by Peter Watson
This evolving idea, of monks as intercessors, had important consequences. Kings and nobles hurried to endow the Cluniac monasteries, anxious to be mentioned in their prayers. Nobles would retreat to monasteries to die, believing they were closer to heaven. Monastic intercession encouraged a spate of church building and adoration of the clergy. But Cluny’s most direct effect on history came through its expansion into Germany at the time of Henry III (10391056). Henry married the daughter of the duke of Aquitaine, whose house had founded Cluny in the first place, but Henry had larger ideas about theocratic kingship and saw the monastery as essential to his aims. He wanted to complete the Christianisation of Europe but, in order to do so, certain matters had to be attended to first. Henry believed, or chose to believe, that at his coronation he had received the sacraments of his office, and that this gave him the spiritual authority to consecrate bishops and order the affairs of the church. He also believed that he needed to reform the papacy which had been very weak for as much as a century. In 1045, for example, there were three rival popes in Rome and, partly as a result of this, Henry called a synod in that year to begin reform. Three Germans were appointed pope in quick succession, the last of whom, Leo IX (10491054), was Henry’s relative. Before long, this pattern would prove too much for other churchmen, provoking the so-called Gregorian reform of the church. And that, in its turn, precipitated the investiture controversy.
Gregorian reform is the name historians now give to a period, 1050–1130, when four popes worked hard to change both the form of worship the biggest upheaval since St Augustine’s time and the status of the papacy, which had been languishing for centuries, proscribed locally by the rival claims of Roman noble families and internationally, as we have seen, by the various kings around Europe. This joint aim has been described as nothing less than a world revolution, ‘the first in western history’.21 As a result, the church would gain a fair measure of freedom from secular control, there would be a marked improvement in the intellectual and moral level of the clergy, and the church itself would become a superstate, governed from Rome by the papal administration, or Curia.
But the Gregorian reforms were also associated with an even more important ground-shift in religious feeling in the eleventh century: the growth of lay piety. This came about partly as a reaction to the Cluniac movement. Thanks to the spread of the order across Europe, a devout attitude towards dogma, and a love of elaborate ritual (a ‘relentless liturgy’) became almost as common among ordinary people as it had been hitherto among monks and priests. But the self-representation of the Cluniacs as intercessors, in particular, while it satisfied the needs of many, conflicted with the new interiorisation of faith, where intercessors were not deemed necessary or desirable. More than that, the interiorisation of faith was leading some people in unusual and unorthodox directions: there was a resurgence of heresy. So two contradictory things were happening at once an elaborate centralisation of worship, centring on the clergy as intercessors, and a proliferation of private beliefs, a good few of which could be characterised as heresy. This was the intellectual/emotional background to the rise of a new attitude to monastic life in the eleventh century: a reaction against Cluny. It involved a return to asceticism and eremitism and resulted, soon enough, in the Cistercian and Franciscan movements.
The idea behind the Cistercian reform was the restitution of the original Benedictine practice. The founder, Robert of Molême (c. 10271110), objected to the complexity of Cluniac art, architecture and in particular its liturgy, which he thought ‘had taken embellishment to the point of no return’, detracting from worship rather than enhancing it.22 In its place, he proposed an austere lifestyle, with hard labour, modest clothing and a vegetarian diet. He positioned his Cistercian abbeys on the remote fringes of civilisation, away from temptation. The abbeys themselves were modest and plain affairs, relying on line and form for their aesthetic appeal, rather than decoration. A certain serendipity was at work here, too, since one effect of locating the Cistercian abbeys in remote areas meant that they became involved in the agricultural revival that took place at this time, many of them becoming models of efficient estate management, which added to their importance and influence. But that influence was not simply organisational: they also became spiritual leaders. One reason for this was the work of Bernard of Clairvaux. The son of a nobleman from Burgundy, Bernard received his calling at the age of twenty-two. Highly familiar with the classics, he developed a mellifluous writing and speaking style, which helped him serve several popes and more than one king. He was one of those who advocated church councils as a way to prevent heretical deviation, and he was an ardent champion of the Crusades, the course of action which took him farthest from Benedict’s original ideal of the monk as a man of peace. He also promoted devotion to the Virgin Mary.
The cult of the Virgin was one of the more important examples of popular piety in the twelfth century. It was Bernard’s contribution to conceive of Mary as, in a sense, the symbol for divine love, ‘the mother of all mercies’, whose intercession offered the chance of salvation to all. She is ‘The flower upon which rests the Holy Spirit’, said Bernard. Mary had not been an important figure in the early church but through Bernard she became a valued addition to the deity and the Son and the Holy Spirit in helping people approach God.23 Bernard did not agree with some of his contemporaries that the Virgin was exempt from original sin. His point was that Mary was important for her humility her willingness to serve as the vehicle for Christ’s arrival on earth. Following Benedict, Bernard argued that humility is the queen of virtues and it was this which led Mary to accept the divine plan freely. ‘Through her, God, Who could have accomplished our redemption any way He wanted, teaches us the importance of our voluntary collaboration with divine grace.’24 In fact, Mariolatry stood for even more than that. As Marina Warner has pointed out, ‘by contrasting human women with the sublime perfection of the Virgin, earthly love could be discredited and men’s eyes turned once again heavenwards’.25 The new concentration on the Holy Family, implied by the cult of the Virgin, distinguished post-1000 Christianity from its earlier forms. In an effort to increase piety, the church was now more concerned with this world.26
The friars, who emerged in the thirteenth century, did so to fill a gap not addressed by either priests or monks. The founders of the friars, Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) and Dominic Guzmán(c. 1170–1234), both concluded that what the church needed at that time was clerics who were mobile, free to take to the streets, to preach, hear confessions and minister to people where they were, living their lives. Their very freedom made the friars highly organised, and open-minded: they adapted their orders to admit women and what they called ‘tertiaries’, lay people who associated themselves with their spirituality.
