Foundations of the Anglican Church X

Ruins of Saint Augustine's Abbey,

Canterbury

Well, back to our saga of the Anglican Church and its relationship to the papacy.  In previous entries we saw how the Church of England has two roots—one in the primitive Christianity brought with the Roman legions and colonists in the second and third centuries, the other in the missionary efforts of Saint Augustine of Canterbury, a Roman monk sent by Pope Gregory the Great in 604 at the invitation of King Aethelberht of Kent’s invitation to Christianize the Anglo-Saxon Kentish people who had settled in England after the withdrawal of those Roman troops in the fifth century.  These two Churches—the older Church which survived mostly in the north and the younger Church which Augustine brought to the south had distinctly different customs and different relationships with the Roman See and its bishop.  The older Church of the north was certainly in communion with the Roman Church but also was quite independent of it.  With its own ancient traditions and under the influence of the Irish missionaries who strengthened it during the period of the Anglo-Saxon invasions it differed in many regards from the Roman Church and its practices.  To a great extent these differences were resolved with the synod of Whitby in 664, but the English Church retained many distinct customs and rites up until the second phase of the English Reformation in 1549.  The Roman Rite was never used in England which until the First (Protestant) Prayer Book of King Edward the Sixth in 1549 followed a variety of rites including those of Sarum, Durham, York, Lincoln, Hereford, and Bangor.  The southern tradition, that of Canterbury, had stronger ties to Rome due to its origins with Augustine and his mission but also followed the uniquely English rites just mentioned.  The ties of Canterbury to Rome were symbolized and strengthened by the sending of the pallium from the pope to each successive Archbishop—a practice that would continue until Matthew Parker’s consecration in 1559 under Elizabeth I. 
During the period of Anglo-Saxon Christianity the great devotion of the Anglo-Saxon peoples to Saint Peter the Apostle built and strengthened ties between Roman and English Christianity.  In order to forge ties to Rome with the northern Church and its more independent tradition, Pope Gregory III named Bishop Ecgbert of York an Archbishop in 735, raising York to metropolitan status and thus dependent on Rome for the archbishop’s pallium, as was Canterbury.  Nevertheless Archbishops of both Canterbury and York as well as the other English bishops were almost always elected independent of papal nomination and only appealed for recognition after their election and consecration.  That would later change and while they would still be elected independently of Rome, their consecration would not occur until after papal confirmation.   One exception where the Pope did appoint an Archbishop of Canterbury was when Archbishop Wighard died in 668 on a visit to Rome to receive his pallium and Pope Vitalian uses the opportunity to selected a Greek, Theodore of Tarsus, as the new Archbishop/primate for the English Church.   

The relationship of the English Church with the papacy was strengthened by William the Conqueror who in 1066 invaded England to claim the throne after the death of Edward the Confessor.  There were two claimants to the English Throne, the Anglo-Saxon Harold Godwinson and the Norman Duke, William the Bastard.   After William defeated Harold and secured the English throne, he replaced the Saxon Archbishop of Canterbury, Stigand (who had supported Harold) with his own candidate, an Italian monk by the name of Lanfranc who had served as Abbot of Saint Étienne in Caen.  Lanfranc was succeeded in 1093 by another Italian, Anselm, abbot of Bec. To be fair, William waited three years from his conquest before sending Stigand into retirement but it was part of the Norman policy after the conquest to replace Saxons with Normans.   The Normans had strong ties to the papacy at this period—the Normans in Italy under Robert Guiscard were protecting Gregory VII from Emperor Henry IV in their dispute over the right of Emperors to invest prelates with the insignia of office.  Ironically William was fighting a variation of the same battle when it came to William of Saint Calais—his sometime rebel bishop of Durham.  That is a story for another time, suffice it to say now that with Normans on English throne and their Italian archbishops ensconced as primates, the relationship between the English Church (the Ecclesia Anglicana) and the papacy grew even stronger.  This is not to say that the Crown and Canterbury acted in concert—far from it.  William and his successors had strong intentions to control the Church in their realms and Lanfranc and Anselm both resisted royal authority and appealed to the Pope to back them up in their disputes with the Crown.  Such reliance on the papacy increased papal influence in England.  Tensions became particularly high under William’s son, William Rufus and Anselm ended up going into exile in 1097 and again in 1105 in disputes with William Rufus and later with William’s son, Henry I.  These conflicts were anticipatory of the debacle between Henry II and Thomas Becket later in the twelfth century but we will come to that matter down the line. Suffice it to say that with the replacement of an Anglo-Saxon hierarchy by a Norman hierarchy after the conquest, the relationship of the English Church to the papacy began to evolve from a relationship of ecclesial communion to the English Church becoming a client dependent on the Roman See.  It would be a long slow process and one with reverses, especially during the Avignon papacy of the fourteenth century, but throughout the one can see throughout the Plantagenet centuries a gradual loss of the ancient autonomy of the Anglican Church and its subjection to more control from Rome.  When the Plantagenets finally lost the Crown to the Tudors, this dependency would be challenged by new views of royal authority.          

