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Rh surrendering to the king the temporalities which he held of him, then he placed in the hands of the bishops the insignia of his episcopal dignity. He then signed an act of renunciation drawn up on the model of that of his predecessor Ebbo, who had been deposed under Louis the Pious. In it he confessed himself unworthy of the episcopal office and renounced it for ever. Finally he absolved his clergy and people from the oaths of fidelity which they had sworn to him. Three days later (21 June) Gerbert was elected in his stead.

All seemed ended, and the future of the Capetian dynasty definitely secured. But they had reckoned without the Papacy. Not only, in defiance of the Canons, the Sovereign Pontiff had not been consulted, but his intervention had been repudiated in terms of unheard-of violence and temerity. Arnulf, the Bishop of Orleans, constituting himself, in virtue of his office of "promotor" of the council, the mouthpiece of the assembly, in a long speech in which he had lashed the unworthy popes of his day, had exclaimed: "What sights have we not beheld in our days! We have seen John (XII) surnamed Octavian, sunk in a slough of debauchery, conspiring against Otto whom he himself had made emperor. He was driven out and replaced by Leo (VIII) the Neophyte, but when the Emperor had quitted Rome, Octavian re-entered it, drove out Leo and cut off the nose of John the Deacon and his tongue, and the fingers of his right hand. He murdered many of the chief persons of Rome, and died soon after. The Romans chose as his successor the deacon Benedict (V) surnamed the Grammarian. He in his turn was attacked by Leo the Neophyte supported by the Emperor, was besieged, made prisoner, deposed and sent into exile to Germany. The Emperor Otto I was succeeded by Otto II, who surpasses all the princes of his time in arms, in counsel and in learning. In Rome Boniface (VII) succeeds, a fearful monster, of super-human malignity, red with the blood of his predecessor. Put to flight and condemned by a great council, he re-appears in Rome after the death of Otto II, and in spite of the oaths that he has sworn drives from the citadel of Rome (the Castle of Sant' Angelo) the illustrious Pope Peter, formerly Bishop of Pavia, deposes him, and causes him to perish amid the horrors of a dungeon. Is it to such monsters, swollen with ignominy and empty of knowledge, divine or human, that the innumerable priests of God (the bishops) dispersed about the universe, distinguished for their learning and their virtues, are to be legally subject?" And he had concluded in favour of the superior weight of a judgment pronounced by these learned and venerable bishops over one which might be rendered by an ignorant pope "so vile that he would not be found worthy of any place among the rest of the clergy."

This was a declaration of war. The Papacy took up the challenge. John XV, supported by the imperial court, summoned the French bishops to Rome, and also the kings, Hugh and Robert. They retorted