One of the curious things about the Middle Ages is that they were original and creative without knowing it. All parties justified their policies by antiquarian and archaistic arguments. The Emperor appealed, in Germany, to the feudal principles of the time of Charlemagne; in Italy, to Roman law and the power of ancient Emperors. The Lombard cities went still further back, to the institutions of republican Rome. The papal party based its claims partly on the forged Donation of Constantine, partly on the relations of Saul and Samuel as told in the Old Testament. The scholastics appealed either to the Scriptures or at first to Plato and then to Aristotle; when they were original, they tried to conceal the fact. The Crusades were an endeavour to restore the state of affairs that had existed before the rise of Islam.
We must not be deceived by this literary archaism. Only in the case of the Emperor did it correspond with the facts. Feudalism was in decay, especially in Italy; the Roman Empire was a mere memory. Accordingly, the Emperor was defeated. The cities of North Italy, while, in their later development, they showed much similarity to the cities of ancient Greece, repeated the pattern, not from imitation, but from analogy of circumstances: that of small, rich, highly civilized republican commercial communities surrounded by monarchies at a lower level of culture. The scholastics, however they might revere
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Aristotle, showed more originality than any of the Arabs–more, indeed, than any one since Plotinus, or at any rate since Augustine. In politics as in thought, there was the same disguised originality.
CONFLICT OF EMPIRE AND PAPACY
From the time of Gregory VII to the middle of the thirteenth century, European history centres round the struggle for power between the Church and the lay monarchs–primarily the Emperor, but also, on occasion, the kings of France and England. Gregory’s pontificate had ended in apparent disaster, but his policies were resumed, though with more moderation, by Urban II
( 1088-1099), who repeated the decrees against lay investiture, and desired episcopal elections to be made freely by clergy and people. (The share of the people was, no doubt, to be purely formal.) In practice, however, he did not quarrel with lay appointments if they were good.
At first, Urban was safe only in Norman territory. But in 1093 Henry IV’s son Conrad rebelled against his father, and, in alliance with the Pope, conquered North Italy, where the Lombard League, an alliance of cities with Milan at its head, favoured the Pope. In 1094, Urban made a triumphal procession through North Italy and France. He triumphed over Philip, King of France, who desired a divorce, and was therefore excommunicated by the Pope, and then submitted. At the Council of Clermont, in 1095, Urban proclaimed the first Crusade, which produced a wave of religious enthusiasm leading to increase of papal power–also to atrocious pogroms of Jews. The last year of Urban’s life he spent in safety in Rome, where popes were seldom safe.
The next Pope, Paschal II, like Urban, came from Cluny. He continued the struggle on investitures, and was successful in France and England. But after the death of Henry IV in 1106, the next Emperor, Henry V, got the better of the Pope, who was an unworldly man and allowed his saintliness to outweigh his political sense. The Pope proposed that the Emperor should renounce investitures, but in return bishops and abbots should renounce temporal possessions. The Emperor professed to agree; but when the suggested compromise was
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made public, the ecclesiastics rebelled furiously against the Pope. The Emperor, who was in Rome, took the opportunity to seize the Pope, who yielded to threats, gave way on investitures, and crowned Henry V. Eleven years later, however, by the Concordat of Worms in 1122, Pope Calixtus II compelled Henry V to give way on investitures, and to surrender control over episcopal elections in Burgundy and Italy.
So far, the net result of the struggle was that the Pope, who had been subject to Henry III, had become the equal of the Emperor. At the same time, he had become more completely sovereign in the Church, which he governed by means of legates. This increase of papal power had diminished the relative importance of bishops. Papal elections were now free from lay control, and ecclesiastics generally were more virtuous than they had been before the reform movement.
