Absolute Monarchs

by John Julius Norwich

  I, Robert, by the Grace of God and of St. Peter Duke of Apulia and of Calabria and, if either aid me, future Duke of Sicily, shall be from this time forward faithful to the Roman Church and to you, Pope Nicholas, my lord. Never shall I be party to a conspiracy or undertaking by which your life might be taken, your body injured or your liberty removed. Nor shall I reveal to any man any secret which you may confide to me, pledging me to keep it, lest this should cause you harm. Everywhere and against all adversaries I shall remain, insofar as it is in my power to be so, the ally of the holy Roman Church, that she may preserve and acquire the revenues and domains of St. Peter. I shall afford you all necessary assistance that you may occupy, in all honor and security, the papal throne in Rome. As for the territories of St. Peter … I shall not attempt to invade them nor even [sic] to ravage them without the express permission of yourself or your successors, clothed with the honors of the blessed Peter …

  Should you or any of your successors depart this life before me I shall, having consulted the foremost cardinals as also the clergy and laity of Rome, work to ensure that the pope shall be elected and installed according to the honor due to St. Peter … So help me God and his Holy Gospels.

  All those present at the ceremony could be well satisfied with what they had done; not everyone, however, shared their satisfaction. The Roman aristocracy retreated into its musty palaces, furious and frightened. The Byzantines saw that they had lost their last chance of preserving what was left of their Italian possessions. And in the Western Empire, shorn of its privileges at papal elections, faced with a new alliance as formidable militarily as it was politically, and now, as a crowning insult, forced to watch in impotent silence while immense tracts of imperial territory were calmly conferred on a band of brigands, the reaction to Nicholas’s behavior can well be imagined. It was lucky for Italy that Henry IV was still a child; had he been a few years older, he would never have taken such treatment lying down. As it was, the pope’s name was thenceforth ostentatiously omitted from the intercessions in all the imperial chapels and churches, while a synod of German bishops went so far as to declare all Nicholas’s acts null and void and to break off communion with him. We cannot tell how he would have reacted; before the news could reach him, he died in Florence.

  THE DEATH OF Nicholas II created a situation even more hopelessly confused than usual, his electoral reforms having produced the very effect that they had been specifically designed to avoid. They made a disputed succession inevitable, for how could the Empress-Regent Agnes accept any candidate canonically elected in Rome without giving implicit approval to the new dispensations? Once again, two popes struggled for the possession of St. Peter’s. The stronger claim was certainly that of Anselm, Bishop of Lucca, whose election as Pope Alexander II by the cardinal bishops—guided, as always, by Hildebrand—had been canonically impeccable. On the other hand, his rival, the antipope Honorius II, chosen by Agnes and supported by the Lombard bishops—who, as St. Peter Damian uncharitably remarked, were better fitted to pronounce on the beauty of a woman than the suitability of a pope—had influential partisans in Rome and plenty of money with which to nourish their enthusiasm; it was only with the military assistance of Richard of Capua, provided now for the second time at Hildebrand’s request, that Alexander was enabled to take possession of his see. Even then Honorius did not give up. As late as May 1063, after Agnes had been removed and an imperial council had declared for his rival, he even managed to recapture the Castel Sant’Angelo for several months, and though he was formally deposed in the following year he was to assert his claims till the day of his death.

  With Hildebrand continuing in his role of éminence grise, it was hardly surprising that the papal-Norman alliance should flourish. In 1063 Pope Alexander sent a banner to Robert Guiscard and his brother Roger, fighting the Saracens for the control of Sicily, and three years later he sent another to William the Conqueror, who flew it at Hastings. He did his best, too, to heal the breach with Byzantium, sending a mission under Peter of Anagni to Constantinople; but feelings on the Bosphorus were running too high, and after the Normans under Robert Guiscard had captured Bari in 1071—eliminating the last bastion of Byzantine power in South Italy—the chances of a settlement were even slimmer. Even there, however, relations were a good deal easier than those with the Empire of the West.

