Читать книгу The Empire and the Papacy, 918-1273. Investiture Contest, Crusades & The Famous Conflicts онлайн

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Under the influence of the reformed clergy, study and learning again became possible to a large class. The monastic and cathedral schools beyond the Alps became the centres of ardent study of philosophy, theology, and science. In Italy grammarians expounded the classics, and civilians commented upon the Roman law. The career of Gerbert is but typical of that of a large number of others. The Lombard Lanfranc, and the Burgundian Anselm, took the new culture over the Alps to the Norman monastery of Le Bec, and prepared the way for the new birth of learning in the twelfth century. Nor did the monastic reformation stop with the Congregation of Cluny. ⁵² In Italy in particular, where a swarm of new orders arose, extreme asceticism and utter self-renunciation stood in strange contrast to the violence, greed, and profligacy that marked Italian life as a whole. ⁵³ Romuald of Ravenna, the spiritual director of Otto III., lived the life of a hermit, and gathered round himself great bands of solitaries from whom sprang the order of Camaldoli, so called from an inaccessible spot in the Apennines, near Arezzo, where one of Romuald’s troops of followers had settled. A monk of this order, Peter Damiani, soon took a very foremost part in the religious reformation of Italy, and first made the enthusiastic anchorites minister to the spread of the new hierarchical ideal. Not far from the hermits of Camaldoli, John Gualbert, a Tuscan lord, established the strict cœnobitic order of Vallombrosa. ⁵⁴ The same influence spread all over Europe, and penetrated into even the most conservative cloisters of the followers of St. Benedict. The faith, zeal, and enthusiasm of the champions of the new order carried everything before it. Under Henry III. the reformers had won over the Emperor himself to their cause. ⁵⁵ The strong arm of the king had purified the Papacy and handed over its direction to men of the new school. But though willing to use the help of the secular arm to carry out their forward policy, the Cluniac reformers never swerved from their conviction that lay interference with the spiritual power lay at the very root of the worst disorders of the time. Even when accepting the favours of the great Emperor, they never lost sight of the need of emphasising the independence of the spirituality. However needful was the imperial sword to free the Papacy from the Tusculan tradition, and to put down the lazy monk and the feudalist bishop, they saw clearly that it stood in the way of the full realisation of their dreams. The German reforming Popes.