Читать книгу The Empire and the Papacy, 918-1273 - Thomas Tout - Страница 12

Table of Contents

End of the Dark Ages—Beginnings of the Cluniac Reformation—The Congregation of Cluny—Cluniac ideals—Camaldoli and Vallombrosa—Henry III. joins the Reformers—The German reforming Popes—Leo IX.—South Italy and Sicily in the Eleventh Century—The first coming of the Normans—Aversa—The sons of Tancred and the Conquest of Apulia—Robert Guiscard—Leo IX. and the Normans—Battle of Civitate—Early Career of Hildebrand—Nicholas II.—The Reform of Papal Elections—The Normans become Papal Vassals—Milan submits to Rome—Roger’s Conquest of Sicily—Feudalism in Southern Italy. End of the Dark Ages.

The Dark Ages were well over by the middle of the eleventh century, and after a century of anarchy, even feudalism had become a comparatively tolerable form of government. The stronger military states had absorbed their weaker neighbours, and, beyond the Alps at least, the disintegrating tendency of feudal doctrine had received a decided check, not only in the strong monarchy of the Germans, but even in the growth of vigorous feudal potentates such as the margraves of the eastern frontier of the Empire, the dukes of the Normans, and the counts of Flanders or of Toulouse. There were again forces making towards order, law, and peace. The state had been saved from absolute annihilation.

The Church was not yet in so sound a position. She had outlived the worst brutalities of the tenth century, but the fierce, lawless, grasping baron, who feared neither God nor man, was still an element to be reckoned with. The revived lay-power tended of itself to correct the worst abuses. The Empire had, as we have seen, reformed the Papacy. But if the Church was to live, it could not owe its life to the patronage or goodwill of outside reformers. The Church must reform itself.

Signs of such a purification of the Church from within had long been manifest, but the little band of innovators found it no easy task to preach to a world that knew no law but the law of the stronger. As ever in the Middle Ages, a new monastic movement heralded in the work of reformation. As the Carolingian reformation is associated with Benedict of Aniane, so is the reformation of the eleventh century associated with the monks of Cluny. The early history of Cluny.

In 910 Duke William the Pious of Aquitaine founded a new monastery at Cluny, in French Burgundy, a few miles from the bishop’s town of Macon. He appointed Berno, a noble Burgundian, as its head, and procured for it absolute immunity from all external ecclesiastical jurisdiction save that of the Roman See. Berno strove to establish a complete and loyal observance of the rule of St. Benedict, and the piety and earnestness of his monks soon attracted attention, wealth, followers. Corrupt old communities or new foundations sought the guidance or the protection of the abbots of Cluny. But the Benedictine system was limited to a single house, and afforded no room for the crowd of disciples who wished to attach themselves to the model monastery. Odo, the second abbot (927–941), started the memorable monastic reformation which, in a few years, was embodied in the ‘Consuetudines Cluniacenses,’ and the ‘Congregation of Cluny.’ By it a plan was found for combining formal adherence to the strict rule of St. Benedict with the practical necessity of maintaining the rule of Cluny over its dependent communities. If under the old system a new house were formed under the direction of a famous monastery, the new establishment, when it had received its constitution, parted company from its parent stock, and, like a Greek colony, became independent and self-governing. The Cluniacs prevented this by regarding the daughter communities as parts of themselves. In whatsoever part of Christendom a monastery on Cluniac lines was established, it was still in law a part of the great Burgundian convent. ⁵⁰ Its head was the arch-abbot, the abbot of Cluny. What local self-government was necessary was delegated to a prior, who was appointed by the abbot of Cluny, to whom he was responsible. From time to time the dependent communities sent representatives to the periodical chapters that met at Cluny, under the presidency of the abbot. By this means a unity of organisation, a military discipline, a control over weak brethren, and a security was procured, which was impossible under the Benedictine rule. When each monastery was as independent for all practical purposes as a modern Congregational chapel, it was impossible, in an age when public opinion hardly existed, to reform a lax community, and it was difficult for an isolated flock of unwarlike men to protect themselves from feudal violence or the equally fierce hostility of the secular clergy. Besides unity of organisation, the control exercised over the whole order of Cluny gave the brethren unity of purpose, doctrine, and policy.

