Chapter VIII: Part 8

It is possible to trace back to the sixth century the first use of church bells, but their general introduction into the Western church dates from the eighth century. They were termed _seings_ (in Latin _signa_); they were not rung, but were simply struck with wooden or metal hammers (Fig. 187), as is still done south of the Pyrenees. From this practice comes the word _toc-seing_ or _tocsin_, applied to the municipal peals of the Middle Ages and of still later times. The organ (_organum_) also dates from the eighth century. Imperfect as this instrument originally was, it caused tremendous enthusiasm among its hearers. Indeed, it may be said that organs and church bells had an equal share in raising the prestige of the ceremonial liturgy, which charmed and captivated both the senses and the souls of its hearers, by the display of its numerous officiating clergy, by the solemn gravity of its chants, by the noble simplicity of the vestments, and by the chaste and majestic arrangement of its ritual.

Under the last Carlovingians the liturgy gradually deteriorated; less in the East perhaps than in the West, less at Rome and Milan perhaps than elsewhere, but everywhere the signs of deplorable relaxation and falling away were manifest. The choristers attempted to assume the privileges of the clerks; the deacons arrogated to themselves impossible rights of independence; the priests despised the bishops, and too frequently the bishops, presuming on their power, had the audacity to disobey the pontifical decrees. This change and deterioration principally showed itself in the psalmody, in the chants, in the adornment of the sanctuary, and in the dress of the ecclesiastics. The Byzantine methods of treatment, as applied to architectural monuments and to the various forms of Christian art, did something to preserve the traditions of the liturgy, but from the close of the tenth century till the twelfth much confusion prevailed in the Latin Church. It was reserved for the Crusades, after a century and a half of adventurous expeditions, to bring back from countries beyond the sea, from Antioch, from Constantinople, and from Jerusalem, the elements and the principles of a Neo-Greek liturgy, in which the degenerate Gallo-Roman was as it were saturated, and its whole character remodelled.

The Catholic liturgy thus underwent a touching and marvellous transformation; this transformation was inaugurated by the construction of new churches, in which the Romanesque style gave place to that of the Ogive or Gothic; by the erection of slender belfries, recalling the minarets of the Mahometan mosques; by the introduction of transparent pictures on painted glass; by the chaste but splendid appointments of the chapels; by the dazzling decorations of the altars; by the melody of the church bells, the sonorous messengers of religion calling the faithful to prayer; and by the harmony of the human voice with the organ and other musical instruments. A complete and ingenious symbolism was contained in this comprehensive allegorical ritual, and rendered the liturgy a veritable sanctuary of Christian instruction and sacred tradition, each mystery (Fig. 188), each precept of which penetrated into the soul, as it were, through the medium of the senses.

In the thirteenth century, when the celebrated William Durand, Bishop of Mende, wrote his “Rationale of Divine Service,” a complete collection of the liturgy of the day, this sort of canonical legislation became settled as much as a matter could be which the bishops and even the mere priests were continually modifying. William Durand, following the example of his predecessors, included many innovations which were to be lamented, many eccentric rites foreign to the traditions of the primitive church, and lowering to the dignity of divine worship. Enlightened minds felt the truth of this, and the Council of Trent found it necessary to demand a liturgical reform. In consequence of this demand Pope Pius V., in 1568, issued the corrected form of the _Roman Breviary_, and, in 1570, the new _Missal_. As the principal object was to reform the errors which had crept in in later times, the dioceses which possessed rituals of at least two hundred years old could either preserve their own customs or adopt the Breviary and the Missal of Pius V.

The Church has deviated as little as possible from its ancient ceremonial, particularly in what concerns the administration of the sacraments. Nevertheless, seven sacraments, which we will rapidly notice in the order in which they are enumerated by the Council of Trent, were formerly accompanied by certain ceremonies which the change of manners and customs has caused to fall into disuse, and which we shall mention merely as a proof of their antiquity.

Left portion of the triptych painted on panel by Roger Van der
Weyden (Rogier del Pasturle).--From the Antwerp Museum (Fifteenth
Century).]

1. _Baptism_, which St. Peter had given by _aspersion_ to the three thousand persons whom he converted by his first sermon, was also given in primitive times by _immersion_; finally _infusion_ (from the Latin verb _infundere_, to sprinkle) was adopted in the manner in which it is practised in our own day (Figs. 189 and 190).

2. _Confirmation_ was administered immediately after baptism, when only adults were admitted to the latter sacrament; but when baptism was administered to new-born infants, confirmation had to be postponed till the receivers of the rite were old enough to answer for themselves--that is to say, until they were capable of distinguishing between good and evil (Fig. 189).

3. The _Eucharist_ from the earliest times was administered under the name of _communion_ to those in sound health, and under the name of _viaticum_ to those at the point of death (Figs. 192 and 193).

The communion, that is to say the host, was received in the hand, and was administered by the communicant himself. After the sixth century women were enjoined to receive it in a white veil, termed _dominical_, with which they lifted it to their mouths without touching it with their hands. In 880 the Council of Rouen decreed that in future the sacrament was only to be received at the hand of the officiating priest. Until the thirteenth century the communion was always preceded by the kiss of love; the men embraced the men, and the women the women. After the distribution of bread the deacons came forward with two-handled cups of large dimensions, containing wine for the communicants, which each tasted through a golden pipe (Fig. 191).

4. _Penance_, the obligatory practice of which was reduced to once a year by the fourth Lateran Council, had always for its aim the absolution from sin consequent upon confession.