The Franciscans took their colour from their founder. Francis was the son of a wealthy cloth merchant. He led a carefree life as a boy, and was known for his courtesy and cheerfulness.27 ‘To the world a Sun is born,’ wrote Dante of Francis. He loved French literature, in particular lyric poetry, and ‘Francis’ (‘Frenchie’) was in fact a nickname he was given because of his literary tastes. He was converted, if that is the word, in two stages. Captured in a skirmish between the Assisians and Perugians, he caught a fever and turned to God. Later, after his release, he one day met a leper on the road. There was a great fear of lepers in those days–they were required to carry bells and ring them when approaching a healthy person. Instead of giving this particular leper a wide berth, Francis embraced him. However, when he looked back no one was there and Francis became convinced it had been Christ who had appeared before him, and converted loathing into brotherly love. Extraordinarily moved by this experience, Francis used his family wealth to rebuild a ruined church. When challenged by his father, the young man in front of the bishop of Assisi and the assembled crowds turned his back on his family wealth and embraced poverty. It is a story reminiscent in some ways of the Buddha.
Not all conversions are as fruitfu
l. But Francis’ charisma was legendary. He thought that a religious leader taught best by giving a moral lead (though he was by all accounts an excellent preacher). His charisma meant that even when he preached to the animals this was not regarded as a mental aberration and he was still adored. Thanks to him the Franciscans venerated the infant Jesus and it is from this time that the Christmas crib was introduced. A number of other mystical experiences surrounded Francis, including an occasion when birds flocked around him with song and another when he received the ‘stigmata’, the physical wounds of the crucified Christ. These various episodes ensured that Francis was canonised within two years of his death, a world record. The main achievement of the Franciscans, following their founder’s example, was to establish that the purpose of theology was to ‘mobilise the heart and not merely to inform and convince the intellect’.28 This was another aspect of the inward movement of faith.
But, in a sense, we are running ahead of ourselves. The new orders were a response to changes in lay piety but far from being the only ones. The fundamental aim of the Gregorian reform was to establish a unified world system, Christianitas, as Gregory himself called it.29 There were three popes and a handful of cardinals who tried to bring about this ambitious reformation. (The term ‘cardinal’, incidentally, comes from the Latin word for the hinge of a door, the crucial device which helps open and close the way.30)
The first of the three reformers, who inaugurated a great debate on the nature of a Christian society, was Peter Damian. Born as the orphan of a poor family, he was adopted by a priest and as a result received a good education. He was one of those who found Cluniac life too much involved with the world. One of his particular worries, where the church was concerned, was the fact that so many of the clergy were either married or had children out of wedlock. Damian wrote an entire book denouncing these scandals, at the same time arguing strongly in favour of clerical celibacy. In Byzantium, ordinary priests were allowed to be married, though bishops were supposed to be celibate. (When a priest was promoted to bishop, his wife was expected to ‘do the decent thing’ and enter a convent.) But Damian was unhappy even with this: he believed that only if they were completely celibate would the clergy devote themselves exclusively to the church, rather than use their offices to inveigle property and jobs for their offspring, a practice which was everywhere bringing the priesthood into disrepute. (It seems that ordinary lay people were little bothered by clerical concubines. The demand for priestly celibacy came from the top down and had as one of its aims making the clergy more separate from the laity.)