Brought under the immediate jurisdiction of Rome, at a time when monastic immunities from episcopal authority had not become common, the Cluniacs taught from the beginning a high doctrine as to the power of the apostolic see. They saw that the great danger to religion was in the feudalisation of the Church. Bishops were in danger of becoming barons in mitres. Kings looked upon prelates as officials bound to do them service, and patrons sold benefices to the highest bidder. Monasteries were often in danger of absolute secularisation. So corrupt and lax were even the better sort of regulars that the Saxon monk Widukind, the historian of his people, naïvely complains of the ‘grave persecution’ which beset the poor religious of his time, and laments the erroneous doctrines of some bishops who maintained that it was better that there should be a few ascetic regulars than houses filled with negligent monks, forgetting, as he innocently adds, that the tares and the wheat were ordered to grow up together until the harvest time. The chief dangers of the Church were simony and the marriage of clerks. To keep the Church apart from the world seemed to the Cluniac leaders the only possible way of securing a better state of things. Their ideal was the separation of the Church from the State, and the reorganisation of the Church under discipline such as could only be exercised by the Pope, who was to stand to the whole Church as the abbot of Cluny stood to each scattered Cluniac priory—the one ultimate source of jurisdiction, the universal bishop, appointing and degrading the diocesan bishops as the abbot made and unmade the Cluniac priors. The bishop, the secular priest, even the monk, had no rights of his own that were not ultimately derivative from the unique source of ecclesiastical authority, the chair of St. Peter. ⁵¹ The Forged Decretals supplied convenient arguments for such a system. The necessities of the times supplied a sort of justification for it. Feudal anarchy made it natural for good men to identify the secular power with the works of darkness, and regard the ecclesiastical power as alone emanating from God. After-ages were to show that the remedy was almost as bad as the disease, and that there was as much danger of secular motives, greed for domination, for wealth and influence in the uncontrolled exercise of ecclesiastical authority, as in the lay power that they dreaded. But the early Cluniacs had faith in their principles, and sought in realising them to promote the kingdom of God on earth. They lived holy and self-denying lives in an age of brutal violence and lust. A moral and an intellectual reformation preceded and prepared the way for the ecclesiastical reformation that was preached from Cluny with the fervour of a new gospel.

Under the influence of the reformed clergy, study and learning again became possible to a large class. The monastic and cathedral schools beyond the Alps became the centres of ardent study of philosophy, theology, and science. In Italy grammarians expounded the classics, and civilians commented upon the Roman law. The career of Gerbert is but typical of that of a large number of others. The Lombard Lanfranc, and the Burgundian Anselm, took the new culture over the Alps to the Norman monastery of Le Bec, and prepared the way for the new birth of learning in the twelfth century. Nor did the monastic reformation stop with the Congregation of Cluny. ⁵² In Italy in particular, where a swarm of new orders arose, extreme asceticism and utter self-renunciation stood in strange contrast to the violence, greed, and profligacy that marked Italian life as a whole. ⁵³ Romuald of Ravenna, the spiritual director of Otto III., lived the life of a hermit, and gathered round himself great bands of solitaries from whom sprang the order of Camaldoli, so called from an inaccessible spot in the Apennines, near Arezzo, where one of Romuald’s troops of followers had settled. A monk of this order, Peter Damiani, soon took a very foremost part in the religious reformation of Italy, and first made the enthusiastic anchorites minister to the spread of the new hierarchical ideal. Not far from the hermits of Camaldoli, John Gualbert, a Tuscan lord, established the strict cœnobitic order of Vallombrosa. ⁵⁴ The same influence spread all over Europe, and penetrated into even the most conservative cloisters of the followers of St. Benedict. The faith, zeal, and enthusiasm of the champions of the new order carried everything before it. Under Henry III. the reformers had won over the Emperor himself to their cause. ⁵⁵ The strong arm of the king had purified the Papacy and handed over its direction to men of the new school. But though willing to use the help of the secular arm to carry out their forward policy, the Cluniac reformers never swerved from their conviction that lay interference with the spiritual power lay at the very root of the worst disorders of the time. Even when accepting the favours of the great Emperor, they never lost sight of the need of emphasising the independence of the spirituality. However needful was the imperial sword to free the Papacy from the Tusculan tradition, and to put down the lazy monk and the feudalist bishop, they saw clearly that it stood in the way of the full realisation of their dreams. The German reforming Popes.

After the synod of Sutri, a whole series of German Popes was nominated by the Emperor, and received by the Church with hardly a murmur, though the young deacon Hildebrand, soon to become the soul of the new movement, attached himself to the deposed Gregory VI. and accompanied him on his exile. But to most of the reformers the rude justice of Sutri seemed a just if irregular solution of an intolerable situation. The puritan zeal of the German Popes seemed the best result of the alliance of the Emperor and the reforming party. The first two reigned too short a time to be able to effect much, leaving it to Leo IX., the third German Pope, to permanently identify the papal throne with the spirit of Cluny. Leo IX., 1048–1054.