  Henry IV had come to the throne of Germany in 1054, shortly before his fifth birthday. He had not made a particularly auspicious start to his reign. His mother, the Empress Agnes, who had taken over the regency, had been totally unable to control him, and after a wild boyhood and a deeply disreputable adolescence he had acquired, by the time he assumed power at sixteen, a reputation for viciousness and profligacy which augured ill for the future. This reputation he was at last beginning to live down, but throughout his unhappy life he remained hot-tempered, passionate, and intensely autocratic. Thus as he grew to manhood he became ever more resentful of what he saw as the increasing arrogance of the Roman Church and, in particular, of those reformist measures by which it was seeking to cast off the last vestiges of imperial control. It was plain that a showdown between Church and empire was inevitable. It was not long in coming.

  The scene was Milan. Nowhere in Italy did the spirit of ecclesiastical independence from the dictates of Rome burn more brightly than in this old capital of the North, where an individual liturgical tradition had been jealously preserved since the days of St. Ambrose seven centuries before; nowhere were the new Roman reforms, especially those relating to simony and clerical celibacy, more bitterly resented by the diehards. On the other hand, the government of the city was now dominated by a radical left-wing party known as the Patarines, who, partly through genuine religious fervor and partly through hatred of the wealth and privilege that the Church had so long enjoyed, had become fanatical champions of reform. Such a situation would have been explosive enough without imperial intervention, but late in 1072, during a dispute over the city’s vacant archbishopric, Henry had aggravated matters by giving formal investiture to his own choice of aristocratic antireform candidate, while fully aware that Pope Alexander had already approved the canonical election of a Patarine.

  Tension between the two parties had led to the burning of Milan Cathedral, and tempers were still running high on each side when, in April 1073, Alexander died, leaving his successor to carry on the struggle. There could be no question as to who that successor would be. Archdeacon Hildebrand had already wielded effective power in the Curia for some twenty years, during many of which he had been supreme in all but name. When, according to a carefully prearranged plan, the crowd seized him during Alexander’s funeral service, carried him to the Basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli, and there exultantly acclaimed him pope, they were doing little more than regularizing the existing state of affairs, and the canonical election that followed was the purest formality. Hastily he was ordained priest—a desirable qualification for the Papacy which seems to have been overlooked during the earlier stages of his career—and was immediately afterward enthroned as Supreme Pontiff with the name of Gregory VII.

  Of the three great popes of the eleventh century—Leo IX, Gregory VII, and Urban II (whom we have not yet met)—Gregory was at once the least attractive and the most remarkable. Whereas the other two were aristocrats, secure in the possession of all that noble birth and a first-class education could bestow, he was the ugly, unprepossessing son of a Tuscan peasant, Lombard by race, whose standards of learning and culture fell well below those of most leading churchmen and whose every word and gesture betrayed his humble origins.4 The others assumed the Papacy almost as of right; he achieved it only after a long and arduous—though increasingly influential—apprenticeship in the Curia and for no other reason than his immense ability and the sheer power of his will. The others were both tall and of outstandingly distinguished appearance; he was short and swarthy, with a pronounced paunch and a voice so weak that, even making allowance for his heavy regional accent, his Roman colle
agues often found it difficult to understand what he said. He possessed none of Leo’s obvious saintliness, nor any of Urban’s political instinct or diplomatic flair. He was neither a scholar nor a theologian. Yet there was in his character something so compelling that he almost invariably dominated, automatically and effortlessly, any group of which he found himself a member. Peter Damian had not called him a “holy Satan” for nothing.