Excommunication, the extreme punishment inflicted upon great sinners, was pronounced by the faint light of a wax taper, which the priest afterwards extinguished and trampled under foot. In some countries the populace used to carry a bier to the door of the excommunicated person; stones were hurled against his dwelling, and all kinds of foul abuse were heaped upon him. Of a still more solemn nature was the excommunication pronounced by the pope himself on Holy Thursday, in virtue of the bull termed _In Cœna Domini_, against all who appealed to the general council against the decrees and the ordinances of the pontiffs; against the princes who exacted unfair tribute from ecclesiastics; and against heretics, pirates, &c. A deacon read the bull from the balcony (_loggia_, an open tribunal) of St. Peter’s in the presence of the pope, who, as a symbol of anathema, dashed a lighted torch of yellow wax into the open court of the Vatican, which the assistants hastened to extinguish by trampling upon it. It was also on Holy Thursday that the _reconciliation_ of the penitents took place, that is to say, their general absolution, to enable them to take part in the mysteries of Easter.

5. _Extreme unction_ has always been given to sick people in danger of death, according to the recommendation of the Apostle St. James. The material of which this sacrament is composed is the _oil of the infirm_, but we can see from old rituals that the place and number of the unctions have varied at different times in the administration of this sacrament (Fig. 194).

6. _Orders_. Besides the higher orders, which were conferred as they are in our own day, the Church included from the earliest times the four minor orders, which were bestowed, as now, upon the tonsured clerks; that is to say, the orders of _porter_, _reader_, _exorcist_, and _acolyte_.

The consecration of abbots and abbesses, although made with a great deal of ceremony, was not considered as an ordination, but only as a benediction. The bishop, after giving the abbot the communion under the form of bread, blessed him, placed a mitre on his head, and gave him his gloves, the symbols of his rank, with the customary prayers. The abbot’s crosier and ring were bestowed upon him before the offertory. Alexander II., elected pope in 1061, was the first to confer upon abbots the privilege of wearing the mitre. Abbesses also enjoyed the right of carrying the crosier; they received it from the hands of the bishop, together with the pastoral cross and ring. In the synods and councils the abbots were only allowed to wear a mitre ornamented with _orfroi_ (a golden fringe), but devoid of pearls and precious stones; the bishops wore the precious mitre, that is to say, one ornamented with pearls and jewels.

7. The ceremony of _marriage_ has altered but little. In old days, however, it was celebrated at the door and not in the interior of the church. In the ninth century the priest placed jewelled crowns upon the heads of husband and wife; these crowns were made in the shape of a tower, and were afterwards kept near the altar.

Most religious ceremonies were accompanied with processions; but besides these there were great public processions varying according to the country and the diocese in which they took place. They were regulated by special liturgies, which formed a separate ritual termed _processional_. The procession of palms or of branches, which takes place the Sunday before Easter, in remembrance of the entry of Christ into Jerusalem, had for a long time been customary in the East, when towards the sixth or seventh century it was adopted by the Latin church, which frequently added scenic accessories, intended to make a still deeper impression on the minds of the spectators. This ancient festival was distinguished by many names; by some it was termed the _Hosanna_, in memory of the acclamations with which Jesus was received in Jerusalem; by others the _Sunday of Indulgences_, on account of the indulgences distributed by the Church on that holy day. In old times verses from the Gospels, inscribed upon a richly ornamented banner surrounded with palm-leaves, were carried in this procession, and it was frequently also accompanied by the chalice containing the host, in the midst of consecrated branches. It was, as a rule, customary that the ashes employed for the ceremony of Ash Wednesday should be those of the branches carried in the procession of the preceding year, and which were carefully preserved from year to year, and burnt when thoroughly desiccated.

In 1262 Pope Urban IV. confirmed and extended to the whole of Christendom the statute of Robert, Bishop of Liége; who, being of opinion that the ceremony of the eucharist ought to be celebrated in a more solemn manner than it was possible to do upon Holy Thursday, the day set aside for the reconciliation of penitents, had decreed that every year, on the first Thursday after Pentecost, the festival of Corpus Christi, or the _Fête-Dieu_ should take place (Fig. 195); the office for which, the same as is used in our own day, was composed by St. Thomas d’Aquinas.

The procession termed _Litanies majeures_, first instituted in 589 by Pope Pelagius II., owed its origin to a plague that desolated Rome after an inundation of the Tiber.

In 474 St. Mamert, Archbishop of Vienne, in Dauphiny, in order to thank God for having delivered his diocese from the scourges which desolated it, and from the wild beasts which ravaged it, founded the procession of _Rogations_, which took place during the three days which precede the feast of the Ascension. This procession was ordered for the whole of France by the Council of Orleans in 511; but it only came into use at Rome towards the close of the eighth century, under Pope Leo III.

The procession which precedes the mass of Ascension Thursday is of the highest antiquity; but nowhere was it carried out with greater ceremony, or attended by a larger number of pilgrims, than at the church built in Palestine by St. Helen, mother of Constantine, on the very spot where the ascension took place, and where still might be seen on the stone the last footprints of our Saviour, as He left this earth and ascended to heaven.

