POPE HILDEBRAND BESIEGED IN THE
CASTLE OF ST. ANGELO BY THE
EMPEROR HENRY IV.
(A.D. 1084.)
Hugo,
these words may never meet thine eyes:—
What then? My thoughts may reach thy heart not less
I watch thee kneeling under Cluny's vaults;
Then write; then pace once more my fortress prison,
St. Angelo, of old great Adrian's tomb,
Adrian, the sagest of Rome's emperors
The man who, dying, questioned of his soul
In song half sad, half gay. Those Pagans old
Had in them valorous stuff. Had they been Christians
Among them many had been of Christian mould
Manlier than some we boast. He guessed not, Hugo,
A spiritual kingdom clasping earth one day
Would find its centre here where sat so long
The Prince of this world crowned! The City's roar
From all its hills shakes ever these grey walls
Or crash more piercing as the roof-tree drops
Of palace, fane, or keep. For leagues around
Yon Infidel's watch-fires shoot their insolent glare;
But scantly dimmed by flying flakes of March
While houseless thousands crouch 'neath arches low
Dead Diocletian's Baths or the Coliseum:
God shield those helpless heads! This two-years siege
Draws to its close.
Think'st thou I faint among these woes, my friend?
I tell thee, nay! A peasant's son am I,
A nursling of snow-blasts on Tuscan hills
Mocker since youth of winter bears and wolves.
The wound's elsewhere:—
Constantine's City, mother-city first
Which raised salvation's sign o'er tower and dome,
Gibbers schismatic drivel. Half the West
Faithful to Faith is faithless to her Lord,
And sells His Heritage for a mess of potage.
O'er fields Christ trod the Impostor's crescent waves:
Thence on to Nilus old. Ten years ago
Thus to yon Emperor wrote I—‘Sin of thine
Holds the wide East grovelling in dust this hour:
The Emperor should have led God's armies there!
The Emperor's naught. I, priest of God, will lead them.
They wait the crosiered hand.’
Hugo, you smile:
What smile like yours for mixed reproach and sweetness?
Storming at priests corrupt I saw it not;
But lavishly if I spake of Kings deposed
'Twas ever near, above or 'neath the surface.
Plainly you warned me once: ‘You'll fail in much,
Succeed in more. You'll win the Church's Freedom:
There lies your limit. Kings are lion-cubs:
God sees them ramp and roar, and bears with them:
Fret not thyself!’
Hugo, God bears with them
That they may weep their sins not triumph in sin.
God's Church reveres true Emperors, true Kings;
They hold from God: the Peoples must obey:
But Kings are sworn to rule with truth and right:
The King forsworn his people may depose him:—
Two claimants these: both need an arbitrator
And, free in choice, have chosen as such the Pope.
Are Kings thus injured? Kings will cry one day
‘That arbitrator's hand raised but a sceptre;
The popular hand an axe.’
Kings claim their rights: I claim His rights for God:
All know His Church's freedom is God's right:
That Popes are bound to guard it.
Hugo, I grant
This royal claim hath pretext. We are rich:
Thence Kings are jealous; Kings are right thus far;
Wealth wars as oft on freedom as on virtue;
It wars against the Church's. That is ill.
What then? We cannot choose the times we live in.
The people will not see God's Church in rags;
The barons will not venerate whom they fear not;
These things will change. The Kings may win that battle:
The worse for them: the Church will then be free,
Both poor and free. Meantime my course is plain;
To fight God's battle of the day; then pass.
Hugo, a saint contemplative art thou:
I am a sinner militant on earth:
One time you warned me thus: ‘Though zeal be good
The censor's fire may fall among the brambles,
Leap thence on cedared crests of Lebanon,
Consume their topmost branch.’ I liked that saying;
I never loved the men most like myself;
Contemplatives I loved: minds such as theirs
Are more than action: barks of God are they
Thought-laden all too deep for rapid keels.
Such Intellect I lack:—it ne'er was mine
With Athanasian insight to detect
The slenderest rift in doctrine's mail: not mine
Augustine-like, deep brooding, to subdue
The old pagan wisdom to the Church's service,
Or with Gregorian chaunt, Ambrosian rite
To charm Christ's flock a-field—
I am an arrow from the bow of God
Sped at a mountain beast.
Those vassal priests
Call me a dreamer. Hugo, you are none,
Have seen no visions. I can guess the cause:
Your whole life long is intellectual vision,
The seeing of the life of spiritual things;
We, men of action, when beside our hand
There lies no act, see visions. Once I saw them;
Not since Life's battle closed around my steps.