  His strength lay, above all, in the singleness of his purpose. Throughout his life he was guided by one overmastering ideal: the subjection of all Christendom, from the two emperors down, to the authority of the Church of Rome. The Church could make them and unmake them; it could also absolve their subjects from their allegiance. But just as the Church must be supreme upon Earth, so too must the pope be supreme in the Church. He was the judge of all men, himself responsible only to God; his word was not only law, it was the Divine Law. Disobedience to him was therefore something very close to mortal sin. All this and much more was spelled out in his twenty-seven propositions, known as Dictatus Papae, published in 1075. These included the assertion that all popes are by definition saints, inheriting their sanctity from St. Peter—a theory which must have raised a few eyebrows among Gregory’s older contemporaries. Never before had the concept of ecclesiastical autocracy been carried to such an extreme; never before had it been pursued with such unflinching determination. Yet this very extremism was to ultimately prove self-destructive. Confronted by adversaries of the caliber of Henry IV and Robert Guiscard, as determined as himself but infinitely more flexible, Gregory was to learn to his cost that his persistent refusal to compromise, even when his principles were not directly involved, could only bring about his downfall.

  BUT ALL THAT was in the future. The problem of Henry IV remained to be settled. At his Lenten Synod of 1075 the pope categorically condemned all ecclesiastical investitures by laymen, on pain of anathema. Henry, furious, immediately invested two more German bishops with Italian sees and added for good measure a further Archbishop of Milan, although his former nominee was still alive. Refusing a papal summons to Rome to answer for his actions, he then called a general council of all the German bishops and, at Worms on January 24, 1076, denounced Gregory as “a false monk” and formally deposed him from the Papacy. It was a decision he was bitterly to regret. His father, Henry III, had deposed three popes, and he had assumed that he could do the same. What he had failed to understand was that the Papacy was no longer what it had been half a century before—and that those three unfortunate pontiffs were not a bit like Hildebrand.

  Henry had long been eager to go to Rome for his imperial coronation, but his quarrel with successive popes over investitures had prevented him. After the Council of Worms, however, he saw that his journey could no longer be postponed. Gregory had not reacted to his deposition with the savagery that was already bring rumored in Germany, but he was clearly not going to accept it lying down. If, therefore, the Council was not to be held up to ridicule, he would have to be removed by force and a successor called. The need was for a swift, smooth military operation; and, while it was being prepared, steps must be taken to deprive the pope of local Italian support as far as possible. North of Rome this would be difficult: the formidable Countess Matilda of Tuscany was a devout champion of the Church, her loyalty to Gregory unswerving. To the south, however, the prospects looked more hopeful. The Norman Duke of Apulia in particular seemed to have no great love for the pope. He might well overlook his feudal responsibilities if it were made worth his while to do so. Once he and his men could be persuaded to participate in a combined attack on Rome, Gregory would not stand a chance.

  Henry’s ambassadors reached Robert Guiscard, probably at Melfi, early in 1076 and formally offered him an imperial investiture of all his possessions; they may even have mentioned the possibility of a royal crown. But Robert was unimpressed. He already enjoyed complete freedom of action throughout his domains, and he saw no reason to jeopardize this by giving Henry further excuses to meddle in South Italian affairs. His reply was firm, if a trifle sanctimonious. God had given him his conquests; they had been won from the Greeks and Saracens, and dearly paid for in Norman blood. For what little land he possessed that had ever been imperial, he would consent to be the emperor’s vassal, “saving always his duty to the Church”—a proviso which, as he well knew, would make his allegiance valueless from Henry’s point of view. The rest he would continue to hold, as he had always held it, from the Almighty.

  Meanwhile, Pope Gregory had acted with his usual vigor. At his Lenten Synod of 1076 he had deposed all the rebellious bishops and thundered out a sentence of excommunication on King Henry himself. The effect in Germany was cataclysmic. No reigning monarch had incurred the ban of the Church since Theodosius the Great seven centuries before. It had brought that emperor to his knees, and it now threatened to do the same for Henry. The purely spiritual aspect did not worry him unduly—that problem could always be solved by a well-timed repentance—but the political consequences were serious indeed. In theory the ban not only absolved all the king’s subjects from their allegiance to him; it also rendered them in their turn excommunicate if they had any dealings with him or showed him obedience. Were it to be strictly observed, therefore, Henry’s government would disintegrate and he would be unable to continue any longer on the throne. Suddenly he found himself isolated.

