instance, he particularly admitted that, though that country was among the earliest of the pontifical possessions, the grant which made it so had perished among other ancient records. In treating with those provinces which had formed no part of the Western Empire, he seems to have assailed them severally as the circumstances of their history happened to favour his demands. Saxony, for example, he asserts to have been bestowed on the Roman See by the piety of Charlemagne. Some among the smaller states were merely exhorted to make a cession of their territories to St. Peter; by which it was admitted that the apostle had yet obtained no rights over them. Some of them made such cession, and thus encouraged the arrogance of Gregory and the aggressions of future pontiffs. The power possessed by the successors of St. Peter to bind and to loose was not confined by them to spiritual affairs, however wide the extremities to which they pushed it in these matters. It was extended also to temporal transactions, and so far extended as to be made the plea of justification with a Pope, whenever he presumed to loose the sacred bonds of allegiance which connect the subject with the sovereign. It would be difficult, perhaps, to produce a more certain index of the character of religious knowledge, and the degradation of the reasoning faculty, which prevailed in those days, than by exhibiting that much-perverted text as the single basis on which so monstrous a pretension rested and was upheld. Secondly-The appalling influence of anathema and excommunication over a blind and superstitious people had long been known and frequently put to trial by preceding Popes; Power of and the still more formidable weapon of Interdict began Gregory. to be valued and adopted about the time of Gregory. Extraordinary legates, whose office suspended the resident vicars of the pontiff, had been sparingly commissioned before the end of the tenth century; they now became much more common, and fearlessly exercised their unbounded authority in holding councils, iu promulgating canons, in deposing bishops, and issuing at discretion the severest censures of the Church. But it was not concealed from the wisdom of Gregory that temporal authority could not surely be advanced or permanently supported without temporal power. Accordingly he cemented his previous alliance with the Normans of Naples; and also (which was still more important, and proved, perhaps, the most substantial among his temporal conquests) he prevailed upon Matilda, the daughter and heiress of Boniface, Duke of Tuscany, to make over her extensive territories to the apostle, and hold it on feudal tenure from his successors. By these means the ecclesiastical states were fortified, both on the north and south, by powerful and obedient allies, while the disaffection of Henry's subjects created a great military diversion in the Pope's favour in Saxony and Swabia. * Lib. x., epist. 28. The frequent use and abuse of excommunication by all orders of the priesthood had greatly diminished the terror and efficacy of the sentence even in much earlier ages. We find the councils of the ninth century continually legislating for the purpose of restoring their weight to both ecclesiastical weapons. By the Council of Meaux (held. in 845) it was especially enacted, that the anathema could not be pronounced even by a bishop, unless by the consent of the archbishop and the other bishops of the province. Called Legates à latere-sent from the side of the Pope. Objects of Gregory in the internal administration of the Church. Let us return for a moment to the internal administration of the Church. We are disposed to think that the very vigorous measures which Gregory employed for what he considered its reform were favourable, upon the whole, to the success of his other projects. We may observe that these were of two descriptions, one of which tended to restore the discipline of the clergy; the other to reduce the ecclesiastical orders into more direct subjection to the Papal See. It is true that, by the former of these, great disaffection was excited among such as suffered by them; that is, among those who had been already living in open disobedience to the canons of the Church; but such, it is probable, were not the most numerous, as certainly they were the least respectable portion of the body. The same severity which offended them would naturally gratify and attach all those, whose religious zeal and austere morality secured them greater influence in the Church and deeper veneration from the people. So that, notwithstanding the clamours of the moment, we doubt not that the Pope was substantially a gainer by his exertions; and that (like every judicious reformer) he extended his actual power and credit with only the partial loss of a worthless popularity. The second object of Gregory in his ecclesiastical government has not yet been mentioned by us. It seems to have been no less than to destroy the independence of national Churches; and to merge all such local distinctions in the body and substance of the Church universal, whose head was at Rome. For the effecting of this mighty scheme he used every exertion to loosen the connexion of bishops and abbots with their several sovereigns, and to persuade them that their allegiance was due to one master only, the successor of St. Peter. And to that end he very readily availed himself of the materials which he found prepared for his purpose, and which had been transmitted to him undisputed by so many predecessors, that it probably never occurred to him to doubt their legitimacy. The false decretals contained the canons which he sought; and Gregory had the boldness at length to bring them forth from the comparative obscurity in which they had reposed for above two hundred and fifty years, and openly to force them into action. We have mentioned the nature of those decretals-they were a series of epistles professing to be written by the oldest bishops of Rome, the Anacletes, Sixtus the First and Second, Fabian, Victor, Zephyrinus, Marcellus, and others*. They recorded the primitive practice in the nomination to the highest ecclesiastical