The Gregorian Reform: Pope Versus Emperor or why Gregory is so Great

Henry IV, Holy Roman
Emperor from 1056-1106

We looked at the imposition of celibacy and the elimination of simony as two of the tree main issues of the Gregorian Reformation; the third issue is called the Investiture Conflict.  Bishops and Abbots of major monasteries were not only religious officials; they were important political officers in the Empire, in France, in England and other Christian states.  As a result, the Emperor or the various kings had a grave concern in who might be bishop or abbot in the various jurisdictions.  In England the bishops and great abbots were ex officio part of the King’s Great Council. (This is before the evolution of Parliament where the bishops and major abbots would sit with the peers.) In the Empire some bishops had a vote in the election of the German King (who in fact was the Emperor).  In all nations, the bishops and abbots controlled vast amounts of lands that belonged to the Church and most had feudal duty to their respective sovereigns to produce knights and soldiers to assist the king in time of war.  Moreover, most sovereigns relied on the leading churchmen to fill key government posts—or rather, named key advisors to lucrative Church positions in order to provide them with income rather than pay them from the often strained royal purse.  And many sovereigns placed junior members of their families, or members of the families of political allies into Church positions to provide these often unemployable folk with a job.  This does not make for good Church administration.  Of course bishops and abbots were technically “elected” by their respective chapters, but an Emperor or King would make some generous gifts of lands and or royal privileges to secure the necessary votes for their candidates to win the prelacy in question.       Once the papacy had freed itself from Imperial control by structuring the papal election to be the sole prerogative of the Cardinal Bishops, Priests, and Deacons of Rome, the popes were anxious to wrest control of the bishoprics from the secular princes.  They knew this would be a long and arduous task  but they also understood the power of symbols and rituals to shape the way people perceive reality.  Gregory VII (pope from 1073-1085) issued a canon (a church law) in 1075 prohibiting secular princes from investing bishops and abbots with the insignia of their office. (Gregory VII is one of the two popes referred to as "Gregory the Great"--the other being Gregory I.)   Up to this time the custom had crept in that the sovereign, Emperor or King as the case may be, gave the new prelate his ring, his miter, and his pastoral staff.  It was a clear sign to all present—prelate, clergy, and people—that the bishop or abbot held his authority from the Sovereign.  By taking away this privilege, the pope was making it clear to all that the Church was independent of the political power.  We Americans do not understand symbols and vastly underrate the power they have on the human consciousness and so it all seems to us like a tempest in a teapot.   Of course, burn a flag and suddenly we get the idea. It is just a piece of cloth, after all, isn’t it?  No.   But to the Emperor, Henry IV, Gregory’s depriving him of the right to bestow the signs of office on prelates was a very clear challenge to his imperial authority.  In fact, Henry was anxious to reassert imperial power not only over the bishops, but over the papacy.  He was not pleased that this system of Cardinals electing the pope had deprived him of the power his father, Henry III, had when he appointed Clement II, Damasus II, and Leo IX (see blog entry for August 13^th).  