which reopened in 1852, the Papacy backed the ' oppressors, while Cavour looked to France, bargaining with Napoleon to surrender Savoy and Nice to France as the price of help in the Austrian war. This cold-blooded political marketing brought no good to the kingdom of Piedmont, and the new Austrian war ended in the betrayal of the Itahans by France at the Peace of Villafranca in 1859. Italy had gained nothing, but Savoy and Nice were lost, and " sold hke sheep " against their will. But the makers of Italy had done their work, and a series of new revolts proved that the soul of a nation, when once it has achieved consciousness, has won the victory that overcometh. Garibaldi's briUiant expedition in Naples and Sicily brought in the South, where the rotten Bourbon monarchy crumbled and fell. In spite of the spUt between Cavour and Garibaldi, Italy began to hold together, land the annexation of the Romagna was peacefully accomphshed. The papal army under a French general, Lamorici^re, was ordered to disband. The Pope's refusal to carry out the order gave Cavour an excuse to annex the rest of the Papal States, and at Castelfidando, September 18, 1861, the Italian armies won the victory which fulfilled the pro- phecy that " Savoy would eat up the Itahan artichoke leaf by leaf". In February, 1861, the first Parhament of United Italy met at Turin, and it was inevitable that its decrees should clash with the papal prerogative. The temporal power of the Pope in Italy had been reduced by conquest and annexation to the Patrimony of Peter. He was now asked to forego all his powers, to recognise a hostile civil code, with civil marriage, etc., as already estab- lished in Piedmont, in territory which had belonged to him for a thousand years. Pius IX., still urged along by AntoneUi, decided to harden his defences. Pohtical concordats of the Papacy with Austria, Spain, and Prussia had put his foreign policy on a reliable basis. The Oxford Movement in England seemed to be reveahng a less recalcitrant spirit in a country which had long been Protestant in pohtics but never Protestant in mind or aspiration. Catholic emancipation was still an encouraging novelty. Above all, his new subjects in America, and those who had carried their Cathohcism across the seas to the new world, made the West radiant with hope. So Pius IX. turned from his CONCLUSION 379 temporal losses to the vision of spiritual victories. Had he been a man hke the saintly founder of that vision, Gregory the Great, he might have won the world : as it was, he lost it by following in the footsteps of Innocent III. He saw the Catholic Church dethroned and dispossessed, and this, not in an age of indifference or cynicism, but at a time of acute spiritual yearning. The great discoveries of science in the nineteenth century liad swept the cobwebs out of Heaven, and set a light there, which by consuming the unreal, revealed the true glory of the Christian vision. The momentary pessimism, which is associated with the views of the early nineteenth-century economists, passed as quickly as a cloud, and the bracing effect of Charles Darwin's " Origin of Species " (1859) kindled a brighter flame than the one which it extinguished. When the theory of evolution called its noble challenge to faith, Newman sang his " Praise to the Hohest in the Height" (1865), and Browning's triumphant assertion gave the answer of un- daunted faith. There shall never be one lost good ! What was shall Uve as before, The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound, What was good shall be good, with for evil so much good more ; On the earth the broken arcs ; in the heaven a perfect round. Pius IX. lost touch with the spiritual aspiration of the world. The series of dogmatic pronouncements with which he tried to answer the anxious questionings of the nations was unsatisfying. The series began in 1854 with the decree which made the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin an essential article of the Catholic Faith. This doctrine had been the subject of mediaeval dispute between the Thomists and the Scotists in the schools of Paris. The Jesuits afterwards made it a part of their teachmg and documents were forged in support of it. The documents were afterwards condemned by the Pope, but the belief in the doctrine had already passed into piety. Vagueness and in- decision in doctrinal matters worried Pius, in spite of his tendency towards it in political affairs. He therefore opened his spiritual bombardment by a pronouncement which narrowed the gate without fm-thering the unity of Catholicism. The "Quanta Cura" Encyclical was the next attack, which declared war on the whole modern and liberal system of ideas. The Syllabus of 1864 defined these, forced them all to their logical conclusion, and condemned them indiscriminately. Pms IX. forced an issue by his pedantic logic, and sealed up the truths of rehgion into an inaccessible treasury remote from the heart of man. Among the errors condemned by the Syllabus 380 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY were the questioning of the Pope's right to employ force, and in illustration of this lesson the celebrated inquisitor Arbues was canonised. ^ The Syllabus further declared it to be an error to maintain that Popes had ever exceeded their powers or encroached on the rights of princes— that the source of clerical immunity from civil jurisdiction lies in the secular law— that other religions should be tolerated in Catholic countries— that tlie Pope should reconcile himself with liberahsm or the progress of civihsation. The Syllabus was an indiscreet and unnecessary document, raising ^estions and allaying none, but silencing discussion by the hammer-strokes of a prerogative which has still to be defined. The Syllabus sharpened the distinction between two parties of Cathohcs : those who tried to explain it and modify it— who, Hke Newman, held that it was a document for experts without any importance for the ordinary behever ; and those, on the other hand, like Manning and WilHam Ward' who accepted it literally and submitted to the whole of its teaching. One result of the Syllabus was that through its political assertions Pius lost the friendship of Napoleon. By his arrangement with Cavour the Itahan Government moved to Florence, and all the French soldiers left Rome. The idea that Rome should be the capital of the new kingdom, although slightly tinged with sacrilege, was already a possible development. If the verdict on it in Paris was the celebrated " Jamais, jamais ! " of Rouher, in. Italy the French Secretary wrote to Cavour : " Of course the result of all this is that you will eventually go to Rome, but a