CHAP. V A. D. 1002-1125 Henry's ef lay before him, Henry III, although only twenty-two years old, took up the government of the Empire with the hand of a master. Inspired by elevated ideals conceived in a practical spirit, Henry aimed at the re-establishment of the Holy Roman Empire as the ruler of the world. His first thought was given to the danger arising in the East. The Duke of Bohemia, Bretislav, was aiming at the foundation of a great independent Slavic kingdom with an archbishopric at Prague, owing allegiance to himself alone, and, in order to augment his dominion, was making an attack upon Poland. Henry hastened to the scene, renewed the feudatory relations of the Poles to himself, subdued Bretislav, and compelled him to do homage for both Bohemia and Moravia; dethroned Aba, King of Hungary, who had been placed on the throne of St. Stephen by a pagan reaction; and, under a new king, Peter, made Hungary a fief of the Empire. Turning toward the East and regarding his Burgundian possessions, Henry resolved to secure the friendship of France; and by a marriage with Agnes, daughter of William of Aquitaine, entered into close relations with his French neighbors. Having thus completed the line of vassal states on his forts for peace eastern frontier, and made friends on his western border, Henry began the reorganization of his kingdom from within. The support which Conrad had given to the lesser nobility had begun to yield its harvest of private feuds and petty wars. Seeing that the government of so great a realm required a system of strong local administration, at a diet held at Constance Henry exhorted the nation to peace, and resolved upon a more liberal policy toward the greater nobles, whose authority was necessary to preserve the good order of the kingdom. The evil which Henry III wished to overcome was almost universal in that age, for the possession of armed power by the feudal nobility had led to the prompt redress of every real or imagined injury by an appeal to force. "Faustrecht" or "fist law" as the Germans have called it, became the brutal code of the time; and whoever had power used it for the accomplishment of his designs. A. D. 1002-1125 Against this evil the Church had proclaimed its prohibi- CHAP. V tion, but in vain. In 1027, at the call of their bishop, a convention of the local clergy and laity had met in the county of Roussillon, in the Pyrenees, and agreed that no man should assail another on the Lord's Day. About the year 1040, this truce was adopted by a larger assembly of prelates and nobles, under the presidency of the Archbishop of Narbonne, and so far extended as to include the entire portion of every week from sunset of Wednesday to sunrise on Monday, as well as all the holy seasons of the year. Thus, from a purely local movement, arose that great institution of the Middle Ages known as the "Truce of God," which the Papacy finally adopted and strove to render universal. It is a lasting honor to Henry III that he was the first ruler to place a check on the turbulent nobility of his time by striving to prevent unrestrained indulgence in private war.1 The weakness of the Empire after the death of Otto III was strikingly exhibited by the condition of the Papacy, which, upon the death of Sylvester II, had again fallen into the hands of the Roman nobles. The power which the counts of Tusculum had wrung from the last Crescentius was, by a strange entente between them and the German kings, allowed full liberty at Rome. It was, apparently, the only means by which the Emperor could maintain that nominal relation to the Papacy which was implied by the theory of the Empire; but, in reality, the papal power had become a hereditary possession of the House of Tusculum. Not content with naming popes, the members of this powerful family themselves assumed the papal office; two brothers, under the names of Benedict VIII and John XIX, having in succession filled the Chair of St. Peter from 1012 to 1032, passing on the tiara to a nephew, Benedict IX, 1 It is interesting to note that Henry IV, in the most desperate moment of his struggle with Gregory VII, in 1085, issued a decree concerning a Truce of God, the text of which may be found in Henderson, Select Documents, pp. 208, 211. The degra- dation of the CHAP. V A. D. 1002-1125 Henry's work in Italy whose extreme youth of only twelve years and whose extravagant behavior became the scandal of Christendom. His excesses led the Romans, in 1045, to set up another pope, Sylvester III; when Benedict, fearing for his own safety, sold the Papacy to a prelate who assumed the name of Gregory VI; and, in strange contrast with this act of simony, attempted to institute reforms. Benedict, afterward repenting of his hasty bargain, returned to Rome and endeavored to establish his claim to the papal authority; and thus three popes, each too feeble to depose the others, were degrading the high office with their quarrels. Such was the crisis at Rome when, in 1046, the Italians convoked a synod and invited Henry to put an end to this disgraceful situation. Resolved to purify the Papacy, Henry crossed the Alps and held a synod by which the wrangling rivals were deposed; then, proceeding to Rome, he demanded 1 that the right of choosing the Pope be