On the death of Damasus, the Romans called upon Henry III., who was then at Worms, to give them another Pope. The Emperor chose for this post his cousin Bruno, the brother of Conrad of Carinthia, the sometime rival of Conrad the Salic, and the son of the elder Conrad, uncle of the first of the Salian emperors. Despite his high birth, Bruno had long turned from politics to the service of the Church, and had become the ardent disciple of the school of Cluny. As bishop of Toul, he had governed his diocese with admirable care and prudence, and his great influence had enabled him to confer many weighty services, both on Henry and his father in Lorraine. When offered the Papacy by his kinsman, Bruno accepted the post only on the condition that he should be canonically elected by the clergy and people of Rome. Early in 1049 he travelled over the Alps in the humble guise of a pilgrim. He visited Cluny on his way to receive spiritual encouragement from his old teachers for the great task that lay before him. He there added to his scanty following the young monk Hildebrand, whose return to the city in the new Pope’s train proclaimed that strict hierarchical ideas would now have the ascendency at the Curia. Joyfully accepted by the Romans, Bruno assumed the title of Leo IX. For the short five years of his pontificate, he threw himself with all his heart into a policy of reformation. In an Easter Synod in Rome (1049), stern decrees were fulminated against simony and clerical marriage. But the times were not yet ripe for radical cure, and Leo was compelled to depart somewhat from his original severity. He soon saw that the cause he had at heart would not be best furthered by his remaining at Rome, and the special characteristic of his pontificate was his constant journeying through all Italy, France, and Germany. During these travels Leo was indefatigable in holding synods, attending ecclesiastical ceremonies, the consecration of churches, the translation of the relics of martyrs. His ubiquitous energy made the chief countries in Europe realise that the Papacy was no mere abstraction, and largely furthered the centralisation of the whole Church system under the direction of the Pope. Wherever he went, decrees against simony and the marriage of priests were drawn up. In Germany, Henry III. gave him active support. In France he excited the jealousy of King Henry I. Invited to Reims by the archbishop for the consecration of a church, he summoned a French synod to that city. Alarmed at this exercise of jurisdiction within French dominions, Henry I. strove to prevent his bishops’ attendance by summoning them to follow him to the field. Only a few bishops ventured to disobey their king, but a swarm of abbots, penetrated by the ideals of Cluny, gave number and dignity to the Synod of Reims, and did not hesitate to join the Pope in excommunicating the absent bishops. The restless Leo sought to revive the feeble remnants of North African Christianity, and began the renewed troubles with the Eastern Church, which soon led to the final breach with the Patriarch Cærularius [see page 167]. The all-embracing activity of Leo led to his active interference in southern Italy, where the advent of a swarm of Norman adventurers had already changed the whole complexion of affairs.

Early in the eleventh century, southern Italy and Sicily were still cut off from the rest of Europe, and, as in the days of Charlemagne, were still outposts both of the Orthodox and Mohammedan East. ⁵⁶ Sicily had been entirely Saracen since the capture of Syracuse in 877 [see Period I. pp. 460–461]. Though the predatory hordes, which landed from time to time on the mainland of Italy, had failed to establish permanent settlements, the various attempts of the Eastern Emperors to win back their former island possession had proved disastrous failures. In southern Italy the Catapan or governor of the Greek Emperors still ruled over the ‘theme of Lombardy’ from his capital of Bari, but in the tenth century, the Lombard Dukes of Benevento, Salerno, and Capua won back much of the ground that had been lost by their ancestors. The transient successes of Otto II. (981–2), had done something to discourage Greeks and Saracens alike, despite the ignominious failure that ultimately led to his flight [see pages 38–39]. In the early years of the eleventh century, southern Italy was still divided between Greeks and Lombards, and the growing spirit of Catholic enthusiasm made the Orthodox yoke harder to bear by those subjects of the theme of Lombardy who were Italian rather than Greek in their sympathy. Between 1011 and 1013 Meles, a citizen of Bari, a Catholic of Lombard origin, took advantage of a Saracen inroad to revolt against the Eastern Emperor. Driven into exile by the failure of his attempt, he sought all over southern Italy for allies to recommence the struggle. ⁵⁷ The fame of the Normans as soldiers was already known in the south of Italy, and chance now threw Meles in the way of some Norman warrior-pilgrims, whom devotion to the Archangel had taken to the sanctuary of St. Michael, in Monte Gargano, in imitation of which a Neustrian bishop had some generations before set up the famous monastery of St. Michael in Peril of the Sea. Meles proposed to the pilgrim leader, Ralph de Toeny, that he should join with him against the Greeks. Pope Benedict VIII. encouraged the enterprise, and the adventurous Normans greedily welcomed the opportunity. In 1017, Meles and his northern allies won a victory over the Greeks at Civitate in the Capitanata. ‘This victory,’ sang the Norman rhyming chronicler, William of Apulia, ‘mightily increased the courage of the Normans. They saw that the Greeks were cowards, and that, instead of meeting the enemy face to face, they only knew how to take refuge in flight.’ ⁵⁸ Other Normans flocked from their distant home on the report of rich booty and fair lands to be won on easy terms in Apulia. But they despised their enemy too much, and in 1019 a battle fought on the historic field of Cannæ annihilated the little Norman band. Meles and Ralph hastened over the Alps, in the hopes of interesting Henry II. in their cause. Even the death of Meles was not fatal to the fortune of his allies. Some survivors from Cannæ took service with the princes of Capua and Salerno, and the abbot of Monte Casino. They were mere mercenaries, and willingly sold their swords to the highest bidder. When Henry II. made his transient appearance in southern Italy in 1022 [see page 50], he found his chief obstacle in the new Greek fortress of Troja, obstinately defended by some valiant Normans in the pay of their old foe the Catapan.

