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

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After the synod of Sutri, a whole series of German Popes was nominated by the Emperor, and received by the Church with hardly a murmur, though the young deacon Hildebrand, soon to become the soul of the new movement, attached himself to the deposed Gregory VI. and accompanied him on his exile. But to most of the reformers the rude justice of Sutri seemed a just if irregular solution of an intolerable situation. The puritan zeal of the German Popes seemed the best result of the alliance of the Emperor and the reforming party. The first two reigned too short a time to be able to effect much, leaving it to Leo IX., the third German Pope, to permanently identify the papal throne with the spirit of Cluny. Leo IX., 1048–1054.

On the death of Damasus, the Romans called upon Henry III., who was then at Worms, to give them another Pope. The Emperor chose for this post his cousin Bruno, the brother of Conrad of Carinthia, the sometime rival of Conrad the Salic, and the son of the elder Conrad, uncle of the first of the Salian emperors. Despite his high birth, Bruno had long turned from politics to the service of the Church, and had become the ardent disciple of the school of Cluny. As bishop of Toul, he had governed his diocese with admirable care and prudence, and his great influence had enabled him to confer many weighty services, both on Henry and his father in Lorraine. When offered the Papacy by his kinsman, Bruno accepted the post only on the condition that he should be canonically elected by the clergy and people of Rome. Early in 1049 he travelled over the Alps in the humble guise of a pilgrim. He visited Cluny on his way to receive spiritual encouragement from his old teachers for the great task that lay before him. He there added to his scanty following the young monk Hildebrand, whose return to the city in the new Pope’s train proclaimed that strict hierarchical ideas would now have the ascendency at the Curia. Joyfully accepted by the Romans, Bruno assumed the title of Leo IX. For the short five years of his pontificate, he threw himself with all his heart into a policy of reformation. In an Easter Synod in Rome (1049), stern decrees were fulminated against simony and clerical marriage. But the times were not yet ripe for radical cure, and Leo was compelled to depart somewhat from his original severity. He soon saw that the cause he had at heart would not be best furthered by his remaining at Rome, and the special characteristic of his pontificate was his constant journeying through all Italy, France, and Germany. During these travels Leo was indefatigable in holding synods, attending ecclesiastical ceremonies, the consecration of churches, the translation of the relics of martyrs. His ubiquitous energy made the chief countries in Europe realise that the Papacy was no mere abstraction, and largely furthered the centralisation of the whole Church system under the direction of the Pope. Wherever he went, decrees against simony and the marriage of priests were drawn up. In Germany, Henry III. gave him active support. In France he excited the jealousy of King Henry I. Invited to Reims by the archbishop for the consecration of a church, he summoned a French synod to that city. Alarmed at this exercise of jurisdiction within French dominions, Henry I. strove to prevent his bishops’ attendance by summoning them to follow him to the field. Only a few bishops ventured to disobey their king, but a swarm of abbots, penetrated by the ideals of Cluny, gave number and dignity to the Synod of Reims, and did not hesitate to join the Pope in excommunicating the absent bishops. The restless Leo sought to revive the feeble remnants of North African Christianity, and began the renewed troubles with the Eastern Church, which soon led to the final breach with the Patriarch Cærularius [see page 167]. The all-embracing activity of Leo led to his active interference in southern Italy, where the advent of a swarm of Norman adventurers had already changed the whole complexion of affairs.