The Gregorian Reform and the Political Independence of the Church

The Emperor Saint Henry, the last
of the Ottonian Dynasty, with a
German Archbishop

Well we have looked at the Carolingian and the Ottonian Reformations  and now we can take a look at the Gregorian Reformation—named after Pope Gregory VII—one of the greatest men to occupy the Chair of Peter.  The name is a bit misleading, however, as Gregory didn’t start this Reformation and there were many other players, several of whom played as crucial a role.  In many respects it was simply the second phase of the Ottonian Reformation—it proceeded almost seamlessly from the Ottonian Reformation and yet it took a remarkably different course and in fact it overthrew the Ottonian Reformation in its efforts to purify the Church even further than the Emperors had.  Indeed it wanted to purify the Church from Imperial control.   
    The Ottonian Reformation, you may remember, is named after the Emperors Otto I, II, and III—a series of German Holy Roman Emperors in the tenth century.  Otto I (912-973), a descendent of Charlemagne but in the matrilineal line, in fact had restored the Empire in 962 after it had all but ceased to exist.  His policy was to strengthen the Church by appointing capable bishops and abbots who, loyal to him, were a counterweight to the secular nobility who resented the expanding Imperial control over their ancestral princedoms, duchies, and counties.  To do this Otto and his successors endowed the Church with considerable wealth to make it independent of all outside (except his, of course) control.  He also needed to have capable men as Archbishops, bishops and Abbots—and capable women too as Abbesses who often held political and religious power and authority  equivalent to the Abbots and Bishops—and not mere sycophants and dependants of the various dukes and counts who were threats to the expanding Imperial power.   
      There were two other aspects, also important, to the Ottonian Reform.  The Emperors used the Church as a tool to expand the imperial power, particularly eastwards into the Slavic lands that today comprise the Czech Republic, southern Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary.  Establishing Archdioceses, dioceses, and abbeys in these new lands they expanded the Church and also brought the subjugated and converted peoples into the Empire as well as into the Church.
     The final characteristic of the Ottonian Reformation was that after long struggles with the old Roman families (and here you should probably read “Mafiosi,” which while not technically true captures the nature of the problem) who controlled the papacy which they filled with some of the most profligate men known to history.  The Roman Church was and had been through most of the ninth century and well into the tenth a scandal to Christendom and had lost the respect of all and thus any real authority.  The Church in Rome, throughout most of Italy, and beyond the Ottonian Realm was of no better moral character than the secular nobility.  There were isolated men and institutions of character—the Abbots and Abbey of Cluny and its dependencies being most notable—but the Church was almost universally beholden to the secular powers for its wealth, and bishops and Abbots were most frequently appointed not for their moral character but their family connections.   
     I do need to be careful here when I say “appointed,” as technically bishops and abbots were elected—bishops by their cathedral chapters, abbot by the monks of their abbey.  But such “elections” were all but universally directed by the king or a more local political authority who had his favored candidate who, once installed as bishop or abbot, would do his bidding.  And this would be the very abuse the Gregorian Reform would seek to end. Political control of the Church all worked fine where the Emperors Otto held sway, but what of the day when kings of lesser character sat on the Imperial throne and abused their powers over the Church?  No, the honest prelates put in place by the Ottonians knew that the Church could not risk remaining under the imperial thumb.  Otto III was succeeded by the last of his dynasty, the saintly (and indeed Sainted) Henry II.   But Henry would die without an heir—supposedly he and his wife, also Sainted, Kunigunde, had committed themselves to celibacy within their marriage (no virtue in light of the royal responsibility to provide an heir)—and a new dynasty, the Salians, came to the throne.  This was not good for the Church, but that is what we shall look at over the next few weeks with the Gregorian Reform.         

Roots of the Reformation XXVI: A Final Word on the Ottonian Reform

The Cathedral of Bamberg
one of the Sees established to
evangelize and push out the boundaries
of the Empire under the Ottonians
Burial Place of Henry II, Saint Henry,
the last of the Ottonian dynasty

The Ottonian Reformation was a successful reform of the Church in as that it removed the papacy from the control of the Roman families that were fighting to control it and it  brought stability to the central administration of the Church.  The papacy was as much in need of reform as any other aspect of Church life but was not able to reform itself.  It took outside power—in this case the Holy Roman Emperors Otto I,II, and III.  But reform came at a price.  The papacy found itself in the gift of the Emperors—they had acquired the ability to name who would be pope.  This was not bad as long as you had good men on the imperial throne, but a disaster should the Emperors want to manipulate the Church for their own ends and that was an irresistible temptation. 