In fact, in the Middle Ages there were an immense number of festivals which gave rise to processions (Fig. 196) and to other religious ceremonies. It must not be forgotten that all great festivals were indifferently termed Easters. The anniversary of the resurrection of Jesus Christ was the great Easter, and in order to prepare worthily for it, the body was purified by baths, and the hair and the beard were cut, as tokens of the care with which the Christian ought to preserve the purity of his soul, and to remove the vices that infect the unregenerated man. The Nativity, Epiphany, Ascension, and Pentecost were also called Easter. In some churches, at Great Easter, dramatic representations were given of the mysteries the festival celebrated. A procession was undertaken to a tomb cut in a rock. Three women and two men in Israelitish dress represented the three Marys and the disciples John and Peter, and others dressed in white, with crowns on their heads and wings on their shoulders, played the part of the angels who communed with them.

_Pentecost_ (Fig. 197), or the _Easter of Roses_, was accompanied with the same dramatic and religious accessories. In many churches during mass, at the words _Veni, Sancte Spiritus_, a sudden blast of the trumpet was given to recall the great noise in the midst of which the Holy Ghost descended upon the apostles. Sometimes, indeed, to add to the scenic imitation of the mystery, tongues of fire fell from the roof, or a shower of red rose-leaves took place; and doves, emblems of the Holy Ghost, were allowed to flutter about the church.

At high festivals the mass was followed by the ceremony of the offering, at which all present were expected to deposit a coin in a plate, and kiss the emblem of good-will presented to them (Fig. 198). This offering was in memory of an ancient custom. The offerings, which in the primitive Church the faithful were accustomed to make every day, consisted of bread and wine. They were placed before the altar at the commencement of the second part of the mass, after the reading of the Gospel and of the Apostles’ Creed. The capitularies of the early Frankish kings prescribed that neophytes were to offer bread and wine at least every Sunday. Until the eighth or ninth century, some authors assert that for the sacrifice of the mass, either leavened or unleavened bread was used indifferently; but since that period leavened bread has only been in use in the Eastern Church. From this epoch, also, the offered bread was no longer used except for distribution to the people, as a symbol of the communion, and it then took the name of _eulogy_ or _consecrated bread_ (Fig. 199). These pieces of bread, which the assisting priests and deacons offered successively at the altar upon white napkins, were of a round shape. They were termed _hoops_, _crowns_, and _wheels_. The custom of offering bread and wine whilst holding a lighted taper in the hand has been handed down, and still exists at burials in many dioceses.

The altar where the offerings were made was surmounted by a cupola (called _ciborium_) sustained by four columns, between which were curtains, which were closed during part of the service to hide the sacred mysteries about to take place (Fig. 200). In the middle of the cupola, above the altar, a hollow dove, made of gold or silver, was suspended (Fig. 201); in this the eucharist for the sick was kept. This silver dove was replaced at a later period by the tabernacle.

We have thus seen that time has only brought about slight modifications in the liturgy of the Church; on the other hand, we can satisfy ourselves that nothing is left to conjecture or hypothesis; the most searching criticism only affirms the truths of tradition. M. Paul Allard, a distinguished writer, has expressed this in a very happy manner in his work, “Subterranean Rome.” “For two centuries,” he says, “the soil of Rome has been searched and dug up with indefatigable ardour, in the hope of discovering the source of the first Christian institutions, the very origin of the Church, catacombs have been thrown open to the day, thousands of inscriptions have been laid bare, and rare and precious paintings have been copied, or are still to be seen. From these subterranean labours, which have left nothing to conjecture, the history of the origin of Christianity has emerged, complete and renovated, but differing in nothing from that which tradition has handed down to us, and which, confirmed as to a great number of points, has been shaken in none.”

THE POPES.

Influence of the Papacy in the Reformation of Early
Society.--St. Leo the Great.--Origin of the Temporal
Power of the Popes.--Gregory the Great.--The Iconoclastic
Emperors.--Stephen III. delivered by France.--Charlemagne
crowned Emperor of the West.--Photius.--The Diet of
Worms.--Gregory VII.; his Plan for a Christian Republic.--Urban
II.--The Crusades.--Calixtus II.; Termination of the Dispute
as to Investiture.--Innocent III.--Struggle of Boniface VIII.
against Philippe le Bel.--The great Western Schism.--Council of
Florence.--Battle of Lepanto.--Council of Trent.

During the Middle Ages the popes exercised an appreciable influence upon society, personifying as they did the Christian element which was destined to regenerate the old world. “A doctrine emanating from Asia was not to subjugate, but to convert Europe, to associate political and religious truth, and, by the force of conscience against idolatry, and of resignation against tyranny, to restore the human race in all its dignity under the one true God. With the power of the sword sprung up that of opinion, which, independent of its rival, sustained the cause of progress in its struggle against this same power of the sword, and prevented it from being overthrown. The Church, representing the people and opening the way to the emancipation of all who were weighed down by conquest and by force, was unable to destroy servitude, legalised violence, and rapine at one blow, but it encountered them with a reproving doctrine and a condemning God.

“Nero and Domitian soon found themselves face to face with Peter and Linus;--the first, armed masters of the world, having upon their side legality, which is so different from justice, representatives of the old world which cried out in the circus, ‘To the lions with the Christians!’--the latter, poor, weak, misunderstood, and calumniated, propagating the kingdom of God by authority, education, ceremonies, and example; declaring that unto Cæsar should be rendered the things which are Cæsar’s, but nothing more, neither worship nor the sacrifice of one’s sentiments and convictions.”--(Cantù.)