Other Normans now flocked to the land of promise. Among these was a chieftain named Ranulf, who joined Sergius, Prince of Naples, a vassal of the Greeks, in his war against the Lombard prince Pandulf of Capua. In reward for his services Ranulf received one of the richest districts of the Terra di Lavoro, where he built in 1030 a town named Aversa, the first Norman settlement in Italy. ⁵⁹ This foundation makes a new departure in Norman policy. The Normans no longer came to Italy as isolated adventurers willing to sell their swords to the highest bidder. By much the same arts as those by which their brethren later got hold of the fairest parts of Wales and Ireland, the adventurers strove to carve feudal states for themselves out of the chaos of southern Italy. Whilst cleverly utilising the feuds that raged around them, they pursued their interests with such dexterity, courage, and clear-headed selfishness, that brilliant success soon crowned their efforts. Conrad II. sojourned at Capua in 1038, deposed Pandulf and confirmed Ranulf in the possession of Aversa, which he erected into a county owing homage to the Western Emperor. Three of the twelve sons of the Norman lord, Tancred of Hauteville, now left their scanty patrimony in the Côtentin and joined the Normans in Italy. Their names were William of the Iron Arm, Drogo, and Humphrey. ⁶⁰ In 1038 they joined the Greeks under George Maniaces in an attempt to expel the Mohammedans from Sicily. Messina and Syracuse were captured, but an affront to their companion-in-arms Ardouin drove the Normans back to the mainland in the moment of victory, and led them to wreak their vengeance on the Greeks by a strange compound of violence and treachery. Ardouin their friend took the Greek pay and became governor of Melfi, the key of Apulia. He proposed to the Normans that he should deliver Melfi to them, and make that a starting-point for the conquest of Apulia, which he proposed to divide between them and himself. The northerners accepted his proposals. ⁶¹ In 1041 Melfi was delivered into their hands, and a long war broke out between them and their former allies. By shrewdly putting Adenulfus, the Lombard Duke of Benevento at the head of their armies, the Normans got allies that were probably necessary in the early years of the struggle. But they were soon strong enough to repudiate their associate. The divisions of the Greeks further facilitated their task. In 1042 William of the Iron Arm was proclaimed lord of the Normans of Apulia, with Melfi as the centre of his power.

In 1046 William of Apulia died, and Drogo, his brother, succeeded him. Henry III., then in Italy, recognised Drogo as Count of Apulia, while renewing the grant of Aversa to another Ranulf. He also urged the Normans to drive out of Benevento the Lombards, who after the spread of the Norman power were making common cause with the Greeks. ⁶² About this time a fourth son of Tancred of Hauteville came to Italy, where he soon made himself the hero of the Norman conquerors. Anna Comnena, the literary daughter of the Emperor Alexius, describes Robert Guiscard as he appeared to his enemies. ‘His high stature excelled that of the most mighty warriors. His complexion was ruddy, his hair fair, his shoulders broad, his eyes flashed fire. It is said that his voice was like the voice of a whole multitude, and could put to flight an army of sixty thousand men.’ A poor gentleman’s son, Robert was consumed by ambition to do great deeds, and joined to great bravery and strength an extraordinary subtlety of spirit. His surname of Guiscard is thought to testify to his ability and craft. Badly received by his brothers in Apulia, he was reduced to taking service with the Prince of Capua against his rival of Salerno. Events soon gave him an opportunity of striking a blow for himself.