     It was not only the papacy that had fallen under control of the Emperor.  Throughout the Empire, but especially in Germany and in the new lands conquered to the East—modern day Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and parts of Poland where the Emperors were pushing out the boundaries of their reign, they used the Church for political ends.  This was not all bad. The Emperors helped the Church evangelize the peoples and the newly Christianized peoples and their kings or nobles submitted themselves and their peoples under Imperial control.  They brought advanced levels of civilization to these lands—learning, laws, and the arts as well as faith.  Part of the evangelization effort was to establish monasteries which became centers of learning.  Bishops and their diocesan organization helped the kings and nobles in setting up schools as well as a coherent system of civil law.  It was for the most part a win-win situation.  The various cultures were Christianized but otherwise remained intact.   Even many of their stories and sagas remained but were given Christian interpretations.  Sometimes their ancient kings and heroes found new identities as Christian saints.  To accomplish all this Emperors needed good bishops, men of character, and found them in folk like Adalbert of Prague, Adelbert of Magdeburg, and Eberhard of Bamberg.  The Emperor regularly “nominated” his candidates to the various cathedral chapters to be elected bishops or to monastic chapters to be elected as abbots of the more important monasteries.  As long as the Empire needed the Church to stabilize the newly conquered lands and as long as the Emperors were men of good character this worked.  But what would happen when the new lands had been Christianized, the Church and political order stabilized, and Emperors came along whose need was not evangelization but reward for faithful retainers or enticements for political alliances?  Would the Church no longer be a partner in good rule but a tool for political supremacy?  Otto III was seceded by Henry II, Saint Henry, the last of the Ottonians and—as his title implies—a great friend of the Church.  A change of dynasty would bring the Salians—and a very different ecclesiastical policy.  The Church would no longer be able to afford being under the imperial thumb.

      The question we might ask ourselves is how can the Church be reformed when it is incapable of reforming itself?   We no longer have—nor would wish to have—an Emperor, and even if we did Emperors long ago proved unreliable in matters ecclesiastical as we shall in the Gregorian Reform.  We find ourselves today in a situation however where the institutional Church has shown itself to be ineffectual (at best) in addressing vital issues of Reform from clerical sex abuse  to financial transparency.  The quality of episcopal leadership being appointed from Rome is, at least in the United States, lamentable.   Rome itself, at least if situations such as that surrounding the veto of Lesley-Ann Knight give any indication, seems to be degenerating into a quagmire of pettiness and reprisal.  With Marxism effectively eliminated, the ecclesiastical “leadership” seems to find its chief enemies in seventy year old women such as Joan Chittester, Sandra Schnieders, Elizabeth Johnson and every American nun who has misplaced her veil.   At the same time the Pope keeps citing the Second Vatican Council, his minions both here in the States and in Rome seem to be dismantling liturgical reform, ecumenical and interfaith collaboration, and empowerment of the faithful piece by piece and at an alarming rate.  The result of all this is not only a drastic decline in Church attendance but the loss of credibility of the once strong and prophetic voice of Pope and bishops.  That the Church needs reform today is a given.  It needs reform in every age. Ecclesia semper reformans, semper reformanda.  But if not the Emperor, then who? 

Roots of Reform XXII: Otto I and Otto II --Father to Son

Christ blesses the Emperor

Otto II and his wife, the

Empress Theophanu in this 10th

century ivory panel. 

We mentioned yesterday that with the election of John XIII in 965, Otto I was able to bring some stability to the papacy.  However, at the pope’s death in 972 the internecine warfare broke out in an effort to control the papacy.  John had been a member of the powerful Crescenti family but unlike the others in that clan was willing to work with Otto.  The Crescenti and the other Roman families resented the imperial control of the papacy; they were used to controlling it.   This strife over the papacy between the Roman families and the Imperial court is the origins of the Guelph and Ghibelline strife that would trouble Italy throughout the Central and into the High Middle Ages, but at this time perhaps it is more accurate to speak of a Nationalist and an Imperial party.  When Otto I selected the deacon Benedict to succeed John XIII, he was installed as Benedict VI in January 973.  Otto died in May of that same year and the Crescenti lost no time in organizing a mob that overthrew Benedict and imprisoned him in the Castle San Angelo where he was strangled in August 974 to prevent his release and restoration by the Imperial Envoy, Sicco, sent by the new emperor, Otto II.  The papal murder was ordered by Crescentius I, the head of the Crescenti family and was possibly carried out by the deacon Franco Ferucci whom Crescentius and his party named to the papacy as Boniface VII.  Count Sicco intervened, however, and named the imperial candidate to the papacy as Benedict VII.  Boniface looted the Vatican treasury (which was not so much cash as the precious objects such as chalices, crosses, reliquaries, candelabra, and other cultic objects made of gold and silver and set with precious stones) and fled to Constantinople.  But don’t worry—he will be back and back more than once.

Otto had his hands full establishing his power in Germany and so he needed a powerful representative in Rome to protect his papal nominee from the Roman nobility and their thugs.  Benedict managed to hang on to the papacy for nine years and in that time he convoked several reform synods for the Diocese of Rome, in particular outlawing simony—the buying and selling of church positions—a common practice at the time. Part of his success in avoiding the sort of fate that met his predecessor was that he was a member of the family of the counts of Tusculum which provided some balance to the power of the Crescenti.  It was only in 981 that Otto was finally able to come to Rome himself.  Benedict died in July 983, Otto died five months later.  Upon Benedict’s death, Otto named his chancellor, Pietro Canepanova as Pope John XIV.  It was the chancellor’s death sentence as without the Emperor he had no protection from the anti-imperial party and their mobs.