This struggle, begun by St. Peter, the first Bishop of Rome, and first pope, and continued by his successor St. Linus, went on for three centuries. Nevertheless the popes, unchecked by persecutions, had effected the moral conquest of the Roman world,--even the palace of the Cæsars was full of Christians when their legal existence became recognised by Constantine. The seat of the empire was transferred to Byzantium; the luxury and effeminacy of the East enervated the degenerated race of the Cæsars, while under the influence of the Bishops of Rome, officially recognised at that date as the sovereign pontiffs of the Christians, the West continued to advance rapidly in the path of modern civilisation.

The emperors, converted to Christianity, ere long became the opponents of the popes; “laying aside the sword of defence for disputations on theology.” Their weakness handed the West over to the Germanic races; primitive society, whose organization still remained heathen, despite the change in religious belief, was swallowed up by the invasion of these Northerners, whose institutions facilitated the triumph of the ideas of political liberty and equality, the germ of which was deposited in the Gospel.

The papacy of the Middle Ages was first made illustrious by Leo I., surnamed the Great. Called to be Bishop of Rome by the people and the clergy in 440, when twenty years of age, he rendered the greatest possible services to civilisation during the twenty-two years of his reign. His preachings, his writings, his decrees, aimed chiefly at the education of his clergy and his flock, at the maintenance of the Nicene Creed (Fig. 206), the moral improvement of the clergy, and the upholding of discipline. He fought the heretics with equal energy and authority; he continued the struggle of orthodoxy against the errors which attacked the dogma of the Incarnation, which is the basis of Christianity, and upheld with vigilant perseverance the primitive doctrine of the Church, so clearly defined and proclaimed during the reign of one of his predecessors at the Council of Ephesus in 431. He was, above all things, a skilful diplomatist and a great politician. He firmly maintained the apostolic pre-eminence of Rome over Constantinople--a pre-eminence which was, moreover, recognised by the Council of Chalcedon.

The empire, like the Church, needed such a man as St. Leo in its days of adversity. The invasion of the barbarians was triumphant in the West, and nearly all of the conquerors were either Arians, who denied the divinity of Christ, or idolaters. Leo triumphed over all these calamities. Rome had already been ravished by Alaric in 410, but even he respected the churches in which the population had fled for refuge. Attila, at the head of seven hundred thousand men, marched on Rome for the purpose of devastating it with fire and sword; resistance seemed out of the question, and the Emperor was preparing to escape. Amidst the universal panic, Pope Leo, accompanied by a consul, went out to meet the dreaded chieftain, and induced him to turn back.

Some years later, Genseric poured his vandals into Italy, and again Leo boldly presented himself before his fierce assailant, and made him renounce his intention of burning the city and slaying the inhabitants. Thus did circumstances lead the way for the temporal power of the popes in Rome, of which they eventually became the sole guardians and defenders.

But the genius of Leo served only to defer the downfall of the Western Empire, which was doomed to disappear fifteen years after his death. His successors continued to protect Italy, so far as in them lay, against the horrors of war; and Pope Agapetus, though weighed down by years, undertook the perilous mission of going to Constantinople to make peace between the Emperor of the East and the King of the Visigoths. A few years afterwards, Pope Pelagius I. had the courage to seek an interview with Totila, and so preserve Rome from massacre and dishonour. Pelagius II., who kept within bounds the Lombards, at that time masters of Italy, was succeeded by Gregory I., surnamed Gregory the Great, one of the most illustrious of the Roman pontiffs.

Gregory, whose father was a Roman senator, and whose mother was canonised, was prætor or chief magistrate of Rome, and his administration had gained for him great popularity when, by his father’s death, he inherited a large fortune. This enabled him to found seven monasteries, and, having distributed the remainder of his money amongst the poor, he became a monk in the Abbey of St. Andrew, which he had founded previous to his entering the priesthood. Chosen as pope on September 3, 590, he, in spite of his resistance to the clergy, the senators, and the people, immediately made his profession of faith in the customary manner. He converted the Lombards, who were professed Arians, and even idolaters. This was no small triumph, for it meant the peaceful subjection, or rather the alliance of a warlike people, whose close neighbourhood to Rome had been a constant cause of alarm. It was especially in his relations with the court of Constantinople that Gregory displayed all the loftiness of his character. While he bridled the ambition of the Lombards, so as to preserve for the emperors of the East their Italian possessions (Fig. 207), he defended with equal energy and tact the independence of the Church and the interests of the Italians against the unjust pretensions of the Byzantine Court. He rendered more distinct the rôle of the papacy in the Middle Ages, which was to uphold the purity of dogma as opposed to heresy against the theological pretensions of emperors, to protect also the Catholic population, vanquished and often persecuted by new masters, whether pagan or heretic; and, lastly, to convey the tidings of the Gospel to the most remote nations of the earth.

To this great pope appertains the glory of having converted England by means of the missionaries whom he sent thither. “There is nothing grander in the history of Europe,” said Bossuet, “than the entry of St. Augustine into Kent with forty of his companions, who, preceded by the cross and image of the Great King our Lord Jesus Christ, prayed fervently for the conversion of England. St. Gregory, who had sent them forth, edified them by truly apostolic letters, and constrained St. Augustine to tremble with amazement at the numerous miracles which God wrought through him. Bertha, a French princess, brought her husband, King Ethelbert, over to Christianity. The kings of France and Queen Brunehild supported this new mission. The French bishops entered cordially into this good work, and, by order of the pope, they consecrated St. Augustine. The support which St. Gregory gave to the new bishop bore abundant fruit, and the Anglican Church was thus formed.”[13]

Amidst these important engagements, the activity of Gregory found time to superintend the relief of the poor and the education of the young. He built schools and hospitals in Rome, and increased the splendour of the church services by a judicious and well-conceived reform of sacred music. M. F. Clement, in his history of religious music, says, “St. Gregory, not content with regulating the antiphon for every service throughout the year, also founded a school of singing at Rome, and personally superintended the teaching there. While other masters were entrusted with the task of giving lessons in one division of the school, at St. Peter’s in the Vatican, he directed another section of St. John of Lateran. We read in the life of this pontiff, written by John the Deacon, that, compelled by his infirmities to lie at full length upon a couch, he still taught the children singing, and that the staff which he used for beating time is still preserved.”