Damian was also the first to give rein to the new piety that was overtaking the Catholic church, which was mentioned above and in the last chapter. This was the changed relationship between God and humanity. The original, jealous God of the Old Testament, which had dominated early medieval times, was now coming to be replaced by the more loving son as described in the New Testament, the God who suffered for our sins and whose ‘sorrowful mother’ was now being more and more invoked. In line with this, as has also been referred to, worship was becoming less a matter of formal, liturgical praying and singing, as in the Cluniac ideal, more an internal personal experience. In one way, this was enriching, in another it would prove unfortunate. Damian’s intense, internal approach to piety helped to release a fierce religiosity in many people, an uncontrollable emotionalism which would lead to fanaticism. It was this intensity which, as we shall see, led to the Crusades, to heresy, to anti-Semitism and inquisition.31
The second of the three makers of the Gregorian reform was Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida. He came from Lorraine and had been a monk at Cluny, where he too turned against the over-elaborate, all-consuming liturgy, feeling that the ideals of Cluny’s founder had been betrayed. As a highly educated and very clever cardinal, with a good knowledge of Greek, he was sent as papal ambassador to Constantinople. Not remotely diplomatic, his appointment there was abrasive and not wholly successful. He ended his visit in 1054 by excommunicating the patriarch on the Bosporus, formally recognising a schism that had been fermenting for centuries. (In some ways, this schism has never been healed.) On his return to Rome, Humbert took over as chief ideas man among those who wanted to see radical change. Beginning in 1059 he published two works which were the real starting point for what came later. The first was a papal election decree, an ambitious piece of work which set out a new manner of electing popes, a plan that excluded both the German emperor and the Roman people as had hitherto been the case. Instead, a college of cardinals (of about a dozen, in the first instance) was created and election was now fully in their hands. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this change: only a generation before, the German emperor had held the whip hand in papal elections. But the emperor of the day, Henry IV, was just then a minor, so Humbert calculated that such an opportunity might never come again. Humbert’s other book was actually called Three Books Against the Simoniacs and this was an anti-German tract which, as Norman Cantor says, was an attack on the whole ‘medieval equilibrium between the church and the world’. Even the tone of the book was new. Instead of adopting a high-flown rhetorical style, Humbert utilised the new learning, which is considered in the next chapter, in particular the so-called new logic, developed since the rediscovery of Aristotle. His style was controlled, cold even, but soaked through with a hatred of Germany. Its chief argument was that simony the buying and selling of church offices was an unforgivable interference in church affairs, and as dire as heresy.32
He didn’t stop there. He went on to argue that if the clergy could be reformed in no other way, then the laity were entitled to consider the moral character of their priests and should they, too, be found wanting, the laity could refuse to take the sacraments from them. This was in effect a revival of the so-called Donatist doctrine, that the laity had a right to judge the priesthood. It was, intellectually and emotionally, a most dangerous development, the most provocative of reforms. It had for long been the practice for the church to argue that the efficacy of the sacraments was not dependent on the priest but on the divinely-constituted office. Now Humbert was throwing centuries of tradition by the wayside. It would lead, in the second half of the twelfth century, to the heretical movements which instigated both the inquisition and, in due course, the Protestant ideas that Martin Luther found so compelling.
The third of the reformers was not so much of an original thinker but he was the greatest organiser and synthesiser. This was Hildebrand, who became Pope Gregory VII. Norman Cantor argues that the three greatest popes before the sixteenth century were Gregory I, Gregory VII and Innocent III, the last of whom we shall meet shortly. ‘And no pope was ever as controversial as Gregory VII, adored and hated in equal measure.’ Even before he became pope, Hildebrand had coerced Italian scholars into beginning the great codification and synthesis of canon law that would play such a part in the revival of Europe and the establishment of the new universities that are the subject of the next chapter. But what really drew the world’s attention was the publication, immediately after his election as pope in 1073, of Dictatus papae. This was by any measure a trenchant assertion of papal power, ‘a sensational and extremely radical document’.33 As was mentioned above, the bull insisted that the Roman pontiff was sanctified by St Peter, that the papacy had never erred and, according to the scriptures, never would err. Only the papal office was universal in authority, said the bull, only the pope could appoint bishops, nothing was canonical without papal assent, no one could be a true believer unless he agreed with the pope, and the pope himself was beyond the judgement of any human being. The pope had the power to depose emperors, and people with grievances against their rulers could lawfully bring those grievances to the Holy See.
Breathtaking in its range, the bull was intended to create a new world order, subservient to Rome, and Gregory was perfectly aware of this. So great was the revolution proposed that not only the emperor and kings of northern Europe were unnerved by the bull; so too were the great
ecclesiastics the pope was proposing to change the modus vivendi that had existed for centuries. More than that, no medieval ruler had ever allowed a pope to interfere in the affairs of state. Most realised that a fight between popes and kings could not be far off. After the bull was published, however, Gregory did not sit on his hands but continued to develop his views in a series of pointed letters to Hermann, bishop of Metz. These were prepared in pamphlet form, as a series of questions put to the pope by the bishop, and sent to all the courts of Europe. In these letters, Gregory expanded his provocative views, further insisting that the state had no moral sanction, that royal power largely resulted from violence and crime, that the only legitimate authority in the world was that of the priesthood. Only complete Christianitas was acceptable.
In addition to this basic assault, however, Gregory also introduced or reintroduced an idea that had not been at the forefront of the church for some time. This was a concern for the poor. Gregory introduced the idea of the poor not so much as an economic issue as a quasi-political one. He himself instinctively sided with the downtrodden and at the same time loathed what he saw as their oppressors (kings included). Thus he introduced into Christianity a measure of social conscience and criticism, something it had lacked during the predominantly agricultural Middle Ages (though in his insistence on celibacy for priests, thousands of wives were turned out on to the street). This essentially emotional attitude towards poverty was a strengthening factor in the church for a time; it proved popular among the new urban classes, by no means all of whom were happy with life in the new towns.34 Gregory also implied that many of the well-to-do were spiritually poor, and this made him more popular than he might otherwise have been. But it wasn’t enough to put off the fight that was coming.