Otto’s death left a political vacuum.  His heir was his three year old son, Otto III.  Otto II’s widow, the Greek Princess, Theophanu, was regent.  The child Emperor was kidnapped by a German Duke in the spring of 984 and the Empress-Regent was preoccupied in regaining custody of her son, leaving Rome open to more trouble.  The Romans resented the imperial nominee pope, John XIV, and anti-pope Boniface VII returned and imprisoned John in the Castle San Angelo where he was murdered.  He was succeeded by John XV, the son of a Roman priest named Leo.  (Clerical marriage was still the norm for the secular clergy.   The Crescenti were opposed to him, but the Empress Regent, Theophanu, resided in Rome during much of his reign and protected him.  John is noteworthy for a variety of reasons, so we will end this entry here and pick up with him in a day or two.     

Before we sign off, however, a final word about Boniface VII.  Having murdered Benedict VI and John XIV, he himself met a most unpleasant death.  He seized the papacy, annulled the papacies of his two predecessors Benedict VII and John XIV.  However, he himself died suddenly in 985, possibly murdered.  He was so hated that his corpse was seized and dragged naked through the streets of Rome and left abandoned at the foot of the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius.  Not a nice guy; not a nice end.

Today he is considered an anti-pope but for centuries he was recognized as legitimate and the next pope to take the name Boniface (a character of somewhat mixed moral fiber himself) took the name Boniface VIII.   

Note two things.  The first is the imperial power to name popes.  Political theory of the time saw the Emperor as the Vicar of Christ and as the earthly head of the Church.  The pope was its spiritual overlord, but subject in temporal affairs, including the temporal affairs of the Church, to the authority of the Emperor.  The Emperor was seen as having the responsibility for the integrity of the Church. 

The second thing to note is the chaotic way in which popes were elected—the roman nobility, the mobs, and the emperor all had some say.  The Emperor’s attempts to control the election of the popes was an attempt to bring some order out of the chaos and violence that too oftenmarked papal transitions.  One of the most important reforms would be the establishment of the system of election by the cardinal clergy of the diocese of Rome.  But that is still away off.    More on that in the future.

Roots of the Reformation XXI: The Ottonian Reformation 2

Otto I with Knights and Nobles

Well, we have strayed a bit from our theme of Reformation and the “Ottonian” Reformation of the Emperors Otto I, II, and III in particular.  The power of Otto I’s daughter, the Abbess Matilida, led us into a digression on women and ecclesiastical authority and then we looked a bit at the issue of Same Sex Marriage due to the passage of a bill legitimating gay marriage in New York State.  So let’s return to the Emperor Otto I and his attempts to reform the Church.

Otto had to carve out the position of Holy Roman Emperor after the title had fallen into disuse in the late ninth and early tenth centuries, but as King of Germany he had great power north of the Alps.  He tried to clean up the papacy which was going through one of its most discreditable periods in history, if not the single most discreditable period, but he did not have great luck.  He had allied himself with the reprobate John XII with the Diploma Ottonium in which he agreed to serve as protector of the Church, but the last thing John—one of the most immoral of popes—wanted was the Emperor interfering in the Church and any curtailment of John’s own power.  When John turned against Otto and his authority, Otto deposed him and saw that Leo VIII was elected in his place.  Church historians today see such a deposition as “invalid,” but at the time it was seen as a legitimate prerogative of the Emperor and the election of Leo was seen as valid. The Romans never accepted Leo—they saw him as a creature of the Emperor and resented the “foreign” interference in the election of their bishop.  John fled to the mountains outside Rome where he gathered an army from among family, friends, and retainers.  Otto was no sooner on his way back to Germany when John’s army attacked Rome and caused Leo to flee.  Otto turned around determined to beat John once and for all, but God called John to judgment before Leo had his chance to do the same.  With John dead, the Roman’s chose Benedict V but Otto was determined for Leo and had Benedict deposed and Leo re-installed as Pope.  Modern Church historians recognize Leo as the legitimate pope from this time (965) on.  Poor Benedict had a somewhat remarkable decline from the papacy.  Leo personally ripped the palium (the sign of his office as pope) frm his shoulders and his papal staff (crozier) was snapped in two over his head and he was reduced to the rank of deacon and sent into exile in Hamburg, Germany—about as far from Rome as you can get.  When Leo died, John XIII became pope—a compromise candidate acceptable to both the Emperor and the Roman Populace, though the first choice of neither.  John and Otto had some success in reforming the Church though no significant reform in Rome itself where the vested political interests of the different Roman noble families would resist change.  John and Otto established a number of new Archbishoprics in Germany—pushing missionary efforts eastward towards what is today the Czech Republic and southern Poland and northward into the Baltic.  John also established several Latin Archbishoprics in southern Italy which still had ties to Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire and where Christianity tended to follow the Greek rather than Roman pattern.  John’s expanding of his authority into the southern reaches of Italy shifted that alliance so that when the break between Rome and Constantinople occurred in 1054, the southern parts of Italy and Sicily remained in the Roman orbit rather than moving with Orthodoxy. 