A century after his death, two popes of the same name who succeeded each other, Gregory II. and Gregory III., recalled to mind the virtues, and above all the firmness of their glorious predecessor. They had to struggle against the extraordinary pretensions of the emperors of the East, who declared themselves iconoclasts--that is, breakers of images. Alleging certain abuses, brought about by the ignorance of some unenlightened Christians, Leo the Isaurian published in 726 an edict commanding the destruction of the images--the crucifixes and the statues--throughout the whole empire. Neither the clergy nor their flocks had ever seen any sign of idolatry in the worship of these images, which were venerated as sacred symbols and respected like family portraits. The Patriarch of Constantinople, refusing to obey this edict, was banished. This new heresy was severely rebuked by Gregory II., and after him by Gregory III. The latter replied to the emperor, who had requested him to convoke a council, in these noble words, “You have written asking us to assemble an œcumenical council; it would be futile, as you alone persecute the images; cease these evil deeds, and the world will be at peace, and scandals will come to an end. Do you not see that your crusade against the images is an act of revolt against the Church and of presumption? The churches were enjoying a period of profound tranquillity when you excited this tempest of disputes; put an end to the schism, and then there will be no need of a council.” This apostolic firmness excited the wrath of Leo, who dispatched against Rome a fleet of vessels carrying a large body of troops, but they were lost in the Adriatic.

Trasmund, Duke of Spoleto, and the Duke of Benevento, having risen in revolt against Luitprand, King of the Lombards, took refuge in Rome. Gregory received them very cordially, and refused to deliver them up to their redoubtable suzerain. Luitprand at once marched upon Rome, and Gregory demanded help from Charles Martel--which, however, he declined to give; and the good pope died just in time to be saved from witnessing the sack of the Eternal City (741).

Zachariah, a Greek by birth, accepted the succession left vacant by Gregory III. under such critical circumstances; but he negotiated so skilfully with Luitprand, that the king not only gave back to the pontifical domain four towns which he had already seized, but further added, as an irrevocable gift, the territories of the Sabines, Narnia, Ossimo, and Ancona, and consented to evacuate the exarchy of Ravenna, occupied by his troops. Zacharias enjoyed an equal amount of credit with the Emperor Constantinus Copronymus, who granted him, in the interest of the Roman Church, concessions which were more than could have been expected from an irritated suzerain. All the sovereigns of his time seemed anxious to have recourse to his advice. Charlemagne, son of Charles Martel, and Rachis, King of the Lombards, went to Rome for the purpose of seeing him, and he invited both of them to enter the monastery of Monte-Cassino.

Stephen III., elected by acclamation to succeed Zachariah (752), was carried from the public square to the Lateran Church upon the shoulders of his supporters; and this custom has since been adhered to in cases where the election has been unanimous.

He had concluded peace for forty years with Astolfo, King of the Lombards, but that ambitious monarch failed to keep his engagements, as, a short time afterwards, he drove the exarch Eutychius out of Ravenna, and then, claiming for himself all the rights of the emperor, he aspired to become master of Rome (753). This unjust warfare was fortunately carried on so slowly that the sovereign-pontiff had time to go to France and intercede with King Pepin for help against Astolfo. The French army was sent over the Alps, and Astolfo had to submit, and to hand over Ravenna to the people, and surrender the hostages. Stephen returned to Rome, accompanied by Prince Jérôme, the brother of Pepin; but in the following year Astolfo again took up arms, and Pepin, who had again crossed the Alps, this time compelled him to abandon definitely the exarchate of twenty-two towns, together with the territories attached to them, which he made over absolutely to St. Peter and his successors. This, with the Duchy of Rome, constituted the temporal dominion of the Church.

A few years later Adrian I., who had avoided falling into the political snares laid for him by Didier, appealed to Charlemagne for his intervention, and the latter, crossing the Alps, laid siege to Pavia, the capital of the Lombard kings, took Didier prisoner, and sent him to the monastery of Corbie. Not content with delivering Rome, Charlemagne, during the two visits which he paid to that city, during and after the war, confirmed the gift solemnly made by his father of the territories which were to be inalienably annexed to the Holy See; and, at the same time, he added the coast of Genoa, Corsica, Mantua, Venetia, Istria, the duchies of Spoleto, Benevento, and the entire exarchate over its thirty towns.

Adrian had the consolation of seeing the heresies of the iconoclasts condemned by the second Nicene Council; and the Empress Irene and her son Constantine submitted to the decision.

Adrian died in 795. His successor, Leo III., sent to the great Emperor of the Franks the standard of the city of Rome, and the keys of the Confession of St. Peter, as to the protector of the Eternal City. The emperor responded to this homage by the gift of immense treasure which he had taken from the enemy, and the pope devoted the greater part of it to the decorating of the Lateran Palace, and various churches.