Meanwhile, a formidable combination was forming against the Normans. Argyrus, son of Meles, had deserted his father’s policy and came from Constantinople, as Patrician and Catapan (Governor), with special commissions from the Emperor. ⁶³ Unable to persuade the Normans to take service with the Emperor against the Persians, he soon waged war openly against them, and procured the murder of Count Drogo in 1051, but was soon driven to take refuge in Bari. Meanwhile Leo IX. had become Pope, and his all-absorbing curiosity had led him to two journeys into southern Italy, where he persuaded the inhabitants of Benevento to accept the protection of the Holy See against the dreaded Northmen. It looked as if the Eastern and Western Empires were likely to combine with the Papacy and the Lombards to get rid of the restless adventurers. In 1052 Henry III. granted the duchy of Benevento to the Roman Church, and Leo hurried from Hungary to southern Italy to enforce his claims on his new possession. Battle of Civitate, 1053.

In May 1053 Leo IX. reached Monte Casino. There soon flocked round him a motley army, drawn together from every district of central and southern Italy and eager to uphold the Holy Father against the Norman usurpers; but the few hundred Germans, who had followed the Pope over the Alps, were probably more serviceable in the field than the mixed multitude of Italians. The Normans, abandoned by their allies, united all their scanty forces for a decisive struggle. The armies met on 18th June near Civitate (Civitella) on the banks of the Fortore, the place of the first Norman victory in Italy. The longhaired and gigantic Germans affected to despise their diminutive Norman foes, and the fiercest fight was fought between the Pope’s fellow-countrymen and Humphrey of Hauteville, the new Count of Apulia, who commanded the Norman right. There the Norman horse long sought in vain to break up the serried phalanx of the German infantry. But the left and centre of the Normans, led respectively by Richard, the new Count of Aversa, and Robert Guiscard, easily scattered the enemies before them, and, returning in good time from the pursuit, enabled Humphrey to win a final victory over the Germans. Leo IX. barely escaped with his liberty from the fatal field. Peter Damiani and the zealots denounced him for his unseemly participation in acts of violence, and the object which had induced him to depart from his sacred calling had been altogether unfulfilled. ⁶⁴ He retired to Benevento, where he soon came to an understanding with the Normans, giving them his apostolic blessing and absolving them from their blood-guiltiness. Even in the moment of victory the Normans had shown every respect to the head of the Church, and self-interest now combined with enthusiasm to make them his friends. But Leo entered into no formal treaty with them. He remained at Benevento, carefully watching their movements and corresponding with Constantine Monomachus in the hope of renewing the league against them. But his dealings with the Greek Empire soon broke down owing to the theological differences which the acute hostility of Leo and Michael Cærularius now brought to a head. Leo gave up all hope of western help when he fulminated the excommunication against Cærularius, which led at once to the final split of Catholic and Orthodox. In the spring of 1054 he returned to Rome and died. His exploits and holy life had given him a great reputation for holiness, and he was canonised as a saint. Even the disaster of Civitate and the eastern schism did little to diminish his glory. Victor II., 1054–1057.

Leo IX.’s successor as Pope was another German, Gebhard, bishop of Eichstädt, who took the name of Victor II. (1054–1057). He continued to work on the lines of Pope Leo, though more in the spirit of a politician. During Victor’s pontificate, Henry III. made his second and last visit to Italy (1055). His presence was highly necessary. ⁶⁵ His strongest Italian enemy, the powerful Marquis Boniface of Tuscany, was dead, leaving an only daughter Matilda heiress of his great inheritance. Boniface’s widow Beatrice soon found a second husband in Godfrey the Bearded, Duke of Lower Lorraine, the chief enemy of Henry in Germany. In this union there was a danger of the German and Italian opposition to the Empire being combined. But the formidable league dissolved at once on Henry’s appearance. Godfrey fled from Italy, and Beatrice and her daughter were led into honourable captivity in Germany. Godfrey’s brother Frederick, hitherto a scheming ecclesiastic, renounced the world, and became one of the most zealous of the monks of Monte Casino. But the death of the Emperor and the long minority that followed, soon restored the power of the heiress of Boniface. The Countess Matilda, powerful alike in Tuscany and north of the Apennines, became the most zealous of the allies of the Papacy. ⁶⁶ Her support gave that material assistance without which the purely spiritual aims of the Papacy could hardly prevail. At the moment when the Papacy had permanently absorbed the teachings of Cluny, it was a matter of no small moment that the greatest temporal power of middle Italy was on its side. It was a solid compensation for Leo’s failure against the Normans.