If Otto’s success in Church reform south of the Alps was not as prolific as he might have wished, he had far greater influence in Germany where his power was stronger.  He was very proactive in the selection of bishops and abbots, choosing men who would be loyal to him (and thus balancing the nobles who resented the diminution of their power) and who saw eye to eye with him on Church matters.  He was particularly successful in pushing missionary activity along the eastern borders of his realm which not only won souls to Christ but subjects to his crown.  Otto had his son Otto II crowned in 961 while he, Otto I, was still alive in order to guarantee the succession.  The nobles having the right to elect the German King, Otto needed to be alive to make sure the election came out the way he wanted.  Otto lived for twelve more years, father and son nominally reigning jointly but the father holding on to power to the very end.  He died in 973 and was buried in the cathedral of Magdeburg, one of the Archiepiscopal Sees he created.   

When women ruled the Churches 3

The Modern Abbey and Abbey Church
at Bingen in the Rhineland

We have seen that at times—and by historical standards fairly recent times—women have exercised considerable authority in the Catholic Church.  We looked initially at the abbey of Quedlinburg and then at Saints Bridget of Kildare and Hilda of Whitby.  In our last blog we had a detailed example of the ceremony of obeisance given by the clergy in the prelacy of Conversano to the Abbess who was their prelate nullius.   We can return to the Abbey of Quedlinburg and a bull issued by Innocent III.  (We will be looking at Innocent, who reigned from 1198 until 1216, in our series of Reformations.  Innocent was responsible for what is probably the second most successful internal reform of the Church, second only to Trent.) This is what Pope Innocent wrote in a Bull concerning the Abbess of Quedlinburg:

Our daughter beloved in the Lord, the Abbess of Bubrigen [Friedberg says in a footnote that this should be read as Quedlinburg in the diocese of Halberstadt] has set forth the following in a petition sent to us: Sometimes when she suspends her canonesses and the clerics who are subject to her jurisdiction [clericos suae iurisdictioni subiectes], because of disobedience and other lapses, from their office and benefice, they do not observe a suspension of this sort because they are strongly convinced that she cannot excommunicate; hence, their excesses remain uncorrected. So that the said canonesses and clerics show obedience and respect to the above named abbess and obey her good admonitions, we consign therefore to your discrimination to what extent you — according to previous admonition — wish to inflict on them ecclesiastical censure under exclusion of appeal.  

The Abbey of Santa Maria la Real de las Huelgas
in Burgos, Spain--the seat of a very important
abbess in medieval Castile

Quedlinburg had been founded by the Abbess Matilda, the widow of King Henry the Fowler and mother of the Emperor Otto.  Otto, you may remember from an earlier blog, placed his daughter Matilda as its second abbess.  He richly endowed the Abbey with lands and properties and exempted it from all external jurisdiction, including exemption from the Bishop of Halberstadt who was the local ordinary. This is not the only Abbey with such exemption.  About thirty years before Pope Innocent wrote to the
Abbess of Quedlinburg, Adrian IV had issued the following Bull to the Abbess and nuns of Herford in Germany:

We forbid that in the said monastery any bishop outside the Roman pontiff exercise jurisdiction, and indeed in the sense that he never — unless he will be so invited by the abbess — may presume to celebrate solemn Masses there. 

While these prelatial abbeys were most common in the Holy Roman Empire, they were by no means limited there.  The most important of these Abbeys where the Abbess exercised ordinary jurisdiction not only over the nuns but over the surrounding area with its churches, clergy, and faithful was the Royal Abbey of Las Hueglas in Spain, a Cistercian foundation.  The Abbess was declared to be , a "noble lady, the superior, prelate, and lawful administratrix in spirituals and temporals of the said royal abbey, and of all the contents, churches, and hermitages of its filiation, of the villages and places under its jurisdiction, seigniory, and vassalage, in virtue of Bulls and Apostolical concessions, with plenary jurisdiction, privative, quasi-episopal, nullius diacesis."

According to the original Catholic Encyclopedia: By the favor of the king, she was, moreover, invested with almost royal prerogatives, and exercised an unlimited secular authority over more than fifty villages. Like the Lord Bishops, she held her own courts, in civil and criminal cases, granted letters dismissorial for ordination, and issued licenses authorizing priests, within the limits of her abbatial jurisdiction, to hear confessions, to preach, and to engage in the cure of souls. She was privileged also to confirm Abbesses, to impose censures, and to convoke synods.  Basil Pennington once told me that these prerogatives, or at least the canonical ones, were still in place at the opening of the Second Vatican Council.  I don’t consider Pennington to have been a reliable source of information as he tended to go on the principle of “don’t let the truth spoil a good story,” but I can’t say that he wasn’t right on this.  