ceded to himself.': This privilege having been accorded by the Romans, with a promise that in future papal elections the Emperor's will should be obeyed, he designated as pope the German Bishop of Bamberg, under the name of Clement II; who, on the day of his consecration, Christmas, 1046, conferred upon Henry the imperial crown. Having thus pacified Rome by the complete confiscation of the Papacy, in company with his new vassal, he traversed Italy, which he brought under submission to the new order of things. Clement died soon afterward, but Henry named a succession of German popes, whom the Italians humbly accepted. By the reorganization of Germany and the control of the Papacy he had completed the work of restoring the Empire, and had raised the imperial office to a new height of dignity and power. For a moment, it seemed as if the end of the hard struggle had at length been reached and a permanent organization bestowed upon Christendom; but an unexpected occurrence was about to change the whole direction of events and lead to a complete transformation in the government of Europe. II. THE REGENERATION OF THE PAPACY CHAP. V A. D. 1002-1125 While greedy barons and princely prelates were absorbing the estates of the Church, which the Papacy was too weak to The influence protect, and which the Emperor was using to build up his of Cluny supremacy, sincere religious faith still lingered on in the monasteries, whose possessions were suffering most from the avarice of the temporal powers. In 910, William the Pious, Duke of Aquitaine, had founded a new monastery at Cluny, near Macon, in Burgundy. To preserve it from the encroachments which had proved so disastrous to other monastic foundations, he endowed it with absolute immunity from all jurisdiction except that of the See of Rome, and set over it a noble abbot whose piety and ability soon made it notable for morality and intelligence. Great numbers of devoted men entered its fellowship, until its rapid growth necessitated the founding of new houses to extend its capacity. These new colonies were so related to the original establishment, that all were not only bound by the same rule, but organically affiliated as members of one great system, presided over by the Arch-abbot of Cluny. Thus, an almost military discipline was maintained over the dependent communities, by which the strictest unity of doctrine, method, and policy was imparted to the growing brotherhood, until it became the most effective international organization of its time.1 Owing allegiance to no power except the Papacy, the brotherhood of Cluny, lamenting the depth of impotence and debasement to which the papal office had been reduced, with a high conception of its duties and prerogatives, resolved to restore it to its rightful authority. In an age of brutal force and ferocity, it longed for a new reign of peace and righteousness, and saw no hope of realizing its desire except in the 1 A translation of the "Foundation Charter of the Order of Cluny," dated September 11, 910, is found in Henderson, Select Documents, pp. 329, 333. CHAP. V A. D. 1002-1125 The relation of Henry III to the doctrines of Cluny exercise of a new spiritual dominion of the Church. To secure this dominion, the entire hierarchy must be reformed, beginning with its head. The Papacy must be released from the control of the Roman aristocracy and the dictation of the Emperor; when the Papacy had regained its freedom from temporal coercion, the Pope must be chosen from among spiritual leaders by spiritual men; the feudal relations of prelates to temporal rulers must cease; to enforce this idea the marriage of the clergy must be prohibited, and the hereditary transmission of ecclesiastical estates thus prevented; the bishops must be freely elected, not appointed by the temporal sovereign, and simony and the subservience of spiritual powers to merely temporal ends thereby averted. In a single formula, the spiritual must be placed above the temporal by the recognition of the Papacy as the supreme authority over all mankind; for emperors and kings alike are the rightful subjects of that greater kingdom of Heaven of which the Pope is the representative on earth. Such was the ambitious programme of the Cluniac reformation, by far the most potent international influence of the eleventh century. In appropriating the right to appoint popes, Henry III had, indeed, violated a cardinal doctrine of the Cluniac faith, which was based on the fundamental idea of the supremacy of the Papacy; but the fidelity with which the Emperor discharged his great trust by appointing men of high character to the papal office went far toward reconciling the reformers to his conduct. Still, the young monk Hildebrand, who was to become the fire and sword of the new movement, followed the deposed Gregory VI, to whom he was closely attached, into exile. The first two popes named by Henry - Clement II and Damasus II-lived but a short time and accomplished little. But the Emperor's cousin, Bruno, Bishop of Toul, who in 1049 was appointed pope as Leo IX, was an ardent adherent of the Cluny brotherhood and accepted the nomination of the Emperor only on condition that he should be elected by the clergy and people of Rome. Crossing the Alps in the garb |