Gregory VII : some Historical Facts

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 27, 22 July 1925, Page 27

Gregory VII : some Historical Facts

t The following letter from the able pen of.-; Rev. Father E. J. Lynch, Palmerston 1 . North, in reply to■ a lecture recently, deliv- : ered there by . Mr. A, E. . Mander (and referred ; to in our “Topics” of this issue) appeared in the Manawatu Daily Times for May 26: ' Sir, —Permit me to make the .following v observations on Mr. Mander’s lecture : - (a) When dealing with remote periods such < as; the epoch in which Gregory VII lived, ■ the writer ,or lecturer must bear in mind that there are certain rules of historical criticism which should bo applied in order to give even a fairly accurate idea of the men and movements of those times. Thus we must not measure the beginning of the Middle Ages by the present-day social, political, religious, industrial t standards; otherwise our account 1 of ; events will .be a distorted narrative, bur portrayal of persons a fantastic caricature. Failure to observe . these canons of historical criticism has marred Mr. Mander’s lecture on Gregory VII, and led him into not a few blunders and exaggerations. * .. (b) Due , allowance must be made, for the . social, political, : religious, and cultural condition of Europe in the time of Gregory VII. Judged by our standard those times x were abnormal. The descendants of those j rude and barbarous Goths, Visigoths, Vandals, Huns, Lombards, who a few centuries before seized upon the Roman Empire, had | . not yet had time to settle down to peaceful occupations. Fierce, warlike, rapacious, they cared little for learning and the Fine Arts. The Church had . riot yet had time to soften the rudeness of their barbarous ways, and to discipline them in the strict observance of her high code of morals. She was too busily engaged ,in preserving the remnants of Christian civilisation, classical. culture and learning to make as yet any deep impression on races but recently redeemed from the gross superstitions of pagan worship, and a moral code in which war-like prowess mattered more than the meekness : arid the self-control of Christian living. Throughout the Europe of this time serf- ., dom, vassalage, despotism held sway. There were .almost continuous wars, national disruptions, quarrels over dukedoms' and kingdoms, strife, ' and' rivalry between barons and princes, which. involved the middle and lower classes in bloodshed, moral anaemia, material ruin. Swords were more in demand -than' : . ploughshares; rowdiness left little room for, N religion; bludgeoning brushed aside books. Europe was in a chaotic condition, and this re-acted on the Church. . ■ ' . (c) Thus the spiritual life and influence of the Church, suffered severely from the rude and disturbed state of society, in ; : all grades. •' Men in - whose; ,veins ran the hot - fteart’s blood of a crflel, barbarous, and r r fiercely war-like ancestry were not easily sub- \ jected to the gentle : yoke of Christ. ‘ The 'descendants of rude : saVages from the Black Forest • needed centuries of Christian training before they could appreciate . sculpture;: painting, :. literature, and the other refining

,; 'V V. : ;- '••v.. : *-.'. : ■' -V . influences of a peaceful, industrious, home-' loving life. The historian or lecturer who fails to give these facts their proper posi- ■' .x , y - .I“*' * Tt • . ... •. ,S v-. * * x | tion as a set-off and background to the condition of morality and culture in- the time , of Gregory VII has not done justice to his ; subject. Without emphasis on these deter- ' mining factors in the history of the early Middle Ages we get but a distorted view j of. ; a period that is not altogether enshrouded * in the gloom of barbarism and moral decay. Men like Gregory VII, Peter Damian, and a host of others summoned their contemporaries to lofty ; ideals and noble enterprises. Such l men officially voiced the protests of the Church v- against Godlessness and disorder. • They ever pointed to the narrow path of. . Christian duties. The Church did not acquiesce in the rapacious graspings, simony,; sacrilege, profanity that were the outcrop ,of rude manners and unchastened minds in troubled and disordered times. The mists of barbarism and paganism, that had risen out of Northern Europe, the Black Forest,' the Pannonian Plains, arid the Russian Steppes were not yet dissolved by the Sun .of Justice, whose rays were focussed in Christian teach-ing-rind morality. The Light of the World was as yet partly obscured by the retreating darkness of a dying pagan civilisation. (d) Another important fact passed over by Mr Mander is this Lay interference brought corruption and degradation into the Churdi. Always and everywhere, some rude and often illiterate baron, warlike duke, despotic king or emperor tried at every turn to enter the domain of Religion and therein to arrogate to themselves powers and privileges which were neither the right nor the duties of laymen. Such tyrants brooked no opposition: they followed " whithersoever avarice or despotism led them, even unto the sanctuary, and the highest offices of the Church. (e) Hence, haughty and greedy nobles frequently laid sacrilegious hands on the property of the . Church, even though dying Christians had willed such things as the legacy of the poor. Church lands, endowments of . monasteries, revenues of abbacies; ■ and ; bishoprics became the easy prey' of a; rapacious aristocracy; - They seized upon the , possessions of the sanctuary arid -the patrimony of the poor,..used them for their ignoble ends, ' parcelled them out to ’,their men-at-arms, worthless sons, ;or flattering - retainers: . they, sold them in public auction to the highest bidder. The avariciousness, of the great „ and the , powerful often saw ' the Church, in her' offices and ; her dignities, only a fruitful source of revenue to replenish - funds or reward sycophants. One who desires to give.: a true - picture of the men and the manners of the days of Hildebrand (Gre- , gory VII) . ought not to omit these funda- • mental facts, * otherwise the representation or the man and his time;is only a crude carifeature.,: For ; it only in the light of these .s considerations f. that we ? can hope to form i a just judgment ? concerning this towering personality and the powerful influence of his real and lasting achievements. ■./ ; r