At Cluny was my first. You knew it not:
Matins were sung: in chapter sat the monks
You at their head. Your voice rang out denouncing
Monastic sloth. I marked beside you close
A vacant stall. Again I looked: and lo
Within that stall with sorrowing face He sate
Who wore the thorny crown: that hour He wore it,
And on a parchment wrote with hand that bled:
The words He wrote you spake.
Another crash!
Once more far roofs fall in, and flames rush up!
Those archers know my casement. Fools, to know not
Their shafts but glance from wall to roof! My foot
Still snaps them as I pace. My friend, these things
Are of the moment, not eternity:
Such merit not long thought.
What mean yon fires?
This and but this. The men who love not Christ
Love not His Church; and, loving not, abhor her.
Christ only truly sees His Church's face:
At times she wears a sable veil: then cries
The world: ‘A widow is she, not the Bride!’
At times she wears a denser veil gold-woven;
Then cries the fool: ‘The world hath wedded her!’
So prate the market babes!
An Emperor that!
An Emperor! Call ye that an Emperor? She,
God's Church, made first the Christian Emperor.
The thought was great: the hope but half fulfilled.
How palpable the snare that marred that greatness!
The Emperor needed not to be a King;
Save for high cause should ne'er have been a King;
His claims were Virtue, Wisdom, Strength: his crown
The badge of Europe's soldier magistracy:
His might was spiritual half; his sword but vowed
Sin to chastise. The Church that—plagued by Rome
For centuries—honoured Rome, her name, her law,
That used her tongue in offices divine,
She crowned her Emperor with his Roman title:
She clothed him with dalmatic and with stole
A canon of St. Peter's and St. Paul's,
His name she honoured in the Mass itself!
What more could she have done for him? This boy,
What is he but a heathen king o'er-grown
Who strives to build again the old Asian empire?
I stand in this tomb-tower begirt with fires,
Protector of the Peoples and the Kings
Against his petulance—ay, but more, far more,
Avenger of God's Kingdom. In thy grave
Turn round, old Leo, of that name the Third,
Whose hands high-lifted crowned thy Charlemagne;
Roll 'neath those shaggy brows thine eyes o'er earth,
And say if on it stand a prince this hour
In whom thine eyes had seen an Emperor!
Where hid they when for forty years at Rome
Bandits usurping Peter's Chair—
Canossa!
The world will have the telling of that tale
At last will yield it credence. To Canossa
I bade not yonder boy; he came unsummoned:
If there the frost wind bit him 'twas his choice;
I bade him to depart. A year before
I summoned him to Rome to answer charges;
Reply he made not but convoked at Worms
Gathering of bishops few and false; through these
Deposed Christ's Vicar. I deposed the traitor:
The German Kings my sentence ratified
Unless within a year he purged his crime
By frank submission made. That year nigh ebbed
He rushed across the Alps; knelt at my gates;
I knew him false; I saw his aim: 'twas this,
My pardon won, the German league dissolved,
To break his pledge and mock his feigned submission.
This knowing I refused to see his face.
Three days he beat my gates in sackcloth clad:
The snow fell fast. At length through ceaseless prayer,
Matilda's, ay, and, Hugo, thine, whose hands
Had held the infant Emperor o'er his font,
Against my word reiterate, prescient bodings,
I bade him enter. At my feet he wept;
Tendered submission; pledged eternal faith.
Save for that fraud the lights of Candlemas
Had seen his crown in the dust!
He broke his vow:
That morn which saw him to the Church restored
He knelt within Canossa's castle chapel:
I sang the Mass. In reverence low he bowed;
I proffered him the Blessed Sacrament
But added thus, ‘In pledge of faithful heart.’
Aghast he rose, and, pretext urged, forth fled.
I fixed on him mine eye but spake no word.
Ere passed six days that Emperor with a troop
Waylaid my person. To the banks of Po
He lured me on pretence of conference new:
Hard riding saved my life.
In this I erred:
Three years I hurled not forth my final sentence:
Three years a crowned transgressor shamed the world;
Thereof there came much bloodshed. What if I
For that cause fail to tread the Promised Land?
God's will be done! Feet worthier far shall tread it:
I see it—from this height!
'Tis strange, this stillness!
The night is well-nigh spent: the fires burn low:
'Tis stranger yet, that stillness in my breast!
Long years seem nought—I see my childhood's home,
Saint Mary's Convent on Mount Aventine
That overlooks half Rome. Again I note
That white-haired monk draw nigh me; hear him speak;
‘Boy, where thou gazest gazed in years gone by
Rome's oldest Augur, and King Romulus.