Henry decided it was time for a showdown in the OK Corral, or in this case, the Forum Romanum.  Henry convoked a synod at Worms which declared Gregory deposed as pope.  To be fair to Henry, as stormy relations had developed over the Emperor’s declared rights to invest bishops (and in fact to name them to their sees) Gregory had threatened to declare the Emperor not only excommunicated but as an excommunicate deposed from Imperial office.  Now we come to the nub of the problem, it was not over investing bishops—that was just the neuralgic point—it was who was in chief in Christendom—pope or emperor.  Neither one was about to back down.  Well, unfortunately for Henry (and ultimately for Gregory, but for the good luck of the Church), the Emperor had to back down.  Henry was young (25) and inexperienced and he had some very rebellious nobles in Germany.  When they rose in revolt Henry realized he couldn’t fight his nobles at home and the pope abroad—and as the nobles were the most pressing threat, he had to make peace with the pope.  So off he went to Italy where he stood barefoot and in a hair-shirt for three days in the courtyard of the Countess Matilda’s castle at Canossa.   Matilda was an immensely power woman, Countess of Tuscany but with lands that bordered France and Germany as well.  She was (at this point) trusted by both Gregory and Henry—though her greater loyalty lay with Gregory as Henry would find out.  Gregory had sought refuge with her at her castle when he heard that Henry was coming down into Italy.  Gregory at first had not realized that Henry was coming as a penitent.  This was not a wrong judgment because Henry was, in fact, anything but penitent.   In the end, Gregory absolved Henry but alas, Henry was not sincere in his penitence.  As soon as he got back to Germany and whipped his nobles into shape and got his empire under control, he came back to Italy with an army and headed right to Rome.  Well, not right to Rome.  First he went after Matilda of Tuscany for her support of Gregory.  He managed to seize much of Tuscany and declare her deposed, but he never managed to defeat her and she and his allies would fight him, finally defeating him at Canossa in 1090.  But that takes us too far from our main story.  Henry arrived in Rome and declared Gregory deposed and arranged for the election of Clement III (whom history regards as an anti-pope).  Gregory ended up fleeing for his life and Robert Guiscard, the Norman conqueror of Naples took him in for refuge.  Gregory died at Salerno in 1085.  This was the beginning of a war relationship that would continue for just under two centuries between the papacy and the Salian and Hohenstaufen Emperors until the tragic death of Conradin in 1268. The Conradin story has always broken my heart.  You're going to have to look it up for yourself as it is not pertinent to our saga, but I would recommend Geoffrey Barraclough's version in The Origins of Modern Germany.
     Gregory lost the battle but the Church won the war.  Emperors still continued to meddle in the election of bishops and abbots, as did the other European sovereigns,  but the power of the Emperor over the Church was effectively broken—not shattered, but broken.  Winning the independence of the Church from the Empire was probably the most successful aspect of the Gregorian Reform—certainly more successful than imposing celibacy or eliminating the buying and selling of Church offices.  Perhaps in our next few postings we can look at some of the current issues of Church and politics and see what might need some reform today.     