(t) -.Therefore the reader of medieval history must ever bear in mind the disastrous Results of such a condition of things upon J'7; ;he Church and Churchmen. For so it came . ■ o pass that unsuitable, unworthy, and some- j r imes wicked men bought, begged, or stole' N . church dignities, offices, livings. The brokeniown soldier would be promoted by his lay •/;/; nitron and master to a rich living ■ in a mrish :;this was an easy way of. giving him a : pension; . the worthless hanger-on would V )e made the Abbot, of a monastery a mis- v creant might receive a mitre : rewards gran- ' ted by conscienceless nobility, who, for. the p most part, recognised no law but the dictates of their wills, and no rights but those 7 their swords had won. In the turmoil and confusion of those’ rude and lawless times, churches and monasteries were 7 often be- ; sieged, sacked, burned down, or turned into j military barracks or armed fortresses of the warring factions of Feudal Europe. Dev/A; generate sons of aristocracy were ‘made ’by' > their fathers or friends, bishops, abbots, . priors, parish priests, cathedral prebends,; even cardinals. In that way were they pro- . vided with rich livings without any regard to their moral fitness, . educational, or doc- 7 trinal qualifications. Right up the ranks of / ’ the nobility, from the poorest baron to the ' powerful Henry IV, this pernicious practice ’ of promoting to Church livings was claimed and exercised by unscrupulous laymen, cither by way of custom or right of investi- , ture. It .is hardly necessary to call the attention 'of the reader to the deplorable in- ; fluence such conduct and. procedure entailed upon the spiritual life and well-being of the 7j’ Church, and through the Church, upon so- ' ciety. ■ _ ' • (g) Thus the corrupt,, avaricious, and con- " scienceless upper classes of Gregory’s day, as well as of other times, were ever attempting and sometimes succeeding, in j enslaving ■ the Church. What the petty prince and \ pauperised /village]- baron tried to do, and l/g often did locals, Henry IV attempted, and sometimes washable to carry out on a vast > scale. Barons, princes, dukes, kings, and.;/: emperors had armies and retainers at their ] heck and call : they could thereby impose 7 their designs of avarice or ambition on a 7 defenceless Church. Only when some nobles, either through motives of personal advan- * tage or ; genuine and unselfish piety espoused the Church’s cause could the hands of greed, lawlessness] and irreligibn be restrained. To say, as Mr. Mander does in his lecture, that the Church was “practically all-powerful” ;in'-the ; time of ' Gregory; VII, is to betray a lack of desirable information about the true condition , of “ the ~ society: then] ; existing ; ■*> throughout Europe. True, Gregory imposed ,/ •av Snow penance on Henry IV and brought = thatv despot “for; a time into \ seeming f submission to >. the laws of / Christian conduct and -g; ecclesiastical discipline, though Henry’s assumed : garb of penitence was , only a cloak to, cover his - temporising//and; a subterfuge, as • ter events * revealed. Now, to conclude i from ; this one .< incident, ■ as: Mr. . Mander / seems to do, that the Church! was, therefore,, “practi- ; cally all-powerful” is* to do violence to both A' History : and ! Logic. The circumstances of ; • the case, as later events prove, warrant no