Hildebrand’s early career and character.

We have now come to one of the real crises of history. The new spirit had gained ascendency at Rome, and the great man had arisen who was to present the papal ideal with all the authority of genius. Hildebrand of Soana⁶ was the son of a well-to-do Tuscan peasant; he had been brought up by his uncle, abbot of the strict convent of St. Mary’s on the Aventine, which was the centre of the Cluniac ideas in Rome, and where he made his profession as monk. He became the chaplain of Gregory VI. who, though he bought the Papacy with gold, had striven his best to carry out the work of reformation. When deprived of his office at Sutri, Gregory VI. had been compelled to retire to Germany with the Emperor. Hildebrand, now about twenty-five years old, accompanied his master in his exile. In 1048 the deposed Pope died, and his chaplain betook himself to Cluny, where he remained for a full year, and where, he tells us, he would have gladly spent the rest of his life. But in 1049 Leo IX. passed through Cluny on his way to Rome, and Hildebrand was commanded to accompany him. With his return to Rome his active career began. As papal sub-deacon he reorganised the crippled finances of the Holy See, and strengthened the hold of the Pope over the unruly citizens. As papal legate he was sent to France in 1054 to put down the heresy of Berengar of Tours. But the death of Leo recalled him to Italy, whence he went to the Emperor at the head of the deputation that successfully requested the appointment of Victor II. With this Pope he was as powerful as with Leo. But Victor II. died in 1057, and Frederick of Lorraine left his newly-won abbot’s chair at Monte Casino to ascend the throne of St. Peter as Stephen IX. ⁶⁷ Though a zealot for the ideas of Cluny, Stephen, as the head of the house of Lorraine, was the natural leader of the political opposition to the imperial house both in Germany and Italy. He made Peter Damiani a cardinal, and zealously pushed forward the warfare against simony in Germany. Stephen’s early death in 1058, when Hildebrand was away in Germany, brought about a new crisis. The Counts of Tusculum thought the moment opportune to make a desperate effort to win back their old influence. They terrorised Rome with their troops, and brought about the irregular election of one of the Crescentii, who called himself Benedict X. The prompt action of Hildebrand preserved the Papacy for the reforming party. He hurried back to Florence, and formed a close alliance with Duke Godfrey of Lorraine, Stephen’s brother, against the nominee of Tusculum. The stricter cardinals met at Siena and chose Gerhard, Bishop of Florence, a Burgundian by birth, as orthodox Pope. Gerhard held another synod at Sutri, where the Antipope was formally deposed. ⁶⁸ Early in 1059 he entered Rome in triumph. By assuming the name of Nicholas II., he proclaimed himself the successor of the most successful and aggressive of Popes. As Archdeacon of Rome, Hildebrand acted as chief minister to the Pope whom he had made. Henceforth till his death he dominated the papal policy. While previous reformers had sought salvation by calling the Emperor over the Alps, Hildebrand had found in Duke Godfrey and his wife champions as effective for his purpose on Italian soil. With the establishment of Pope Nicholas, through the arms of Godfrey and Matilda, the imperial alliance ceases to become a physical necessity to the reforming party in Italy. Hildebrand had won for the Church her freedom. Before long he began to aim at domination.

Nicholas II. ruled as Pope from 1058 to 1061. Within those few years, three events were brought about which enormously strengthened the position of the Papacy, already possessed of a great moral force by its permanent identification with the reforming party, and the final abasement of the unworthy local factions, that had so long aspired to wield its resources. These events were the settlement of the method of papal elections, the establishment of a close alliance between the Papacy and the Normans of southern Italy, and the subjection of Lombardy to the papal authority. Lateran Synod and reform in Papal elections, 1059.

In 1059 Nicholas held a synod in the Lateran which drew up the famous decree that set aside the vague ancient rights of the Roman clergy and people to choose their bishop, in favour of the close corporation of the College of Cardinals. The decree was drawn up in studiously vague language, but put the prerogative voice into the very limited circle of the seven cardinal bishops of the suburbicarian dioceses. These were to add to themselves the cardinal priests and deacons, whose assent was regarded as including that of clergy and people at large. A Roman clerk was to be preferred if worthy, and Rome was to be the ordinary place of election; but, if difficulties intervened, any person could be chosen, and any place made the seat of election. The due rights of King Henry and his successors to confirm their choice were reserved, but in terms that suggested a special personal favour granted of his own goodwill by the Pope to a crowned Emperor, rather than the recognition of an immemorial legal right. The decree did not, as was hoped, save the Church from schisms like those of Benedict X. Neither was the pre-eminence of the suburbicarian bishops permanently maintained. But henceforth the legal right of the cardinals to be the electors of future Popes became substantially uncontested. It is not likely that this involved any real change of practice. But in embodying custom in a formal shape it gave subsequent efforts to set up Antipopes the condemnation of illegality, and so stood the Papacy in good stead in the troubles that were soon to ensue. The council also witnessed the abject degradation of the Antipope and the recantation of the heretic Berengar of Tours. The Normans become the vassals of the Pope, 1059.