offices, and in that and many other matters ascribed authority almost unlimited to the Holy See. It is worth while here to particularize, even at the risk of repetition, some of the points on which they most insisted. (1.) That it was not permitted to hold any council, without the command or consent of the pope; a regulation which destroyed the independence of those local synods, by which the Church was for many centuries governed. (2.) That bishops could not be definitively judged, except by the Pope. (3.) That *The first collection of canons made in the west was the work of a Roman monk named Dionysius, who lived in the sixth century. This was followed by many others; but that which gained the greatest celebrity was the one ascribed to St. Isidore, Bishop of Seville; and it had great prevalence in Gaul as well as in Spain. Guizot remarks that it was in the North and East of France that the 'false decretals' first made their appearance, in the beginning of the ninth century. (Hist. de la Civ. en France, Leçon, 27.). The collection of decrees, known by the name of Dictatus Hildebrandini, and falsely ascribed to Gregory VII., is generally held to be the next forgery which disgraced the principles and swelled the authority of the Roman Church. the right of episcopal translation rested with the Pope alone. (4.) That not only every bishop, but every priest, and not the clergy only, but every individual *, had the right of direct appeal from all other judgments to that of the Pope.-These rights, and such as these, had been neglected or vainly asserted by the Roman See during the long period of imbecility which followed their forgery; but the spuriousness of their origin had never been exposed or suspected; and the simplicity of every succeeding generation added to their security, their antiquity, and their respectability. Gregory at length undertook to give them full efficacy; and though none were ceded or overlooked by him, that which he appears most earnestly to have pressed was the Pope's exclusive jurisdiction over the whole episcopal order: to this end he enforced universal appeal to Rome. Orders to attend before the pontifical court were issued to every quarter of Europe; and they generally met with obedient attention, not only from those whose principles sincerely acknowledged such spiritual supremacy, or who expected from their submission a more favourable sentence, but also from the great mass of offenders, who naturally preferred a distant and ecclesiastical tribunal to the close judicial inspection of a temporal magistrate. The good which Gregory proposed from this system could be one only, and that a very ambiguous advantage-to secure the independence of the Church, or, in fact, to withdraw it from the control of all secular power, and subject it to one single spiritual despot. The evils which he occasioned were numerous and of most serious magnitude to create and nourish inextinguishable dissensions between princes and their clergy, to retard and perplex the operations of justice, and to multiply the chances of a partial or erroneous decision‡. of universal dominion. In the prosecution of this history we have frequently lamented the necessity of dismissing some important event or useful His double scheme speculation with a few hasty and unsatisfactory sentences, and especially do we lament it at this moment. But enough may possibly have been said to give the reader some insight into the DOUBLE scheme of universal dominion to which the vast ambition of Gregory was directed-enough to make it evident how he projected, in the first place, to unite under the suzerain authority of St. Peter and his successors the entire territory of Christian Europe, so as to exert a sort of feudal jurisdiction over its princes, and nobles, and civil governors; and, in the next place, to establish throughout the same wide extent of various and diversely constituted states one * Fleury, 4me Disc. sur H. E. sect. v. Pope Nicholas I., who ruled from 858 to 867, is the principal exception to this remark: he is described by contemporary chronicles as the greatest pontiff since the days of St. Gregory-kind and lenient in his treatment of the clergy, but bold and imperious in his intercourse with kings. His conduct to Hincmar in the affair of Rothadus is at seeming variance with part of this eulogy; but though Nicholas was triumphant both in that dispute and in the more important difference with Lothaire, neither he nor any other Pope under the Carlovingian dynasty could establish, in France at least, the claim first men tioned in the text. The emperors continued to convoke all councils and to confirm their canons. Gregory also obliged the Metropolitans to attend at Rome from all countries, in order to receive the pallium at his hands. This, together with the appeal system, kept that capital continually crowded with foreign prelates, with great vexation to themselves, with great detriment to their dioceses, and with no real profit to the Catholic Church. In the mean time, it is certain that mere papal influence gained by this system; for all authority, to be always respected, must sometimes be felt; but unfounded and irrational authority most chiefly so. single spiritual monarchy, of which Rome should be the centre and sole metropolis; a monarchy so pure and undivided, that every individual minister of that church should look up to no other earthly sovereign than the Pope. Such does indeed appear to have been the stupendous scheme of Gregory VII. We have already seen by what measures he proceeded to its execution, and we shall now trace his extraordinary career to its conclusion. Henry advances to Rome. The election of a new Emperor by the Pope was very reasonably retorted by the election of a new Pope by the Emperor; and Clement III. was exalted to the honour of being the rival of Gregory. But a much more sensible injury was inflicted on the fortunes of that pontiff immediately afterwards by the defeat and death of Rodolphus. That prince received a mortal wound in battle in the year 1080; and with him was extinguished the spirit of rebellion, or at least the hope of its success. Henry immediately