Perhaps the most significant Abbess of the Middle Ages was the famous Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179).  Though not officially canonized, she is regarded as a saint by the Catholic Church.  She is an immensely popular figure in certain circles today and she certainly was an accomplished woman—a musician, scientist, physician, poet, philosopher, theologian and who knows what else— she was actually authorized to preach by Pope Eugene III at the recommendation of his mentor, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (who, in turn, was no fan of women nor advocate of their cause).  I have no idea of what prompted Bernard’s recommendation but here we have papal authorization for a woman to preach, a license that would be rather difficult to obtain today.  Why aren’t women authorized to preach today?  I know nuns (and laywomen as well) who are far better preachers than many priests and deacons (and even some bishops.)  Perhaps I just answered my own question.   

Roots of the Reformation XXI: Leave it to the ladies: An Abbess' progress

Quedlinburg Abbey

Well, let’s go  back to the Emperor Otto and his determination to reform the Church.  In the first place Otto, like Charlemagne before him, needed the Church if he was going to bring unity to his vastly diverse empire.   It would be religion that could provide a common basis for all the different races and tribes, languages, legal codes, and traditions that comprised the empire he was trying to forge out of his vast holdings.  Otto also needed the Church—or to be specific—the bishops and abbots to be a counterweight to the power of the nobility and attain a true political supremacy and not just the imperial title.  Even so, supremacy did not come easily and Otto had to put down several rebellions by various dukes who were used to independence from any outside authority. 

Otto’s first brush with the papacy was when John XII, a particularly unworthy pope, appealed to Otto for help against Berengar II who was occupying the Papal States.  (Check entries for June 6^th, and June 18^th for more details on John and his alleged crimes ranging from incest to the invoking of demons.)  Otto defeated Berengar and Pope John crowned Otto as emperor.  Together they issued the Diploma Ottonianum—an agreement by which Otto pledged himself to defend the Church.  John was treacherous, however, and not wishing Otto to have control of Italy any more than Berengar, John tried to build an anti-Imperial alliance with the Magyars and the Emperor of Constantinople.  The Emperor returned to Rome and convoked a synod that deposed John and elected Leo VIII. Today the Catholic Church says that this deposing a pope by a synod and at the insistence of the Emperor was invalid and Leo was (initially) an anti-pope, but in that time and for centuries afterwards this was recognized as a legitimate act.  The Emperor claimed—and was accorded—this right to “make and break” popes as part of his oversight of the Church.  The story doesn’t end there, by the way, but we need not go further for our purposes other than to say that Leo may not have been as evil as John XII, but he was no worthy successor of Peter either.  It would be a while before the Emperors were able to get men of good moral character on the papal throne.

That doesn’t mean that Otto wasn’t sincere about Church reform, but the greatest efforts of reform during his reign were actually accomplished by his daughter, Matilda, the Abbess of Quedlinburg.  Quedlinburg was an abbey of canonesses.  A canoness is a woman religious much like a nun (or even, one might say, a type of nun) whose chief purpose is to serve the church to which her community of canonesses is attached by providing for the daily round of liturgical offices.  Just as canons are (usually) religious (in this case, men) whose chief work is to sing the offices in their abbey church, so too canonesses are obliged to sing the liturgical hours for the edification of the faithful.  They differ from monks and monastic nuns who, while the sing the daily offices, have their chief work in lectio divina (contemplation of the Word of God) and manual labor (ora et labora).  That distinction is a bit simplistic but perhaps in a future entry we can explore canons and canonesses more deeply.  I am using an awful lot of parentheses today, bear with me. 

Anyway Quedlinburg was a somewhat exceptional abbey.  It had been established by Otto’s mother who, in her widowhood, served as its first Abbess.  Otto appointed his daughter Matilda as its second Abbess when she was just eleven years old.  When Otto went to Italy to sort out various problems with the papacy, he left his daughter the Abbess Matilda, as regent in Germany.  She subsequently served as regent for her brother, Otto II, when he was occupied in Italy with various issues regarding the papacy.   While still in her teens, she convoked a reforming synod of the German prelates.  She was determined to end many of the abuses that were plaguing the Church at the time—especially the domination of important abbeys and dioceses by the various nobles who interfered with the election of bishops and abbots to put family members or clients in those positions.  This was ironic, of course, as Matilda herself had been appointed Abbess by her father, the Emperor. 

