2. The Establishment of the Medieval Order.
The
real recovery of Europe from what can justifiably be
regarded as “Dark Ages” dates from the latter half of
the tenth century, when the Germans halted the
Magyars, nomadic hordes from
Asia, who had carried
their raids across the length and breadth of the
conti-
nent. Henceforward the west of
Europe was guarded
against the worst of its dangers by the
consolidation
of Germany and the establishment of the Magyars in
a
sedentary Christian state in Hungary, as well as the
development also of
Christian monarchies in Poland,
Bohemia, and Scandinavia. The establishment
of a
“Roman Empire” under Otto I in 962 opened at
last
a period of comparative stability, and there emerged
something
like the shape of the Western Europe we
know—a Europe which by
1053 had lost a great deal
of its connection with the Orthodox Church.
Trade and
industrial production increased again, and the Medi-
terranean, which in 972
“like the Baltic, was a hostile
sea,” saw important
developments which brought
Venice, Genoa, and Pisa to the front. The period
be-
tween 1050 and 1150 was to prove one of
the most
creative epochs in European history, and its great
achievement was that it established the real bases of
the medieval system.
In this period intellectual influ-
ences from
the more highly developed Islamic world
provided an important stimulus; but
it was only one
factor in the case. The intellectual leadership had
passed to the northern part of France and to Lorraine.
The promotion of the
study of logic (which goes back
to Gerbert in Rheims, A.D. 972, and was
based at first
on the writings of Boethius) became “the most
impor-
tant feature in the advancement of
learning in northern
Europe.”
But from the time of Otto I the Church had become
still more the prey of the
laity and a low-water mark
was reached when the Emperor Henry III (1039-56)
deposed three
popes and installed his own nominees.
From the Church's point of view, the
main problem
to be solved was the question of the independence of
the
spiritual authority; for the existing system led to
many abuses and
obstructed any attempt to bring the
clergy under discipline. A monastic
reform which
started in Cluny in 910, though it did not attack this
problem, established centers of piety over a very wide
area. Another such
movement in Lorraine can be seen
from 1046 making a specific call for the
absolute inde-
pendence of the spiritual
authority. The demand for
change arose in the provinces therefore, and it
was
a band of people connected with the Lorraine move-
ment who brought this latter program to Rome and
became influential in that city. They supported their
cause by a study of
the canon law, and if on the one
hand they made use of what we know as the
“False
Decretals” (produced two centuries earlier in
the
province of Tours) they also found more imposing
evidence,
including documents from the time of
Gregory the Great.
Perhaps their labors would have been ineffectual if
the Emperor Henry III,
though nominating popes, had
not appointed some worthy people to the Holy
See.
Their efforts at a time when the next emperor, Henry
IV, was a
minor, led in 1059 to a crucial decree which
excluded the
laity—whether the emperor or the Roman
aristocracy—from any part in the appointment of a
pope and
prescribed an independent election by cardi-
nals. A great development of ecclesiastical litigation
and an
increasing number of appeals to Rome may
have represented another way in
which action from
the provinces helped to elevate and transform the
papal office. The Lorraine reformers had been equally
anxious—indeed, it would seem to have been their
initial
anxiety—that local ecclesiastical authorities
should be
liberated from subservience to a powerful
laity. During the pontificate of
Gregory VII (1073-85)
the zeal of the pope for the reform of the Church
at
large, and particularly the Church in Germany—the
determination to get rid of such evils as simony—led
to that
conflict between papacy and empire which was
to form one of the great
themes of medieval history.
In any case, the essential system of the Middle
Ages
now took shape.
At first it was a controversy as to whether the mon-
arch should choose his own bishops and invest them
with the
insignia of the spiritual office. And here the
Church was faced with
problems that arose out of the
character of its new entanglement with the
world.
Bishops in Germany had vast temporal possessions and
might be
the heads of considerable principalities. An
emperor could not be
indifferent to the appointment
of such formidable dignitaries. What was called the
“Investiture Contest” was in fact open to compromise,
and one pope, in what seems like a fit of absent-
mindedness, accepted the interesting idea of
turning
the bishops into purely spiritual officers—a thing
which
had no chance of being tolerated by the German epis-
copate. The pope possessed weapons—he could
use
discontented magnates, or incite foreign powers, or
foment public
opinion, against an emperor. Before
long, pope and emperor were presuming
to depose one
another.
There can be little doubt that the assertion of the
independence of the
spiritual authority, and the result-
ing
conflict between “spiritual” and
“temporal,” were
amongst the factors that were to
give to Western his-
tory its remarkable dynamic
quality. The controversy
directed the thought of men to the question of
the
origin and basis of government, whether secular or
ecclesiastical,
and produced a literature that has little
parallel in the history of
Byzantine Christianity. At
times it led to a confrontation between the
theory or
the assumptions of the canon law and the principles
that lay
behind Roman Law. The fervor for political
theory in Europe in the
centuries from the time of
the Renaissance may owe something (just as
medieval
thought itself owed something) to the influence of the
ancient world. But many of the modern ideas rise more
directly out of the
politico-ecclesiastical controversies
of the Middle Ages. This point became
a great feature
in the historical thinking of Lord Acton, who summed
up the matter by saying that Saint Thomas Aquinas
had been “the
first Whig.”
In the age of the Reformation many of the medieval
patterns of thought are
still visible, whether in the
theory of the divine right of kings, or the
notion of
a contract between king and people, or the idea of
constitutional limitations on monarchical authority, or
the controversy
over tyrannicide. At a later period still,
it is possible to trace the
actual secularization of what
had once been politico-religious ideas.
Without what
under various forms was an epic conflict between the
secular authority and the spiritual, a Western Europe
under a predominant
religious faith might have
hardened into something like the Byzantine or
oriental
systems.
Gregory VII and the restored papacy stood for the
idea of a Christian
Commonwealth—not a “state” but
a
“religious society” existing for the glory and the
service of God. The whole was to be managed by a
secular arm and a
spiritual arm, and these were sup-
posed to
cooperate with one another. Often the two
did cooperate, the Church not
only offering its prayers
and its spiritual services—not merely
giving a vague
support to the whole order of things—but allying with
the monarch because, for example, it had an interest
in
preserving the larger territorial unit from disruption.
The ecclesiastics
might introduce the monarchy to
ideas of law, notions of property, the use
of written
deeds—techniques of an older civilization which
they
were in a position to remember, and perhaps to need
for
themselves. Monarchs in turn defended and
endowed the Church; and at a
desperate moment an
emperor had helped to produce that reformed papacy
which was to harass his successors. When the two
clashed, it was almost in
the logic of the medieval
system that the conflict should be long and that
the
spiritual arm should ultimately prevail, but only to its
own
detriment. Already, for Gregory VII, the pope
represented Christ, the real
governor of the world, and
it was for him to guide the destiny of the
“religious
society,” directing and coordinating its
larger purposes.
The most signal illustration of this in the latter
half
of the eleventh century was the way in which Gregory
VII and his
successor took up the idea of a Crusade
assuming that Rome should have the
role of inspirer
and director. At a time when monarchs were in revolt
against the Holy See, and Germany in particular with-
held its support, it was the pope, not the emperor, who
launched
the First Crusade (1096-99) and showed
himself the leader of Western
Europe.