A conspiracy, which Leo III. only escaped by climbing the walls of Rome and by taking refuge with the Duke of Spoleto, who had marched to his succour, gave him an opportunity for going to see Charlemagne at Paderborn, who promised to come himself into Italy to confound the enemies of the holy father; in the meanwhile he dispatched commissioners to Rome, who reinstated the pope in his pontifical city (November 30, 799). Charlemagne came to Rome in the following year, when, convoking an assembly of the people, he declared the object of his visit and summoned the accusers of the pope to appear before his tribunal. As they did not dare to put in an appearance, he declared that the holy father should be allowed to justify himself on oath. Then in the great cathedral of St. Peter, in the presence of a vast concourse of people, Leo, with his hand upon the books of the Evangelists, cried out, “I know nothing of the crimes with which the Romans have charged me.” His declaration was received with shouts of applause that rung through, the vaults of the sacred edifice. Charlemagne, who had returned to St. Peter’s on Christmas Day, for the service, knelt before the altar. The pope, upstanding before him, placed upon his forehead a golden crown studded with jewels and proclaimed him emperor, thus giving him a real supremacy over all the Christian princes and people of the West. (Figs. 208 and 209.)

The popes who were contemporary with the successors of Charlemagne, though not of special note, governed the Church with wise moderation; and as they were all patrons of the Fine Arts, Rome is indebted to them for some of her chief embellishments. Leo IV., in 847, was compelled to make Rome secure from an attack by the Saracens, who were always making incursions up to its very walls. For this purpose he constructed around the church of St. Peter a regular town--the Leonine city--which he fortified with high towers. He also fortified the places near Rome, and founded a new city, called Leopolis, which he surrounded with ramparts. Rome thus being out of danger, he imitated the example of his predecessors by ornamenting the churches, to which he gave paintings and other works of art of the value of 5,971 silver marks. The fabulous story of Pope Joan--who was said to have been elected pope, and to have concealed her sex, though she was shortly after expelled, after some great scandal--is placed by historians between Leo IV. and Benedict III.; but the falsity of the story is manifest, for there was no interregnum between the death of Leo, upon July 17th, 855, and the election of Benedict.

Nicholas I. (858–867), anathematized Photius, the usurping Patriarch of Constantinople. The empire having fallen to Michael III., a child of three years old, his mother Theodora, assisted by his uncle Bardas, carried on the government in his name. When this prince grew up, Bardas ousted Theodora, and, in order to maintain himself in power, pandered to the passions of his nephew. Michael gave himself up to such scandalous excesses that the Patriarch Ignatius excluded him from the church, and excommunicated Bardas. In six days, Photius, a layman who could be depended upon to do as he was told, was made patriarch in the room of Ignatius. This was the prelude to the separation of the Greek Church. Photius added heresy to his revolt against the pope, by asserting that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father only, and not from the Son. Nicholas’ successor, Adrian II., appointed his legates to preside at the council which deposed the Patriarch Photius. He also upheld the sentence of his predecessor against Lothair, whom he compelled to renounce his adulterous union with Valdrade. When that prince came before him to partake of the sacrament, the pope said in a loud tone of voice, as he presented the host, “If thou hast given up thy adultery, if thou hast broken off all connection with Valdrade, may this sacrament comfort thee! But if thy heart is still perverse, it will be for thy punishment.” This lofty firmness of speech was all the more praiseworthy because the pope, in thus maintaining the rights of morality, had to defy and admonish a prince who had delivered Rome from the Saracens. No one can tell whether the doubt expressed by Adrian, as to the sincerity of Lothair’s conversion, was well grounded or not; but it is at least certain that the latter died forty days afterwards, and that his death appeared to be a judgment from Heaven.

The legates of John VIII., the successor of Adrian, allowed themselves to be intimidated and corrupted by Photius. Deceived by their false representations, John VIII. at first approved of what they had done; but when he learnt the truth he publicly excommunicated at Rome both Photius and the cowardly legates who had betrayed their trust in order to curry favour with this impostor (880). John VIII. was the first pope, since the fall of the Roman Empire, who had to decide between two competitors for the Imperial crown. He declared, that as the empire had been conferred upon Charlemagne by the grace of God and the authority of the pope, he transferred it to the King of the Franks, Charles the Bald.

For a century and a half the factions of powerful Italian families and the arbitrary will of the emperors interfered with the free election of the popes, whence arose great scandals, and many unworthy persons were elevated to the pontificate. On several occasions the rivalry of parties led to the creation of anti-popes, and at one time there were as many as three claimants to the Holy See. It is little short of miraculous that the papacy should have kept its place against so many causes tending to its ruin. At last, in 1049, the Romans having sent to the Emperor Henry III., asking him to appoint a successor to the pope who had just died, that monarch assembled the bishops and grandees of the empire at Worms, and upon their advice selected Bruno, Bishop of Toul.

Before repairing to Rome, Bruno went to consult Hildebrand, the monk of Cluny, whose reputation for virtue and ability stood very high. The latter received him very cordially, but pointed out to him the impropriety of a lay election, and persuaded him to exchange the pontifical gown for that of the pilgrim, until the people and clergy of Rome should have freely elected him.

Bruno entered Rome barefooted, and thus replied to the applause of those who had gone to meet him: “The choice of the people and the clergy, supported as they are by the authority of the canons, overrides all other nominations; I am therefore ready to return to my country if my election is not approved by all your suffrages.” By Hildebrand’s advice, the ancient customs were observed. Bruno took the name of Leo IX.; he was consecrated on the 2nd of February, and enthroned ten days later. Thus did the Roman Court proclaim that the emperors and princes did not possess absolute power over the election of the pontiffs, and the right of election, after having been thus restored to the people and the clergy, was subsequently vested in the cardinals.