Ravens eleven in slow, successive flight
Sailed from the East. That Augur watched them long:
Then spake: “Yon ravens, King, are centuries;
Thy realm will last for centuries ten and one,
Then crumbling, leave its cycle incomplete
Since all is incomplete which is not God.”’
So spake that monk white-haired. I answered thus:
‘Ten centuries! thousand centuries fled, God's Church
Will yet be in her prime!’
My youth gone by,
A man way-worn again I stood in Rome;
Again I trod those ivy-mantled halls
Once trod by Sabine Numa, Cincinnatus,
Camillus sage and just. I trod them oft:
A breath passed o'er them from the patriarch days
And made me, for brief space, a ruin-lover.
The Basilics three taught me a nobler lore—
The Lateran, the Vatican, St. Paul's:
These said, ‘In ruins have not joy, for God
Is of the living, God, and not the dead.’
The Imperial ruins never touched my heart;
The Palatine sighed for pomps and pleasures gone:
The Coliseum's crime seemed unatoned:
History stood naked there and full of shames:
The sins of princes living or late dead
Interpreted the horror of the past:
The present prophesied a fouler future:
That Dead Sea of the ages dead which covers
Those cities judged, the empires of old time,
By strange upheavings notified, methought,
Volcanic throes beneath. Daily I learned:
I felt that all the forces deemed extinct
Still lived in Rome, and strove in her. A whisper
Ascended ever from the Catacombs;
‘It was God's future made that Roman past:’
A whisper found me from the Capitol,
‘King Romulus feared to read that Sibyl's tomes;
The lost books shall be found.’ Lastly, from heaven
A whisper fell; ‘Not vain the poor man's prayer!
“Thy kingdom come” means this—the Church's triumph!’
I willed not to be Pope. Four Popes in turn
This hand pushed front-ward when the popular voice
Called me to Peter's Chair. I drave these four
Successively on great attempts. At last
God wrought His Will.
That hour which made me Pope
Temptation came to me till then unknown,
A thought pride-born, ‘Build thou a Church to Him
To whom the Saviour said, “Thou art the Rock,”
A Church three times transcending Constantine's!’
Such act had warred against my true vocation
And left my life a mockery. I was saved.
The consecration past, all Rome rejoiced:
The Coronation feast begun, a missive
Was laid beside me by a hand unseen.
Its words still haunt me, ‘Keep thine earlier vow:
Make it thy breast-plate and thy diadem.
Dream not that rearing Solomonian fanes
Shall quit thy debt. Austerer tasks are thine.
Lift thou God's besom in a stalwart hand
And cleanse God's threshing-floor! Abase the proud:
Be terrible to heresy and schism,
More terrible to tyranny and greed:
Trample the robber-brood with feet blood-red
As His that treads His wine-press. Save God's Church
Like Leo hurling back the Huns from Rome:
So shalt thou live the lion of God's Tribe;
So, life surceased, inherit on God's hills,
Thine eyes fast fixed upon the Eternal Face,
By Eden springs thine everlasting lair.’
Hugo, that hour it was my life began!
That missive read, mine earlier aspirations
Changed to resolves. They warred against three sins:
The first was ‘Simony’—that leprous plague
Which downward drags the Church's flesh, and leaves
Her bones all glaring. Bishoprics themselves
In public mart were sold like sheep or swine;
The Spirit's gifts—the Spirit Himself, Who still
Lives in His gifts. Men called it ‘Time's abuse:’
To such I answered, ‘Better sin the sin
Than, tempted not, thus falteringly reprove it.’
The second of those sins, ‘Investitures!’
This Emperor's sire deposed three Popes, yet deemed
He reigned Protector of the Papal Chair.
What makes bad bishops but elections false?
A prince, a layman, puts me forth his hand,
And on the finger of the purchasing priest,
Likeliest some comrade of his losel hours,
Descends a ring! That priest stands up a bishop!
O how unlike such prince to Charlemagne,
So reverent to God's Church, or England's Alfred;
All know his saying: ‘Kings are kings elsewhere;
Kings in God's Church are simple citizens:’
Edward the Confessor made like confession.
The strife was long! How many bishops holp me!
In Germany but five; in Lombardy
Seven and no more!
Scandal the third—the last—
Cleric concubinage ill named a marriage:
The canons old and use of purest times
Forbade the bond. A Sacrament is marriage,
The image of Christ's bridal with His Church.
God's Church hath ever honoured holy marriage,
Banned all beside. There's nought so like that Church
As hearth of peasant pure with children girt:
Ay, but a celibate clergy is its fence!