such conclusion. During the Pontificate of Gregory VII, of his immediate predecessors and successors, there was a long-drawn-out • struggle against the lay violators of the v divine - rights and privileges of the Church. f Gregory was nothing if not the champion of the Church’s freedom . m the exercise of her spiritual power, and in the enforcing of her discipline. * Rather should it be said ; that the Church in this' particular period was bound hand and foot by the slavery of ' L lay patronage, whereby the pliant minions ,of a- corrupt and avaricious, aristocracy were ,• , ~.-N ?■_ . .. .. J . rewarded; by receiving positions of honor, - responsibility, and influence in the Church, .. although neither nature nor grace had fitted them for such distinctions. (h) Mr. Mander’says “He (Pope Gregory) " knows too the strength of the idea of his, the Pope’s power, to condemn to everlasting Hell- those who dare to defy , him belief that is deeply rooted in the minds of almost every single man ip Western Christendom. ... In every mind in Christendom there is belief, a belief so strong as to amount to Absolute Certainty.” Now one wonders how a man with'any pretentions -to some education in ’he subject of history could have uttered such arrant nonsense. The weakest sixth standard child in the Convent School would bo able to set Mr. Marider right in this elementary point of Church discipline. The censures of the Church, such as interdict, excommunication, and anathema, can no more in themselves and through themselves condemn a man to “Everlasting Hell” than the sentence of a police-court magistrate could send a man to Hell. No one knew better than Gregory VII did the limits cf the power of ecclesiastical censures and condemnations. Nay, even the rudest peasants of German and Italian villages were well aware of the distinction, clear-cut and definite, between the Church’s punishments which affect only the. present life,-, and that power of everlasting damnation, which is reserved to God alone. One feels that Mr. Mander’s excursions into distant fields of medieval Church history are not calculated to win for him a reputation either for clear thinking or critical scholarship. His evident love -, of coloring dramatic situations with purple phitches and hyperbolic generalisations may be a valuable asset for a writer of romance. It is, however, a defect, even in a popular lecturer on historical subjects. (i) 1. Gregory is deposed from the papal • throne,” says Mr. Mander. Not at . all. The. Emperor’s hostility compelled the Pope to retreat to Salerno. -Henry was not competent to depose Gregory from his spiritual office. The Emperor, of course, set up an Antipope; but he was an usur- - per. ‘ The presence of an intruder in. :o.; r man’s house does not legally dispossess the .: owner. Therefore, it is ■ not correct to say that Gregory was deposed. 2. Does it not seem that Mr. Mauler is > r guilty of an anachronism in the expression ■- “To Hell with • the Pope” ? Certainly- it is language sacred to an obscurantist mod- , - ern society phut it is scarcely Medieval.- ■ .-t. “For three days and nights Henry .■ . was compelled ,to stand out in the court-

yard of the castle. You seeduni standing there in the... snow-covered - court-yard—-alone —shivering, trembling, utterly humiliated.” f , - What ,a wonderful feat of endurance! An inquisitive schoolboy would' feel inclined to ask whether Henry got : the .mumps or double pneumonia, or was lie frost- arid - ice-proof like a polar bear. Of course no serious critical historian pretends , that ' this sensational touch is to be taken literally.. The Old Chronicler, who on s a slender foundation of fact built up a big dramatic scene, does not hesitate “to feature” the Emperor as stripped to his shirt. That, however, was in the Dark Ages; yet one' fancies that the good man wrote with his tongue in his cheek. 4.. The foregoing, one out of many ,instances, is sufficient to show that Mr. Mander’s account is mere highly-colored sensationalism. The lecturer’s weakness for exaggeration lures him into the misty regions; of high Romance. ' Historical Romance has, indeed, its uses and fills no obscure corner in the field of Literature.

Nevertheless, the lecturer who pretends -to be uttering: solid facts while he is giving rhis audience ; what ig little better than • nebulous, imagery; - ought in justice to his ' hearers declare himself ' openly ; for what . lie really is, namely, a pedlar of Romantic ; pen-pictures, but no genuine interpreter’ of critical History, We are all familiar with the fable'of 'the frog which - tried to v rival the ox in . bulk; [ but unexpectedly ■ burst. There are lesser lights who would fain emulate the glowing pages of Gibfrons", : Macaulay, Fronde. . The result is frequently intellectual' suicide; “It is not,” says a well-known humorist, “so much a man’s ignorance' that makes him ridiculous .as the knowing so many things that are not so.” yf '- - cif; '-! This is Mr. Mander’s present trouble; time, and the study of genuine history, r will, one hopes, cure this : defect. ' , . ’ ' : Yours, : etc.,’ r ’•' . E. J. Lynch, ’ ' ;S.- X 7 -f>. • ' ; -j'fM ■’•j . .. . St, Patrick’s Presbytery, v . I Palmerston North. May 25. ’ - ’ -