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 XXIV: The Islamic Scholar and the Ottonian Reformation



An armillary sphere
Sandro Botticelli

Well, back to the Ottonian Reformation.  You may remember that about two weeks ago (July 1) to be precise, I mentioned a fellow by the name of Gerbert of Aurillac.  Hugh Capet—the King of France—had asked pope John XV to depose Arnulf from the Archbishopric of Reims as Arnulf was an ally of Charles of Lorraine who was contesting Hugh’s claim to the French crown—a somewhat shaky claim other than in the medieval world might made right and Hugh and plenty of might.  When the pope failed to act, Hugh took it on himself to convoke a synod of bishops and depose Arnulf and he named Gerbert in Arnulf’s place.  John XV did not like this and sent a legate to France who declared Gerbert’s election to the See of Reims invalid and restored Arnulf.  Now, we need to be somewhat careful about this.  The pope, at the timed, did not have the right to appoint bishops.  Bishops were elected by their Cathedral Clergy. (Popes would only get the authority to appoint bishops to most European sees in the nineteenth century and there are still a number of sees that maintain the right of election, though recent popes have interfered—with mixed success—with this right.)  Nevertheless, once a bishop was duly elected and installed, the papacy was quick to defend them against the attempts of kings or nobles to depose them.  When Byzantine Emperor Michael III deposed the Patriarch Ignatius in 858 and named Photius to the See of Constantinople, Pope Nicholas I excommunicated both Emperor and the new Patriarch.  So, in any event, Gerbert was deposed as Archbishop of Reims by the pope—not an auspicious sign for his future—but Gerbert was, as well shall see, the original “Come-back Kid.” 

Gerbert had been born in 946 in what is now south-central France.  At approximately the age of eighteen he entered the Benedictine abbey at Aurillac, not far from his birthplace.  This local is crucial to the story as the Abbey of Aurillac was a relatively influential one at the time due to the cult of its founder, the count Gerald of Aurillac and its ties with the influential Abbey of Cluny.  It is also important in as that geographically it was in a bridge area between France (to the North) and Catalonia—a region which stretched from what is today the South of France along the Mediterranean coast south into what is today Spain.  This region served as a conduit of information and trade between Europe and Islamic Spain. 

       In 967, Borrell II, Count of Girona visited the Abbey of Aurillac and the Abbot asked him to take the young monk back with him to Spain for studies.  Gerbert studied under Bishop Atto of Vic, a remarkably cosmopolitan man.  Atto himself was sent on a diplomatic mission to sue for peace at the Court of the Caliph at Cordoba—the Islamic armies were threatening the Christian stronghold in Catalonia and Borrell was anxious to avoid a war that would result in his counties (he was also Count of Barcelona, Ausona, and Urgell—all in the northeastern corner of modern Spain).  Cordoba, indeed Islamic Spain, was the most advanced civilization in Europe at this period.    In Cordoba Atto was introduced into a very different world, a world in which Christian bishops and clergy spoke Arabic, dressed and lived in the Arabic manner, and were in open conversations about philosophy and sciences with Arab and Jewish scholars.  It is unclear whether Gerbert accompanied Atto on this mission, or indeed if Gerbert ever managed to visit Islamic Spain, but whether in Catalonia or Al-Andalus he certain was exposed to Arabic learning and culture and drank it up. 

     During his time in Spain Gerbert was introduced to the Hindu-Arabic numerals and recognized how much easier mathematics was with this system than with the clumsy system of Roman numerals then in use in Christian Europe.  It would be Gerbert who introduced the Hindu-Arabic numerals to western Culture.  He also was introduced to the Abacus which had disappeared from European learning with the collapse of Graeco-Roman culture.  He reintroduced the armillary sphere which, like the abacus, had been lost to European knowledge and complemented it with sighting tubes that helped in stellar navigation.  Gerbert was not an inventor or original thinker as much as he was someone who was quick to grasp the advances made by the Arabic culture and was not afraid to bring them to the west.  He was only in Spain for two years, but it was two years that made a huge difference for European mathematics and science.  What is truly remarkable about Gerbert then is not his originality but his openness to other cultures, non-Christian cultures—where he felt he could learn something.  He did not let theological prejudices close his mind to the truths and wisdom he found outside Christian circles not did he insist that theology trumped science.  This was a remarkable openness in the tenth century—indeed many Catholics today think they have nothing to learn from non-Christian sources and look down on cultures that differ from their own.  Truth has nothing to fear from open dialogue and minds that are fearful of different insights and ideas only betray both a lack of faith and shallowness of intellect.      
     In 969 Borrell made a pilgrimage to Rome and Gerbert was included in his suite.  Pope John XIII (not one of our better popes (see entry of June 28^th) suggested to the Emperor Otto I that he should name Gerbert tutor for his son, the future Otto II.  It would take this man and cast him in a very different direction than the Arabic scholar.

Roots of the Reformation XXIII: The Ottonian Reformation falters (briefly)

Otto II

Sorry--our network was down last evening when I went to post this. 