The German Popes

Leo IX--one of the
German Reform Popes

When Gregory VI resigned under pressure from the Synod of Sutri in 1046, the Emperor Henry III nominated Suidger of Morsleben and Hornburg, the Archbishop of the newly founded Archdiocese of Bamberg, to be Pope as Clement II.  This will begin a series of German Popes appointed by the Emperor.  Clement had a short reign, less than a year.  The Emperor then appointed Poppo of Brixen as Damasus II but there was a challenge to the succession.  Benedict IX, the dissolute gay-rapist-adulterer who had sold the papacy to his godfather, Gregory VI, tried to make a comeback and actually took control of Rome before the new pope could travel down from Germany and take possession of his See.   Henry had to send troops to Rome to clear out Benedict and when Damasus was able to be installed, he reigned only twenty-three days before dying—most likely of malaria, though some thought he had been poisoned by the anti-Reform party.  Rome was notorious for malaria in the early and central Middle Ages because of the swamps that surrounded the city.  On the other hand, poison was a reasonable suspicion given the politics of the day.  Benedict, you may recall, was a member of the Theophylact clan which had dominated the papacy during the pornacracy of the tenth century and while his uncle Benedict VIII had been a reform pope, Benedict the nephew represented the old fashioned corrupt popes dominated by the Roman mobs who, in turn, were driven by the various noble houses—the Theophylacts (Dukes of Spoleto/Counts of Tusculum) and the Crescentii.  The Emperors had long fought these rival factions for control of the papacy as a means of trying to reform the Church.  Thus the imperial appointees were generally reform popes and the traditionally elected popes were, for the most part, the anti-reform party.  This is important to note, because the equation will change during the course of the Gregorian Reform. 
     Upon hearing of the death of Damasus II, Henry III appointed Bruno of Eguisheim-Dagsburg pope and this was confirmed by a synod at Worms.  Notice that the Roman clergy and people had no voice in this election—it was pure appointment by the Emperor.  This practice of Imperial appointment was an innovation introduced by Henry.  Even the Ottonian emperors had gone through the motions of a traditional election to get their candidates into office.  Henry III was a good man and had the good of the Church at heart.  Indeed, he saw that involving the Roman clergy and people in the election as had been their right from the earliest days of the Church only ran the risk of very unsuitable men being made pope.  He also, as did the Emperors of the East as well as the West, saw that he—the Emperor—was Vicar of Christ and head of the Church—and the pope was his viceroy in matters ecclesiastical.  Keep this in mind as it will become a source of tension.  In any event, Bruno of Eguisheim-Dagsburg understood the significance of this change of procedure and despite having been appointed by the Emperor, insisted on a proper canonical election before he took office.  Thus the Roman clergy met and chose their candidate—not surprisingly (given the Emperor’s army sitting there) the imperial nominee—the Roman faithful gave their acclamation of assent, and the bishops of the Sees surrounding Rome (the so-called suburbican sees) approved and Bruno of Eguisheim-Dagsburg became Leo IX. 
     Leo was a very busy pope; a model of a reforming pope.  Although he reigned only six years, he customarily held an Easter Synod of the clergy at Rome to pass important reform legislation.  He was concerned about the celibacy of the clergy, the conservation of Church property, and the elimination of the practice of the buying and selling of church offices.  When he was not busy reforming the Roman Church, he kept himself occupied travelling throughout northern Italy and Germany-Austria holding local synods to bring the various Churches of the Empire into conformity with Roman reform practices. 
     A new political threat appeared on the scene as the Normans conquered much of southern Italy.  This was both good and bad for the Roman Church.  This area had been held by the Byzantine Empire and the Church in Sicily and Southern Italy followed the Greek practices.    
     The Normans, originally Scandinavian pirates—that is to say, Vikings—had been converted to Christianity when they began to settle along the northern French coast in what is now Normandy.  An inherently restless—and warlike—people, they continued their conquests spreading down into the Mediterranean fighting Greeks and Arabs alike for the rule of Sicily and Southern Italy.  (This explains why there are so many Sicilian red-heads, supposedly more than in Ireland.)   In conquering these lands they brought the Church in those regions into Western rather than Eastern practices, saving the Christians there for Catholicism rather than the Orthodoxy they would have practiced had they remained under Greek influence.  But the news was not all good for the pope found his southern boundaries manned not by a distant Emperor in Constantinople but very near and very aggressive warriors who might recognize his spiritual leadership but not his political domination.  The day would soon come when the Normans would save the papacy, but initially they were a threat to the pope’s political power. 
     Leo led a German army against the Normans and not only lost, but was taken captive.  The Normans treated their prisoner with all the respect due to the Pope, but kept him prisoner none the less.  Eventually freed, he died shortly after his return to Rome.  The Emperor Henry then appointed the fourth German pope in a row, Egbert of Calw, who reigned as Victor II.  
     In the final months of his reign, Leo IX sent an embassy to Constantinople to protest to the Emperor the interference of Michael Caerularius, the Patriarch, in the Western Church.  It was a disaster, but we will deal with that topic at another time.