In the years that followed the battle of Civitate, the Normans had steadily extended their power over Apulia and Calabria. But the south of Italy is so rugged and mountainous that even the bravest of warriors could only win their way slowly. In 1057 the valiant Count Humphrey died, leaving his sons so young that he had been constrained to beg his brother Robert to act as their protector. But the barons of Apulia insisted that Robert should be their count in full succession to Humphrey. Soon after Roger of Hauteville, the youngest of the twelve sons of Tancred, left the paternal roof to share the fortune of his brothers. ‘He was,’ says Geoffrey of Malaterra, ‘a fine young man, of lofty stature and elegant proportions. Very eloquent in speech, wise in counsel, and gifted with extraordinary foresight, he was gay and affable to all, and so strong and valiant that he soon gained the good graces of every one.’ ⁶⁹ Robert Guiscard received Roger in a more brotherly spirit than had been shown on his own first arrival by Drogo and Humphrey. He gave him a sufficient following of troops and sent him to Calabria, where he soon established himself as lord of half the district, though under his brother’s overlordship. Meanwhile, Richard of Aversa had driven out the Lombards from Capua and added it to his dominions. The Normans were still, however, not free from danger from the Popes. Victor II. had disapproved of Leo IX.’s policy, yet before his death he had become their enemy. Stephen IX. formed various projects against them. But Hildebrand now turned Nicholas II. to wiser counsels. In 1059 Hildebrand went in person to Capua and concluded a treaty with Count Richard, who, as the ally of the monks of Monte Casino, was the most friendly of the Norman chieftains to the Church. Almost immediately the archdeacon returned to Rome with a strong Norman escort, and soon after a Norman army spread terror among the partisans of the Antipope. ⁷⁰ In the summer of 1059 Nicholas himself held a synod in Melfi, the Apulian capital, where he passed canons condemning married priests. After the formal session was over, the Pope made Robert Guiscard Duke of Apulia and Calabria, and ‘future Duke’ of Sicily, if he should ever have the good luck to drive out the infidels. ⁷¹ In return Robert, ‘Duke by the grace of God and of St. Peter,’ agreed to hold his lands as the Pope’s vassal, paying an annual rent of twelve pence for each ploughland. Richard of Capua, either then or earlier, took the same oath. Thus the famous alliance between the Normans and the Papacy was consummated, which by uniting the strongest military power in Italy to the papal policy, enabled the Holy See to wield the temporal with almost as much effect as the spiritual sword. Thus the Papacy assumed a feudal suzerainty over southern Italy which outlasted the Middle Ages. Within seven years of the Synod of Melfi, the establishment of the Norman duke William the Bastard in England, as the ally of the Pope, still further bound the most restless, active, and enterprising race in Europe to the apostolic see. The Patarini in Lombardy.

The Pope now intervened decisively in the long struggle between the traditional and the strict parties in Lombardy, where the ancient independence of the archbishops of Milan had long been assailed by the Patarini or rag-pickers, as the reformers were contemptuously called. Lovers of old ways in the north, with the Archbishop Guido of Milan at their head, had long upheld clerical marriage as the ancient custom of the Church of St. Ambrose. Peter Damiani was now sent as papal legate to Milan to uphold the ‘rag-bags’ in their struggle. At a synod held in Milan, the zealous monk made short work of the married clerks and of the immemorial rights of the archbishop. Guido proffered an abject submission and received a contemptuous restitution of his archbishopric. The continuance of the friendship of Godfrey and Matilda secured middle Italy, as the alliance with Normans and Patarini had secured the south and the north. ⁷² The strongest princes of Gaul and Burgundy were on the zealots’ side. The imperialist prelates of Germany, headed by Anno of Cologne, made a faint effort to stem the tide, but the decrees fulminated by German synods against Nicholas and his work were unknown or disregarded in Italy. Alexander II. 1061–1073.