turned his victorious arms against Italy; the opposition presented to him by Matilda and the Tuscans he overcame or evaded, and advanced with speed and indignation to the gates of Rome. From his dreams of universal empire-from the lofty anticipations of princes suppliant and nations prostrate in allegiance before the apostolic throne, Gregory was rudely awakened by the shouts of a hostile army, pressing round the Imperial City. But he woke to the tasks of constancy and courage; and so formidable a show of resistance was presented, that Henry, after desolating the neighbouring country, withdrew, without honour or advantage, to the cities of his Lombard allies. Not deterred by this repulse, he renewed his attempt early in the spring following, and encountered the same opposition with the same result. The soldiers of Germany retired for the second time before the arms of the unwarlike Romans and the name of Gregory. But in the succeeding year (1084), the efforts of the Emperor were followed by greater success. The citizens, wearied by repeated invasions, and suffering from the ravages attending them, abandoned that which now appeared the weaker cause -on this third occasion they threw open their gates to Henry, and to Clement, the Antipope, who followed in his train. Henry placed his creature on the throne of Gregory, and the exultation of that moment may have rewarded him for the bitterness of many reverses. The measure which he next adopted should be carefully noticed, since it proves the veneration which was exacted even from him by the See itself, without consideration of its occupant. By an immediate act of submission to the chair which his own power had so recently bestowed, he solicited the Imperial Crown from the hand of Clement, and he received it amid the faithless salutations of the Roman people. In the mean time, his victory was neither complete nor secure: from the Castle of St. Angelo, Gregory surveyed in safety the partial overthrow of his fortunes, and awaited the succours from the south with which he purposed to repair them. Robert Guiscard-whether mindful of his feudal allegiance, or jealous of the Emperor's progress-was already approaching at the head of his Norman warriors; Henry and his Pope retired with precipitate haste, and Gregory was tumultuously restored to his rightful dignity. The success of the Normans was disgraced by the pillage of a large portion of the city: this circumstance depressed still further the declining popularity of the Pope, and he had learnt by his late experience how little he could confide in the capricious allegiance of the Romans*. Accordingly, on the return of Robert to his own dominions, Gregory followed him, and retired, first to the monastery of Monte Cassino, afterwards to Salerno. It is recorded that, on this occasion, Death of Robert would have profited by the weakness or the gratitude Gregory. of Gregory, to obtain from him the concession, on the part of the Church, of some disputed feudal right of no great importance, but that the Pope resisted the solicitations of his protector in the very centre of his camp. And, no doubt, his persevering and fearless spirit was still meditating the reoccupation of his chair, and the prosecution of his mighty projects. But such anticipations were speedily cut short, and in the year 1085, very soon after his arrival at Salerno, he diedt. He concluded a turbulent pontificate of twelve years in misfortune, in exile, with little honour, with few lamentations; without having witnessed the perfect accomplishment of any portion of the project which had animated his existence, and even at the very moment when it appeared most hopeless. He died—but he left behind him a name, which has arrested with singular force the attention of history, which has been strangely disfigured indeed by her capricious partiality, but which has never been overlooked, and will never be forgotten. He did more than that; he left behind him his spirit, his example, and his principles; and they continued, through many successive generations, to agitate the policy and influence the destinies of the whole Christian world. The latest words of Gregory are recorded § to have been these :—' I have loved justice and hated iniquity; therefore I die in exile;' words which seem to indicate a discontented His Character. spirit, reluctantly bending before the decrees of Pro vidence. But the same complaint may also have proceeded from a sense of pious intention, and the recollection of duties conscientiously performed. It becomes us then to inquire, in what really consisted that justice which he loved, and that iniquity which he hated? what were the principles which guided his public life? what were the habits. which regulated his private conversation? The leading, perhaps the only, principle of his public life was to reform, unite, and aggrandize the Church over which he presided, and especially to exalt the office which he filled. He may have been very serious and sincere in that principle-he may even have considered, that the whole of his duties were *Gli umori sempre diversi del popolo Romano.'-Denina, Riv. d'Ital., lib. x., c. 8. These are Semler's words:-Gregorius...tantis ausibus ipse immortuus est; nulli jam parti carus aut amatus; diu omnibus, execrationibus, scommatibus, satiris, mendaciisque post mortem oneratus-Sec. xi. c 1. Guillielmus Apuliensis, a poetical eulogist of Gregory, sings, that Robert Guiscard, who would have beheld with tearless eyes the death of his father, his son, and his wife, was moved to weakness by that of Gregory : Dux non se lacrymis audita forte coercet Morte viri tanti: non mors patris amplius illum Pagi, Vit. Greg. VII. sect. cxv. § Millot, Hist. de la France. They are given somewhat differently by Paulus Bernriedensis:-'Ego, fratres mei dilectissimi, nullos labores meos alicujus momenti facio, in hoc solummodo confidens, quod semper dilexi justitiam et odio habui iniquitatem.' And when his friends who were present expressed some anxiety respecting his future condition, he stretched forth his hands to Heaven, and said, Illuc ascendam; et obnixis precibus Deo propitio vos committam.' U |