The Abbess of Quedlinburg, like the abbesses of many other imperial abbeys, was exempted from the authority of the local bishop and, indeed, had a virtual diocese of her own having jurisdiction of the many churches that belonged to the Abbey.  It was not unusual in the Middle Ages for abbeys, both of men and women, to be Abbeys Nullius—that is an abbey where the Abbot or Abbess held “ordinary” jurisdiction, i.e. the administrative (though not necessarily the sacramental) jurisdiction of a bishop.  Such Abbots and Abbesses had their own canonical tribunals, appointed pastors, gave letters dimmisorial  permitting ordinations, gave dispensations, granted faculties to the clergy and the various other jurisdictional responsibilities of bishops.  Today Roman authorities claim that one has to be in Holy Orders to exercise jurisdiction in the Church, but history testifies that this was not always the case.  In 1540 the Abbess and canonesses of Quedlinburg embraced the doctrines of the Reformation, becoming Protestant, but they continued leading their lives of prayer and education until suppressed by Napoleon (along with Catholic abbeys) in 1802.

Roots of the Reformation XX: The Ottonian Reformation I

The Empire of Otto I
included modern Germany, Switzerland,
the Netherlands, Belgiumjparts of Austria,
France, and Italy as far south as Naples 

Well, I ended up taking a bit of a vacation from the blog—which I shouldn’t do as every time I skip just two days, the readership starts falling and it takes me a week to rebuild it.  So sorry folks for the interruption.  I do have a life—and even a day job—and this blog takes a considerable amount of time.  But I do enjoy it and what is more it is worth it if it encourages people to think, not a about the past, but about our Catholic Church today and some of the issues confronting it.

We had been talking about the problem of Reform of the Church—and who can reform it when the need for reform begins right at the top.  This has happened in the past with corrupt popes and papal administrations that forgot the gospel and became over invested in their own ambition for power, wealth, and pomp.  We saw how in his day Charlemagne had stepped in and set things right with Leo III (blog entry June 4, 2011).  Well after Leo things only got worse—and we saw what happened with Marozia, Theodora and the pornacracy (entries June 9, June 6, and January 15).   You may remember the Cadaver synod (entry, January 24, 2011).  These are all great stories.  Amazingly, as corrupt as the Borgias were—and as Showtime showed them, they were pretty corrupt—the tenth century papacies were even more wicked.  Who would set the Church back in order?

Charlemagne’s empire with its Renaissance and Reformation did not last.  The Emperor was succeeded by his son, Louis, who in turn was succeeded by his son Lothair.  But Lothair’s claims of Imperial supremacy were disputed by his half-brothers Louis the German and Charles the Bald  The two brothers were too strong for Lothair and after much warfare among the three, Lothair was left with the imperial title but with much of the realm taken by his brothers. Lothair himself, when dying, left the imperial title to his son Louis, but divided his remaining lands among Louis and his two brothers—Lothair II and Charles of Provence.  This was not an easy time for Europe—the Magyars were sweeping in from the east, the Vikings were ravaging the Atlantic and channel coasts and the Saracens were ravaging the Italian possessions of the Empire. There was a need for strong leadership to meet the challenges and there were plenty of strong leaders—but they kept fighting one another rather than the external enemies.   On his deathbed, Louis named his cousin Carloman, the son of his uncle Louis the German, to succeed him, but his other uncle, Charles the Bald—in connivance with Pope John VIII—seized the throne.  John, by the way, is a curious personage himself and was quite effeminate.  Patrick Madrid, an amateur historian (and the operative word here is amateur), suggests his effeminacy may have given rise to the Pope Joan legends.  That is a very complex topic and we will have fun someday soon looking at those stories.  However “light in his buskins” he may have been, John was a good pope; indeed a great pope.  Of course the competition at the time was not much.  John had a problem and that was the Saracen (Muslim) pirates who were raiding papal Italy and so the pope turned to the Carolingians for help just as Leo III had turned to Charlemagne and Pope Zachary had turned to Pepin in their respective political woes in the previous century.  They let him down—they were too divided among themselves for any sort of effective response—and, in the end, the popes had to pay tribute to the Saracens.

Speaking of the Carolingians,  Charles the Bald was succeeded in the Imperial title by his nephew, Charles the Fat.   Meanwhile in each of these successions various grandchildren and great grandchildren of Charlemagne kept dividing lands and squabbling with one another, each trying to expand his own power.  Most were not interested in the imperial title because it had become nothing more than that—a title.  Power was local and the central administration of Charlemagne had completely broken down.  In fact, with the death of Berengar of Friuli in 924 the throne and title themselves were empty and remained so for thirty-eight years.  All this at a time when Europe needed strong leadership—and when the Church needed a protector not only against Vikings and Saracens, but against some of the most unworthy men every to sit on the throne of Peter.   This was a time when popes obtained their office by cash, by murder and by adultery.  

In 962 the great-great-great-great-grandson of Charlemagne, through a predominately feminine line, took the throne and revived the empire.   His name was Otto.  He had become King of East Francia in 936, that part of Charlemagne’s empire that went to Louis the German and is what we call today Germany (West Francia, or West Frankreich being France, also known at this period as Neustria).  Otto arranged for his coronation at Charlemagne’s capital of Aachen and in Charlemagne’s cathedral where Charlemagne’s bones lie.  Now, just in case you’re missing this—he is trying from the beginning to establish a claim to Charlemagne’s title and realm. His intention is to refound Charlemagne’s “Roman Empire.”