The untimely death of Nicholas in no wise altered the course of events. The next Pope, Alexander II., was Anselm, Bishop of Lucca, who had shared with Peter Damiani in the victory over the simoniacs and married clerks in Lombardy. His appointment by the cardinals without the least reference to King Henry IV. gave the greatest offence in Germany, and brought to a head the growing tension between Empire and Papacy. A synod at Basel declared Pope Alexander’s election invalid, and set up an Antipope, Cadalus, Bishop of Parma, who had been the real soul of the opposition to the Patarini in Lombardy. Honorius II. (this was the name he assumed) hurried over the Alps, and in 1062 was strong enough, with the help of the Counts of Tusculum, to fight an even battle with Alexander’s partisans, and for a time to get possession of St. Peter’s. But the factions that controlled the government of the young Henry IV. could not unite even in upholding an Antipope, while the religious enthusiasm, which the reforming movement had evoked, was ardently on the side of Alexander. Condemned by Anno of Cologne and his party in Germany, Honorius was rejected in 1064 by a council at Mantua. Nevertheless, he managed to live unmolested and with some supporters until his own death in 1072. His successful rival Alexander only outlived him a year. It was then time for the archdeacon himself to assume the responsible leadership of the movement which he had so long controlled. In 1073 Hildebrand became Pope Gregory VII. Later triumphs of Robert Guiscard, 1068–1085.

The reconciliation with the Papacy stood the Normans in good stead. Henceforth they posed as the champions of Western Catholicism against Eastern Orthodoxy and Islam. Though the Norman chieftains still wrangled hotly with each other, the tide in south Italy had definitely turned in their favour. In 1071 the capture of Bari, after a three years’ siege, finally expelled the Greeks from Italy. The Lombard principality of Salerno was also absorbed, and the greater part of the territories of the dukes of Benevento, save the city and its neighbourhood, which Robert Guiscard, much to his own disgust, was forced to yield to his papal suzerain. We shall see in other chapters how Robert crossed the Straits of Otranto and aspired to conquer the Greek Empire, how he came to the help of Gregory VII. in his greatest need, and how his son Bohemund took part in the first Crusade and founded the principality of Antioch. When Robert died in 1085, all southern Italy acknowledged him as its lord, save the rival Norman principality of Capua, the half-Greek republics of Amalfi and Naples, and the papal possession of Benevento.

While Robert Guiscard was thus consolidating his power in the peninsula, an even harder task was being accomplished by his younger brother Roger, sometimes in alliance, and sometimes in fierce hostility with the Duke of Apulia. The grant of Nicholas II. had contemplated the extension of the Norman rule to Sicily. The divisions of the Mohammedan world had cut off the island from the Caliphate of the Fatimites, and its independent Ameers were hardly equal to the task of ruling the island and keeping in order a timid but refractory population of Christian serfs. ⁷³ The increasing power of Robert was fatal to the independence of Roger in Calabria, and he gladly accepted the invitation of the discontented Christians of Messina to deliver them from the bondage of the infidel. In 1060 Roger led his first expedition to Sicily, which was unsuccessful. But early next year he came again, and this time the dissensions of the Mohammedans in Sicily enabled him to have friends among Saracens as well as Christians. In the summer of 1061 Robert came to his help. Messina was easily captured, and proved invaluable as the starting-point of later expeditions. The infidels were badly beaten at the battle of Castrogiovanni, and before the end of the year the standards of Roger had waved as far west as Girgenti. The first successes were not quite followed up. In 1064 the Normans were forced to raise the siege of Palermo. The compact Mussulman population of Western Sicily opposed a very different sort of resistance to the invaders from that which they had experienced in the Christian East. But the process of conquest was resumed after the capture of Bari had given Robert leisure to come to his brother’s help. In 1072 Palermo was taken by the two brothers jointly. Robert claimed the lion’s share of the spoil. Roger, forced to yield him the suzerainty of the whole island, and a great domain under his direct rule, including Palermo and Messina, threw himself with untiring zeal into the conquest of the parts of the island that still adhered to Islam. Thirty years after his first expedition, the last Saracens were expelled from the rocky fastnesses of the western coasts, and the inaccessible uplands of the interior. ⁷⁴ The Normans took with them to Italy their language, their manners, their art, and above all, their polity. On the ruins of the Greek, Lombard and Saracen power, the Normans feudalised southern Italy so thoroughly that the feudalism of Naples and Sicily long outlasted the more indigenous feudalism of Tuscany or Romagna. Freed from his grasping brother’s tutelage after 1085, Roger ruled over Sicily as count till his death in 1101. We shall see how his son united Sicily with Apulia in a single sovereignty, which has in various shapes endured as the kingdom of Naples or Sicily, until the establishment of a united Italy in our own days.