  The pope’s grim satisfaction can well be imagined as he watched his adversary struggling to retain the loyalties of those around him; his ban had been more successful than even he had dared to hope. The German princes, meeting at Tribur, had agreed to give their king a year and a day from the date of his sentence in which to obtain papal absolution. They had already called a Diet at Augsburg for February 1077. If by the twenty-second of that month the ban had not been lifted, they would formally renounce their allegiance and elect another king in his place. Henry could only bow to their decision. From his point of view it might have been worse. It called, quite simply, for his own abject self-abasement before the pope. If this was to be the price of his kingdom, he was ready to pay it. Fortunately, there was still one Alpine pass—the Mont-Cenis—unblocked by snow. Crossing it in the depth of winter with his wife and baby son, he hastened through Lombardy and at last found the pope at the fortress of Canossa, where he was staying as a guest of his friend the Countess Matilda pending the arrival of an escort to conduct him to Augsburg. For three days Gregory kept him waiting for an audience; finally he saw that he had no alternative but to relent, and to give Henry the absolution he needed.

  The story of Canossa, usually enlivened by an oleaginous illustration of the king, barefoot and in sackcloth, shivering in the snow before the locked doors of a brilliantly lit castle, has always been a favorite with the writers of children’s storybooks, who present it as an improving object lesson in the vanity of temporal ambition. In fact, Gregory’s triumph was empty and ephemeral, and Henry knew it. His humiliation had nothing to do with repentance. It was a cold-blooded political maneuver which was necessary to secure his crown, and he had no intention of keeping his promises once they had served their purpose. The pope, too, can have had few delusions about the king’s sincerity. Had his Christian conscience permitted him to withhold absolution, he would doubtless have been only too happy to do so. He had won an unquestionable moral victory; but what was the use of a victory after which the vanquished returned unabashed to his kingdom while the victor remained cooped up in a Tuscan castle, blocked from Germany by the savage hostility of the Lombard cities and powerless to intervene?

  Of course, Henry showed no sign of mending his ways. He antagonized the German princes to the point where they did indeed elect a rival king, Rudolf, Duke of Swabia. Gregory did his best to mediate between them but eventually, in 1080, excommunicated Henry once again, sentenced him to deposition, and declared Rudolf king. Alas, he had backed the wrong horse. That same year Rudolf was killed in battle; Henry, on the other hand, had never been stronger. For the second time he
declared Gregory deposed; he then called a synod of German and Italian bishops at Brixen—now Bressanone—in the Tyrol, which in June 1080 dutifully elected Guibert, Archbishop of Ravenna, as Pope Clement III.

  It was easy to elect an antipope but a good deal harder to install him. Henry made three attempts to take over Rome, but only on the third was he successful. Finally, early in 1084, a mixed party of Milanese and Saxons managed to scale the walls of the Leonine City; and within an hour or two Henry’s soldiers were fighting a furious battle in and around St. Peter’s. Pope Gregory, however, had been too quick for them. He had no intention of surrendering. Hurrying to the Castel Sant’Angelo, he barricaded himself in and watched, powerless, while on Palm Sunday Clement was enthroned in the Lateran and just a week later, on Easter Day, Henry was crowned emperor.

  Gregory was to be saved by the Normans. Four years before, Robert Guiscard had sworn fealty to him, binding himself to give the pope any assistance he might need; in any event, his own position would be seriously threatened if Henry, now crowned emperor and supported by an obedient Clement III, were allowed to have his own way in South Italy. And so it was that on May 24, 1084, he rode up the Via Latina with a force estimated at some 6,000 horse and 30,000 foot and, roughly on the site of the present Piazza di Porta Capena, pitched his camp beneath the walls of Rome.

  Henry had not waited for him. News of the size and strength of the Norman army had been enough to make up his mind. Summoning a council of the leading citizens of Rome, he explained to them that his presence was urgently required in Lombardy. He would be back as soon as circumstances permitted; meanwhile, he trusted them to fight valiantly against all attackers. Then, three days before the Duke of Apulia appeared at the gates of the city, he fled with his wife and the greater part of his army, the terrified antipope scurrying behind.