With a view to reforming the morals of the ecclesiastics, to re-establishing discipline and the liturgy, and to combat false doctrines and heresies, Leo IX. held a vast number of councils, some at Rome, some at Vercelli, and others at Paris; he travelled all through France, Germany, and Italy, taking note of all the abuses which he discovered, and showing himself determined to correct them. Thanks to imperial munificence, he had increased very considerably the pontifical power. Carried away by his zeal, he accompanied the troops sent him by the emperor against the Normans who were devastating Italy. His soldiers were defeated, and he himself was taken prisoner; but the Normans did homage to their captive, and begged him to accept the homage of all their possessions in Italy, so that Leo IX. actually obtained advantages greater than ever he could have expected. The nomination of his successor no longer came within the province of the emperor, and the illustrious Hildebrand, who was at that time almost supreme in the Roman Church, directed the election under the canonical form of four successive popes, who required neither the approbation nor the support of the holy empire. The last of them, Alexander II., died in 1072, after having reigned nine years, and the bishops were deliberating on the choice of a new pontiff, when a voice was suddenly raised from amongst the people, “Hildebrand for pope, St. Peter has chosen him.” This was as the voice of God, and Hildebrand, who had been pope _de facto_ for so many years, was enthroned under the title of Gregory VII. His first care was to arrange at a council the affairs of Italy and of France, and to contract alliances with Spain, Hungary, and various German principalities. He judged himself strong enough to undertake this severe and unwearied struggle, which he kept up throughout the whole of his reign, in the interests of the Church, against the sovereigns of Europe. He wished to obtain recognition of the independence of the Holy See, to dispossess the abbots and prelates who had been guilty of simony, reprimanding at the same time the emperors and kings who had trafficked in ecclesiastical dignities. He desired also to reform the loose morality of the clerks, at the same time that he condemned the careless indifference of the episcopate. He first attacked the Emperor Henry IV., he then threatened Philip I. with excommunication if he did not mend his ways; he launched an anathema against five of the principal members of the imperial household, and afterwards summoned the monarch himself to appear in person before a synod, to render account of what he had done. Henry IV., victorious over the Saxons, and irritated at the pope’s audacity, convoked a diet at Worms for the purpose of deposing him, and dismissed the legates whom he had sent. During this time a conspiracy was being hatched at Rome against the pope, the promoters of which were Cencius, prefect of the city, and Guibert, Archbishop of Ravenna. It was brought to issue upon the night of Christmas, 1075. Gregory, wounded in the forehead while he was celebrating mass in the basilica of St. Peter, was carried prisoner from the altar into one of the towers; from which he was almost at once delivered by the people, and brought back to the altar to terminate the service. The pope showed great clemency towards the conspirators. Six weeks afterwards the Diet of Worms pronounced his deposition, and the bishops gave in their solemn adherence to the decree. Gregory VII., nowise cast down or discouraged, anathematized the emperor at a council held in Rome; and, then addressing himself to the whole Christian world, he entreated it to join him in the defence of their outraged religion. The most distinguished women of Europe--at the head of whom was Matilda, princess of Tuscany (Fig. 210), widow of Godfrey the Humpbacked--declared themselves openly for the pope, in whose favour a sudden reaction took place. Feudal Germany deserted the cause of the emperor, who was compelled to withdraw to Spires until a diet, convoked to meet at Augsburg, should decide as to the respective complaints of the two sovereigns. But the emperor, impatient to get rid of the sentence of excommunication which had been passed against him, went to meet the pope on his way to Augsburg with the Countess Matilda. This illustrious lady interposed to effect a reconciliation between the two rivals, who had an interview in the fortress of Canossa, near Reggio, when the emperor, in order to obtain his pardon, submitted to the humiliation of going on his knees to the pope to ask for it (1077). It was then that the Countess Matilda bequeathed all her patrimonial domains and all her personal property to the Church and to the Court of Rome. The unhappy Henry, ashamed of the penance which he had been made to undergo, peremptorily separated himself from the papal communion. Council after council was convoked, and in the space of two years Gregory had convoked no less than seven for discussing the general affairs of the Church. He had not omitted to secure for himself allies, while the emperor was confronted in Germany by enemies who were attempting to wrest from him the imperial crown. Henry IV. succeeded in defeating them, and then turned to encounter Gregory, against whom he had set up an anti-pope. After the victories of Fladeheim and Marburg he crossed the Alps, crushed the papal army, and threatened Rome, where Gregory, inflexible as ever, had assembled an eighth council, which excommunicated the emperor afresh. The investment of the city had lasted three years when the emperor, by the sacrifice of a vast sum of money, caused the gates of the town to be opened to him; and though Gregory attempted a last effort to assemble a fresh council, Henry was already inside with his anti-pope, whom he had crowned under the title of Clement III. The intrepid Gregory, immured in the Castle of St. Angelo, held out until the old Norman knight Robert Guiscard, Duke of Apulia, came to his deliverance. He then convoked a tenth council, which once more excommunicated the emperor, the anti-pope, and their numerous adherents. Before the emperor could return to Rome for the fifth time, Duke Robert Guiscard deemed it prudent to return to Apulia with the pope, whose death occurred at Salerno shortly afterwards (May 25th, 1085).