In the early 960’s, the papal possessions in Italy—the Papal States—were overrun and conquered by Berengar II, the grandson of Berengar of Friuli who had been the last emperor, dying in 924.  Berengar II was a thug.  The Pope—John XII—was worse.  Nevertheless, when John asked the help of Otto in regaining his temporal possessions, Otto came down into Italy, defeated Berengar, restored the Pope to power.  The Pope, for his part, then crowned Otto as Emperor, restoring the lapsed imperium.  Pope and Emperor then established the Diploma Ottonianum, a treaty in which Otto and his successors would “protect” the papacy. 

This brings us back to the thorny issue of papal versus imperial power.  Charlemagne saw himself having supreme authority over the Church in the model that the Byzantine Emperors had exercised from the time of Justinian, and in fact from Constantine’s control over the Church.  Certainly Constantine met nothing but gratitude from Popes Miltiades and Sylvester.   Justinian, for his part, kept papal authority dependent on the Imperial exarch in Italy.  This was and would be a problem for Eastern (later specifically Orthodox) Christianity where the Emperors—first the Greek Emperor at Constantinople and later the Russian Emperors at Moscow and Saint Petersburg—firmly kept the Church under the imperial thumb and the Church thanked them for that.  So deeply ingrained was the Caesropapism in Orthodoxy that centuries later, even under the worst years of Communist oppression and persecution, the Russian Church was totally compliant with the Soviet government.  But, to be fair, that was its strategy for survival and in so far as it was a survival strategy, it worked. 

The Western Emperors saw their authority in the same way and for several centuries most popes agreed.  We saw (see blog entry of May 12, 2011) that Charlemagne altered the Creed of Nicea and, in direct contradiction to Leo III, insisted that this revised Creed be used in the liturgy)   In 824, Louis the Pious, his son and co-emperor, Lothair, and Pope Eugene II promulgated the Constitutio Romana, a protocol by which the Popes recognized, among other things, that the authority of the Emperor was supreme.  The Popes, for their part, were in a bind.  They needed the military protection from a series of foes—Lombards, Magyars, Saracens, and a host of Italian warrior-counts—to protect Rome and the papal territories.  Secondly they, like everyone else in Europe, were used to thinking of the Emperor as being supreme, indeed as being the Vicar of Christ which was a title the emperors (not the popes) had appropriated to themselves.  Finally, the popes had very little real power.  Bishops were elected locally, admittedly often under some royal or noble pressure.  Local Bishops, not popes, made decisions regarding liturgy and cult as well as Church discipline.  Papal authority was exercised more by encouragement and exhortation than by decree.  There was not much point into getting into “turf warfare” with the Emperor.  That would change, but for the time being, the popes were willing to let the issue slide.  And it was just as well—the Church needed the emperors to clean up a papacy that had become hopelessly corrupt.  I did a blog entry on what historians call The Pornacracy (cf. January 15 2011) which means the Rule (of the Church) by whores and refers to a period.  While you’re looking at that check out the January 24 2011 entry which is about the Cadaver Synod.  This might give you a picture of just how mad things were in the Church in the tenth century.     I think tomorrow we will talk about John XII—the pope who asks Otto for help.  It will show you why we need some outside authority to clean up the mess in Rome.  Just remember the old Italian axiom—il pesce puzza dalla testa—the fish rots from the head: it was coined about the papacy. 

Roots of the Reformation XVII: Who Reforms the Pope?

Otto I --restorer of the Holy Roman Empire

Charlemagne’s empire with its Renaissance and Reformation did not last.  The Emperor was succeeded by his son, Louis, who in turn was succeeded by his son Lothair.  But Lothair’s claims were disputed by his half-brothers Louis the German and Charles the Bald  The two brothers were too strong for Lothair and after much warfare among the three, Lothair was left with the imperial title but with much of the realm taken by his brothers. Lothair himself, when dying, left the imperial title to his son Louis, but divided his remaining lands among Louis and his two brothers—Lothair II and Charles of Provence.  This was not an easy time for Europe—the Vikings were ravaging the Atlantic and channel coasts and the Saracens were ravaging the Italian possessions of the Empire. On his deathbed, Louis named his cousin Carloman, the son of his uncle Louis the German, to succeed him, but his other uncle, Charles the Bald—in connivance with Pope John VIII—seized the throne.  John, by the way, is a curious personage himself and was quite effeminate.  Patrick Madrid, an amateur historian (and the operative word is amateur), suggests his effeminacy may have given rise to the Pope Joan legends.  That is a very complex topic and we will have fun someday soon looking at those stories.  However “light in his buskins” he may have been, John was a good pope; indeed a great pope.  Of course the competition at the time was not much.  John had a problem and that was the Saracen (Muslim) pirates who were raiding papal Italy and so the pope turned to the Carolingians for help just as Leo III had turned to Charlemagne and Pope Zachary had turned to Pepin in their respective political woes in the previous century.  They let him down—they were too divided among themselves for any sort of effective response—and the popes had to pay tribute to the Saracens.