It is unfortunate that Otto II died so young—at only 28—and that his heir was only three years old  when he came to the throne because Otto and his father (Otto I) had managed to make some remarkable headway into securing good order in both Church and State and a regency provided both the German nobles and the Roman families with the opportunity to undo the political and religious progress that had been accomplished.  Otto’s widow, Theophanu, gets mixed reviews as regent, though the negative opinons of her own day might be biased against her being a woman and her being Greek.  She seems to have preferred Italy to Germany, probably because it was more like her native Greece but also because she was detested in Germany for her sophistication which made her seem affected and pretentious.  Raised in the imperial court of Constantinople where her uncle reigned, she was given to a high degree of luxury and her preference for rich fabrics and elegant jewelry made her appear decadent to the more battle-hardened Germans.  Among her “affectations,” she seems to have been the one who introduced the use of the fork to Europe.  She had a two pronged golden instrument with which she lifted meat and other greasy foods to her mouth. The Germans couldn’t understand this—why, after all, had God given us fingers if not to slobber grease-dripping  globs of fat into our mouths?  On the other hand, lazy, sunny decadence was familiar to Rome and the Romans (where it is still the fashion), and while Italy may not be Greece, at least it wasn’t the frigid, Spartan forests north of the Alps. 
Germany was in turmoil through much of Otto’s childhood due to the rebellion of Henry the Quarrelsome whom Otto II had deposed as Duke of Bavaria.  At one point Henry had actually kidnapped the young Otto III and in his rebellion he tried to seize the imperial crown for himself.  It is never healthy for a kingdom or an empire to have a child on the throne.  Quarrelsome Henry's quarrels were not the only issue causing trouble in Germany.  Hungarians ravaged the eastern fringe of the empire, Vikings the north.  France, under Lothair IV used the chaos created by Henry the Quarrelsome to make itself independent of Imperial oversight.  On the other hand, Theopanu was able to arrange for Bohemia under Duke Boleslaus II to become part of the Empire. 

Otto, or rather his regent and mother, Theophanu, had better luck with their Roman policy.   You may remember that one of Otto II’s last acts was to name John XIV as pope, but with Otto’s death five months into that papacy, John was left vulnerable to the enemies of the Imperial party and the antipope Boniface VII had returned from exile and imprisoned John in the Castle Sant’ Angelo where he was murdered.  Boniface held the Chair of Peter for a year until he died.  (He is the one whose corpse was dragged naked through the streets and flung at the statue of Marcus Aurelius.)  John XV was elected to succeed him.  John was a client of Theophanu and the Imperial party and her presence (at times personal, at times through a strong envoy) kept him safe. 

As pope John was not remarkable in any way other than to say he was noted for his love of luxury and a tendency to enrich family and retainers with Church offices.  Those are not virtues in a pope, though they were common enough faults. There are two important events in his papacy however. 

The first event was that the new King of France, Hugh Capet, who had replaced the old Carolingian dynasty wanted to depose Arnulf, the Archbishop of Reims who was a relative of Hugh’s rival for the French Crown, Charles of Lorraine.  When John XV failed to act promptly at Hugh’s request, the French King convoked a synod and deposed Arnulf choosing the abbot Gerbert of Aurillac to succeed him.  We will hear more—much more—about Gerbert later.  Instead of being angry at the King, Arnulf turned on the pope saying of John XV:

Are any bold enough to maintain that the priests of the Lord all over the world are to take their law from monsters of guilt like these—men branded with ignominy, illiterate men, and ignorant alike of things human and divine? If, holy fathers, we are bound to weigh in the balance the lives, the morals, and the attainments of the humblest candidate for the priestly office, how much more ought we to look to the fitness of him who aspires to be the Lord and Master of all priests! Yet how would it fare with us, if it should happen that the man the most deficient in all these virtues, unworthy of the lowest place in the priesthood, should be chosen to fill the highest place of all? What would you say of such a one, when you see him sitting upon the throne glittering in purple and gold? Must he not be the "Antichrist, sitting in the temple of God and showing himself as God"?

This might be the first time that the Pope has been termed the Antichrist.  That is a theme that would be picked up by Luther at his Reformation, shared by other Protestant Reformers, and still a popular theme today among some of the more exotic millenarians on the right fringe of Christianity.  Hugh's evaluation of John might be more out of anger that John wasn't supporting him in his struggles for the French throne, but it does serve as a warning that people are not necessarily impressed by papal pomp. 

The other event that made John’s papacy noteworthy from a historical point of view is that on January 31 995, just a year before his death, John canonized Bishop Ulrich of Augsburg.  This is the first record of a papal canonization of a saint.  John died in March of 996 as he was preparing to crown the young Otto III as emperor.   Otto III named his 24 year old cousin, Bruno of Carinthia, as Gregory V.  At this point in history we see that the papacy is totally in the control and gift of the Emperor.  By amd large, the imperial popes were good popes, or at least not bad popes--certainly better than the ones the Romans tended to elect.  We will see Bruno's efforts at Reform and then his successor who is one of the better popes, and one of the most idiosyncratic, of the period. 

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.