RISE OF THE LOMBARD CITIES
The next stage was connected with the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa ( 1152-1190), an able and energetic man, who would have succeeded in any enterprise in which success was possible. He was a man of education, who read Latin with pleasure, though he spoke it with difficulty. His classical learning was considerable, and he was an admirer of Roman law. He thought of himself as the heir of the Roman emperors, and hoped to acquire their power. But as a German he was unpopular in Italy. The Lombard cities, while willing to acknowledge his formal overlordship, objected when he interfered in their affairs–except those which feared Milan, against which city some of them invoked his protection. The Patarine movement in Milan continued, and was associated with a more or less democratic tendency; most, but by no means all, of the North Italian cities sympathized with Milan, and made common cause against the Emperor.
Hadrian IV, a vigorous Englishman who had been a missionary in Norway, became Pope two years after the accession of Barbarossa, and was, at first, on good terms with him. They were reconciled by a common enmity. The city of Rome claimed independence from both
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alike, and, as a help in the struggle, had invited a saintly heretic, Arnold of Brescia. * His heresy was very grave: he maintained that “clerks who have estates, bishops who hold fiefs, monks who possess property, cannot be saved.” He held this view because he thought that the clergy ought to devote themselves entirely to spiritual matters. No one questioned his sincere austerity, although he was accounted wicked on account of his heresy. Saint Bernard, who vehemently opposed him, said, “He neither eats nor drinks, but only, like the Devil, hungers and thirsts for the blood of souls.” Hadrian’s predecessor in the papacy had written to Barbarossa to complain that Arnold supported the popular faction, which wished to elect one hundred senators and two consuls, and to have an Emperor of their own. Frederick, who was setting out for Italy, was naturally scandalized. The Roman demand for communal liberty, which was encouraged by Arnold, led to a riot in which a cardinal was killed. The newly-elected Pope Hadrian thereupon placed Rome under an interdict. It was Holy Week, and superstition got the better of the Romans; they submitted, and promised to banish Arnold. He hid, but was captured by the Emperor’s troops. He was burnt, and his ashes were thrown into the Tiber, for fear of their being preserved as holy relics. After a delay caused by Frederick’s unwillingness to hold the Pope’s bridle and stirrup while he dismounted, the Pope crowned the Emperor in 1155 amid the resistance of the populace, which was quelled with great slaughter.
The honest man being disposed of, the practical politicians were free to resume their quarrel.
The Pope, having made peace with the Normans, ventured in 1157 to break with the Emperor. For twenty years there was almost continuous war between the Emperor on the one side, and the Pope with the Lombard cities on the other. The Normans mostly supported the Pope. The bulk of the fighting against the Emperor was done by the Lombard League, which spoke of “liberty” and was inspired by intense popular feeling. The Emperor besieged various cities, and in 1162 even captured Milan, which he razed to the ground, compelling its citizens to live elsewhere. But five years later the League rebuilt Milan and the former inhabitants returned. In this same year, the
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* He was said to be a pupil of Abélard, but this is doubtful.
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Emperor, duly provided with an antipope, * marched on Rome with a great army. The Pope fled, and his cause seemed desperate, but pestilence destroyed Frederick’s army, and he returned to Germany a solitary fugitive. Although not only Sicily, but the Greek Emperor, now sided with the Lombard League, Barbarossa made another attempt, ending in his defeat at the battle of Legnano in 1176. After this he was compelled to make peace, leaving to the cities an the substance of liberty. In the conflict between Empire and papacy, however, the terms of peace gave neither party complete victory.
Barbarossa’s end was seemly. In 1189 he went on the third Crusade, and in the following year he died.
The rise of free cities is what proved of most ultimate importance in this long strife. The power of the Emperor was associated with the decaying feudal system; the power of the Pope, though still growing, was largely dependent upon the world’s need of him as an antagonist to the Emperor, and therefore decayed when the Empire ceased to be a menace; but the power of the cities was new, a result of economic progress, and a source of new political forms. Although this does not appear in the twelfth century, the Italian cities, before long, developed a non-clerical culture which reached the very highest levels in literature, in art, and in science. All this was rendered possible by their successful resistance to Barbarossa.
All the great cities of Northern Italy lived by trade, and in the twelfth century the more settled conditions made traders more