The unfaithful weds the mart, the farm, the shop:
The faithful priest is wedded to his charge;
I have heard such clerics cry, ‘We are not angels!’
I answered, ‘No, nor men, if, bound by vows,
Ye lack the strength to keep them.’
Work and wait!
The regulars walked as men by hemlock drugged
But late, as now the seculars. Hope nigh dead
A beam went through the mist. 'Twas Hanno's work:
A sudden sickness seized him at Cologne,
His pastoral charge. Within St. Martin's Church
The monks sang matins. From his bed he crawled:
Knelt at the casement, listened, made resolve;
Restored, within a week he sped true monks
To those fair convents twain, Siegberg and Saalfield:
Reform descended on them hundred-handed
And each hand sceptred! Fast the example spread;
New convents rose; the sterner was the rule
The readier loyal hearts to bow before it.
‘Touch thou thy mountain-tops, and they shall smoke.’
The hand of God had touched the heights. Ere long
The lowlands caught the flame.
Again I see them!
O'er northern Germany the infection raced;
O'er southern next, Suabia, Hungarian wilds,
All hailed that great Reform. The Forest Black
Clasped to its inmost heart the noble guest.
Hirschau was next to claim it; three years sped,
A score of monasteries owned her sway;
Schaffaussen rose, St. Blaise; to these there flocked
Princes and nobles worn in this world's strife
True priests, and youthful knights. Whole villages
Neighbouring those convents gloried in their rule,
Echoed their hymns. In Vallombrosa's woods
Against the storm-laid trunk the kneeling maid
Pressed her pure bosom; children joined her prayer:
Praying, the mason lifted course on course
Unpaid, to breast the storm of centuries
And flash the dawn unrisen o'er golden plains.
I saw those sights: I heard those psalms through crash
Of falling roofs this night. 'Twas these that kept
A heart sore tried unflawed.
This is my mission,
To stand till death Reformer of the Church:
Let none who love her vindicate abuse.
Reform she needs, not once, but age by age
For ever dying like our Alpine forests,
Like them for aye renewed. She dies to live;
Dies locally to sow by tempest winged
The strong seed of her omnipresent life.
Who are her foes? Who mine? Foul, merchant cities,
Despotic monarchs, and false priests world-tamed:
Who are her friends? The poor in every land,
Devout men; youths high-hearted; feudal lords
Honest and brave; the sons of Benedict;—
Monte Cassino! Ay, 'tis she that aids me!
She breeds me bishops, canonists, missionaries:
This arm grows old: concede Thy Church, great God,
A century of Benedictine Popes—
These shall avenge Thy cause!
I read this night
By lurid lights Saint Chrysostom, thy words:
‘Not Heaven itself is stable as God's Church:
She was not made for Heaven but Heaven for her:
God said: “The heavens and earth shall pass away;”
But of the Church He said, “Upon this Rock
I build My Church. The gates of Hell shall never
Prevail against it.” Think ye, sons of men,
Its walls are walls of stone? I tell you nay:
Its walls are multitudinous walls of Souls;
Its pillars Spirit-Pillars based on Faith.’
I read: a Hand from Heaven was on my head:
It stayed me where I stood.
What man is he
That wars against us? He too has a son:
That son will strike that sire as he strikes me.
The end draws near. Henry, I think, will fail:
Guiscard, who wills me well, may prove worse foe:
A flame is he ravening on all he meets,
And liefer far to burn his best friend's house
Than let his least of rivals scape alive.
Long since there are that scatter lies against me;
On me they charge these woes—
I will not draw my sword against my people:
If Rome, this present trouble past, revolts,
With staff and book a pilgrim I depart
Exile on alien shores.
I think that I shall die beside the sea:
I ever loved it: on its beaming marge
I found no littleness. What brings this hour
That image of Salerno's coast before me?
I saw it first with him, its gentle Bishop:
The amenities of that benign sea-clime
About him clung methought. We paced that shore:
Interminably before us spread the deep,
All calm, all splendour, all beatitude.
Thereon—far off—his eyes were fixed: more near,
The unending breaker, high as castle wall,
O'er-arching, and down-toppling fell in thunder.
Armies confronting it had died the death.
I touched his arm, and said; ‘Look nearer, friend!’
He mused; I spake: ‘God wills the death of none:
God is all Love. Yet this is true not less,
Through all the infinitudes of God's measureless Being
Justice and Love are one. If men reject
That Love, that Justice needs must mount against them;
Fall—like yon breaker. 'Tis their will, not His.’