Speaking of the Carolingians,  Charles the Bald was succeeded in the Imperial title by his nephew, Charles the Fat.   Meanwhile in each of these successions various grandchildren and great grandchildren of Charlemagne kept dividing lands and squabbling with one another, each trying to expand his own power.  Most were not interested in the imperial title because it had become nothing more than that—a title.  Power was local and the central administration of Charlemagne had completely broken down.  In fact, with the death of Berengar of Friuli in 924 the throne was empty and remained so for thirty-eight years.  All this at a time when Europe needed strong leadership—and when the Church needed a protector not only against Vikings and Saracens, but against some of the most unworthy men every to sit on the throne of Peter.   This was a time when popes obtained their office by cash, by murder and by adultery.   

In 962 the great-great-great-great-grandson of Charlemagne, through a predominately feminine line, took the throne and revived the empire.   His name was Otto.  He had become King of East Francia in 936, that part of Charlemagne’s empire that went to Louis the German and is what we call today Germany (West Francia, or West Frankreich being France, also known at this period as Neustria).  Otto arranged for his coronation at Charlemagne’s capital of Aachen and in Charlemagne’s cathedral where Charlemagne’s bones lie.  Now, just in case you’re missing this—he is trying from the beginning to establish a claim to Charlemagne’s title and realm.

In the early 960’s, the papal possessions in Italy—the Papal States—were overrun and conquered by Berengar II, the grandson of Berengar of Friuli who had been the last emperor, dying in 924.  Berengar was a thug.  The Pope—John XII—was worse.  Nevertheless, when John asked the help of Otto in regaining his temporal possessions, Otto came down into Italy, defeated Berengar, restored the Pope to power.  The Pope, for his part, then crowned Otto as Emperor, restoring the lapsed imperium.  Pope and Emperor then established the Diploma Ottonianum, a treaty in which Otto and his successors would protect the papacy. 

This brings us back to the thorny issue of papal versus imperial power.  Charlemagne saw himself having supreme authority over the Church in the model that the Byzantine Emperors had exercised from the time of Justinian, and in fact from Constantine’s control over the Church.  Certainly Constantine met nothing but gratitude from Popes Miltiades and Sylvester.   Justinian, for his part, kept papal authority dependent on the Imperial exarch in Italy.  This was and would be a problem for Eastern (later specifically Orthodox) Christianity where the Emperors—first the Greek Emperor at Constantinople and later the Russian Emperors at Moscow and Saint Petersburg—firmly kept the Church under the imperial thumb and the Church thanked them for that.  So deeply ingrained was the Caesropapism in Orthodoxy that centuries later, even under the worst years of Communist oppression and persecution, the Russian Church was totally compliant with the Soviet government.  But, to be fair, that was its strategy for survival and in so far as it was a survival strategy, it worked. 

The Western Emperors saw their authority in the same way and for several centuries most popes agreed.  We saw (see blog entry of May 12, 2011) that Charlemagne altered the Creed of Nicea and, in direct contradiction to Leo III, insisted that this revised Creed be used in the liturgy)   In 824, Louis the Pious, his son and co-emperor, Lothair, and Pope Eugene II promulgated the Constitutio Romana, a protocol by which the Popes recognized, among other things, that the authority of the Emperor was supreme.  The Popes, for their part, were in a bind.  They needed the military protection from a series of foes—Lombards, Magyars, Saracens, and a host of Italian warrior-counts—to protect Rome and the papal territories.  Secondly they, like everyone else in Europe, were used to thinking of the Emperor as being supreme, indeed as being the Vicar of Christ which was a title the emperors had appropriated to themselves.  Finally, the popes had very little real power.  Bishops were elected locally, admittedly often under some royal or noble pressure.  Local Bishops, not popes, made decisions regarding liturgy and cult as well as Church discipline.  Papal authority was exercised more by encouragement and exhortation than by decree.  There was not much point into getting into Turf warfare with the Emperor.  That would change, but for the time being, the popes were willing to let the issue slide.  And it was just as well—the Church needed the emperors to clean up a papacy that had become hopelessly corrupt.  I did a blog entry on what historians call The Pornacracy (cf. January 15 2011) which means the Rule (of the Church) by whores and refers to a period.  While you’re looking at that check out the January 24 2011 entry which is about the Cadaver Synod.  This might give you a picture of just how mad things were in the Church in the tenth century.     I think tomorrow we will talk about John XII—the pope who asks Otto for help.  It will show you why we need some outside authority to clean up the mess in Rome.  Just remember the old Italian axiom—il pesce puzza dalla testa—the fish rots from the head: it was coined about the papacy.