Gregory possessed too much foresight not to have thought of naming an heir capable of pursuing his vast designs. Amongst those whom he had named, Danfier, Abbot of Monte-Cassino, was ultimately selected, and, though it was not without hesitation that he accepted so heavy a burden, he was made pope with the title of Victor III. The new pontiff came to Rome, and occupied with his troops the Faubourg of Transtevere and the Castle of St. Angelo, while the anti-pope Clement III. held the other bank of the Tiber. This state of things could not, however, be of long duration. Victor, overcome with grief, died soon after at Monte-Cassino, and was succeeded by Eudes de Châtillon, who took the name of Urban II. (1087). Of French origin, and brought up in the Metropolitan Cathedral of Rheims, he had for twenty-eight years been prior of the famous abbey of Cluny. It was there that Gregory, whose unbounded confidence he had enjoyed, first knew him, and, under these circumstances, he naturally wished to continue the policy of that pontiff. But the Emperor Henry IV. frustrated this project by suddenly invading Italy, capturing Rome, and setting up a new anti-pope, Guibert, to rule in the Holy City, under the protection of the German soldiery. Urban, forced to abandon the Castle of St. Angelo, which was besieged by the imperial troops, transported his seat of government to Benevento, where he displayed more resolution than before, crowning Conrad, son of the emperor, King of the Romans, after getting him to abjure the schism, and excommunicated Philip I., who had sent away his wife in order to marry his concubine. After this, he returned to Rome in time to celebrate the Christmas services. He expelled the anti-pope, Guibert, and his followers, recovered the independence of the tiara, and assembled at Placentia, amidst the schismatical Lombards, a council which was attended by two hundred prelates, four thousand clerks, and thirty thousand laymen. This was an imposing protest on behalf of the peace of the Church, to which the presence of delegates from the Empires of Germany and the East, and from the Kings of France and England, lent additional significance. Urban went, in the course of the same year, to Clermont, in Auvergne (Fig. 211), to preside, under the auspices of Philip I., over another council, at which the first crusade (1095), preached by him throughout France, was decided upon; he afterwards returned in triumph to Rome (1096), happy in the thought that he had realised the wishes of Gregory, who first conceived the idea of the Holy War.

The Council of Rome, at which the sovereign right of the Church to confer the investiture of ecclesiastical dignities was proclaimed, marked the close of his reign. He died in 1099, upon the eve of that century of strife and confusion over which his spirit and that of Gregory VII., as well as of several other popes and learned doctors who had come from Cluny, were destined, as it were, to hover, for the investiture quarrel was far from being settled. Pascal II. imitated the firmness of his predecessors, and the King of France gave way; but the Emperor Henry V., in spite of the formal engagements entered into by his father, revived his claim to appoint the bishops and the abbots, and to induct them into their charge. After entering Rome with his troops, and after having given the pope the kiss of peace, he had him arrested, together with several of his cardinals, and, by means of a long captivity, by threats, and by violence, he induced him to issue a bull, in which the pontiff acknowledged the emperor’s right to annul the canonical elections of bishops and abbots, and likewise promised not to excommunicate him for the future. Pascal II. had no sooner regained his liberty than he convoked a council at Rome, at which he confessed that he had failed in his duty, whereupon the council, with his consent, condemned afresh the ecclesiastical investitures conferred by the civil power. Another council, held in France, excommunicated the emperor, who succeeded in taking Rome. Pascal being dead, Gelasius II. had to take refuge at Cluny, and Henry V. appointed an anti-pope, who assumed the title of Gregory VIII.

At the death of Gelasius II., the cardinals who had followed him into France elected as his successor a Frenchman--Calixtus II., to whom belongs the renown of having put an end to the quarrel as to investiture. The emperor, finding that the irritation of the Germans, weary of his despotism, was growing perilous to his throne, convoked a diet at Würtzburg, when it was decided by him and the princes of the empire that ambassadors should be sent to negotiate with the pope, who had returned to Rome amidst the acclamations of the inhabitants.

1. Solemn mass celebrated in St. Peter’s by the Pope.--2.
Celebration of the sacred services in which the Pope takes
part, especially those of the Sundays in Advent and Lent.--3.
Coronation of the Sovereign-Pontiff at St. John of Lateran.--4.
The newly-elected Pope seated upon the altar of the Clementine
Chapel and receiving the homage of the cardinals.--5. Solemn
benediction which the Pope gives to the people.--6. Tribute of
the white horse, formerly paid to the Pope each year, on St.
Peter’s day by the King of Naples in token of his vassalship.--7.
Solemn cavalcade of the Pope upon his first journey from St.
Peter’s to the Lateran Church.--8. Public consistory for the
reception of the ambassadors.--9. The Pope carrying the Holy
Sacrament in the procession of the Fête-Dieu.--10. Opening of the
holy gate by the Pope, for the twenty-five years’ jubilee.--11.
Solemn procession on the days when the Pope, clad in the sacred
decorations, goes to the Basilica of St. Peter to celebrate mass.]

According to the Concordat drawn up and adopted by Henry V. at the Diet of Worms, the emperor finally renounced his claim to investiture by the ring and the crozier, which were symbols of ecclesiastical dignity; he acknowledged the right of the dioceses and abbeys to elect their bishops and abbots, and the investiture of the elected dignitaries into their domains was to be conferred by the emperor, in Germany, _before_ their consecration, and in the kingdoms of Italy and Burgundy _after_ it. This Concordat was confirmed at the œcumenical council which Calixtus II. assembled at Rome in 1125.