sufficient interval must elapse to save us from responsibility ". But when it came to the point, the CathoHcism of Napoleon was too strong for him. The death of Cavour cleared the way for Garibaldi's independent action with the radical wing of the Young Italy party at his back. He began to attack Rome, but the uncertainty of the Italian Government gave Pius time to collect an army of defence. To this army Napoleon contributed. Garibaldi succeeded at Monte Rotondo in October, 1867, but the Italian Government failed to support him by stirring up a rising in Rome, upon which he counted for success. The French, therefore, defeated him at Montana on November 3. The attitude of France was extremely irritating to the Italian Government, and when in 1870 the French wanted help against Germany, the Italians were able to bargain for the sacrifice of Rome. Napoleon was too clerical to give in, but the crisis of his overthrow effected the same end. Before the last round of the old contest for temporal power CONCLUSION 381 vas fought to a finish, the relentlesB logic of Tius IX. brought aim to the climax of his reign, the Vatican Council of 1870. His passion for definition had Ijrought into question his authority ;o define the faith. The word Infallibility had been hovering on he lips of Catholics throughout his reign. It was not a sudden .nvention nor a wild fiight of papal pretension. It was simply the logical conclusion of one view of the character of the Papacy. There was another view— the view of the minority in the Vatican Council— but this never found expression owing to the unfree nature of the proceedings, and its upholders were gradually reduced by strong censorship to twenty Bishops, who stayed away from the final voting out of respect for the Holy Father. On July 14, 1870, the Vatican Council passed the famous definition, thus worded, " It is a dogma divinely revealed that the Roman Pontift", when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, in the exercise of his ofiice as pastor and teacher of all Christians, he defines by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the Universal Church, is by the Divine assistance promised to him in the person of St Peter, possessed of that Infallibility wherewith the Divine Redeemer willed that His Church should be endowed in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals; and that therefore such definitions of the Roman Pontifi" are unalterable of themselves and not by reason of the consent of the Church". The Infallibility decree, however important it may be theo- logically, had very little political importance. Those who had come to the Council to oppose it ended in refraining from fear ot schism A form of words has a less enduring significance than a course of action, and the minority were right in the instinct which told them that posterity would look upon this question— so burn- ing in their minds and consciences— as a Sacristry dispute. Ihe old Cathohc schism, which some of them embraced, survives to-day as a mere protest, and Dolhnger, the chief opponent of Infallibility, never joined it. The Council itself was a personal triumph for Pius IX., and wrapt in the majesty of his victory tie turned to face the last defeat of temporal power. The events leading to the last battle of the history ot the Papacy have been vividly described by an eye-witness. " In that burning summer-time, we, who were staying in Rome saw the French Bishops depart, and knew that the French soldiers woiild soon follow them. . . . Thirty thousand Italian troops kept a watch on the frontier, ready to break in if the Romans would seize Rome. But, as ever, the Romans did no more than buy flags which might be hmig out according to iortune, the lopes 382 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY colours so long as they were needed, the tricolour invented lon| ago by Republican Bologna when King Victor's regiments shoulc come marching in. The King himself was torn between feehngt of gratitude to France, and the conviction that if he did not put an end to the temporal power it would cost him his. throne. . . . After a moment of hesitation, ministers were allowed to act. Ponza di San Martino brought a royal letter to the Vatican in which 'with the devotion of a son, the faith of a Catholic, the loyalty of a King, and the heart of an Itahan,' Victor Emmanue] told Pius IX. that he intended to occupy the Papal States. The Pope answered by a single word — 'Might then comes before right'. When for the last time, at the Piazza dei Termini, he made an official appearance in public, the Holy Father was greeted by the Romans with frantic enthusiasm. But they had their two sets of flags ready." The battle itself was a tournament, carried out with chivalry and courtesy on both sides. Negotiations respectfully tendered were civilly declined. The conflict lasted a few minutes only. General Cadorna had secret orders to drive the Pope's troops to the Leonine city and to isolate them there with the Pope. The Pope on his side ordered a feigned resistance, but the zeal of his supporters caused a little bloodshed which a misunderstanding made inevitable. "At ten o'clock," says Canon Barry, "we saw the white flag waving high over St. Peter's dome. We heard afar off" from our College roof the thunder of the captains and the shouting, as through the shattered walls of the Porta Pia streamed in a mixed array of soldiers, refugees, camp followers, along the street afterwards named from the twentieth of September. Early in the afternoon we saw Itahan standards floating from the Capitol. Rome had once conquered Italy. Now Italy had conquered Rome" (Canon William Barry, in "The Papacy and Modern Times "). The tournament finished according to the best traditions of mimic war, and the military salute was accorded to the vanquished by the victors, as the papal army marched to lay down its arms in the Villa Belvedere. In May, 1871, the Law of Guarantees was passed in the Itahan ParHament, which "guaranteed" the sovereign status of the Pope, his appropriation of the Vatican and the Lateran, his absolute and unfettered spiritual authority, and provided for him a net endowment of £129,000 a year. The law was clumsily framed, and unsuccessfully proffered. The endowment was never accepted, and Pius IX. preferred the dignified poverty of a mendicant Prince to the compromising position of an Italian pensioner. His policy for the next seven CONCLUSION 383 years was in accordance with the advice sent him by France, '•Protest, refuse, and wait for further mutations in France". Apart from pohtics, he remained on courteous terms with the King of Italy. He watched the affairs of the young kingdom,