Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 15.djvu/350

PAPACY. interest that must arise if clerical office were to be bought and sold for any valuable considera- tion whatever. (3) The prohibition of lay in- vestiture was to free the clergy from any re- lation toward the State which might interfere with the exclusive control of all clerical inter- ests by the supreme ecclesiastical autliority, the Papacy itself. The efl'ect of the first was to separate the priest from the family; of the second, to separate him from the temporal inter- ests of the society about him; of the tnird, to cut him off from any secular service to the State. It was 'freedom" in the sense of a separation that must tend to place a gulf between the clergy and all purely secular interests. On the other hand, it is doubtful if any other process could have stayed the progress of a fatal secularization of the Church that threatened to absorb it en- tirely in the life of the society of the full feudal period.

As to the question of simony, all thinking men were agreed that it was an evil. The celi- bacy of the clergy in the major orders was al- ready well established in the habits of most of the European populations, and the sympathy of the masses was decidedly setting toward its extension to the minor orders as well. It was, therefore, a well-considered policy that led Hil- debrand from the moment of his accession as Pope Gregory VII. (107.3-8.5) to throw his whole energy- into the fight against the lay investiture. The moment cliosen for the conflict with Ger- many was most favorable. Henrj- III., the vigorous champion of Imperial right and duty as the guardian of Papal honor, died in 1056, leaving a son. Henry IV.. si.x years old. who was accepted as King under the regency of his pious mother. Agnes of Poitou. In 1073 this son was a clever, headstrong youth of twenty- three, already at odds with many parts of his kingdom, but prepared to press to the utmost all his royal rights. The first proclamation against lay investiture was in 1075. and, though couclied in general terms, was plainly aimed at Germany. To give up the right of investiture would have meant for the German King the loss of the most important means of political control, and Henry threw himself upon the loyalty of his clerical subjects. A German synod at Worms (10701 denounced the Pope in unmeasured terms, and threatened him vjth deposition. He replied by excommimicating the King, whose political ene- mies utilized the excommunication as a weapon to keep him in a seniiimprisonment until Greg- ory could carry out his purpose of settling the whole German question in person at a German assembly. Gregory was on his way to this meet- ing at Augsbtirg when Henry IV.. leaving Ger- many, hurried over the Alps, met the Pope in the famous interview at Canossa, and won from him the absolution which reinstated him in the al- legiance of his subjects, and thus averted the grave political danger of a settlement of Ger- man affairs by a Papal council on German soil. Through the long reign of Henry IV.. under Gregory and his successors, the fight went on. The Pope repeatedly excommunicated the King and sanctioned the election of anti-kings. The King replied in virtue of his Imperial rights, actual or to be. by deposing' popes and causing the election of a series of anti-popes. The im- mediate question of the investiture was lost sight of in the larger issue — whether Church or State was to control. Henry V. (1106-25) had joined th(! Papacy against his father, but was no sooner King himself than he was forced into an oppo.-^i- lion as much more dangerous as he was more powerful. In 1111 he was able to force the Papacy into a momentary agreement that the clergy of the Kmpire should be exempt from the Imperial investiture on condition that they should surrender all their temporal propertv. Tliis agreement was promptly rejected by those most interested on both sides,'and led to the final settlement in the Concordat of Worms (1122), whereby the dual nature of the clerical office as at once temporal and spiritual was recognized. The investiture with the spiritualities (ring and staff) was left to the Papacy, while that with the temporalities (sceptre) was held by the Em- peror. Similar but less violent confiicts in France and England led to a similar result. A new phase of the conHict between Church and State begins with the accession of the em- perors of the House of Hohenstaufen. The Hohenstaufen (Ghibelline) policy was to extend the German kingdom, under the disguise of the Empire, over Italy. In this ambition it was checked at every turn by the rising power of the Italian city republics. Frederick Barbarossa (1152-90) sought to incor|jorate these communi- ties into- his administration by jilacing governors (podestji) over them and utilizing their growing wealth for his larger plans. Led by Milan, the Lombard communes steadily resisted. Milan, destroyed in 1162, was rebuilt by her neigli- bors, and at the head of Uie great Lombard League gave the Emperor such a defeat at Legnano (1170) that in the Peace of Constance (1183) he conceded practically all the claims of the cities to independence. Throughout this fight the communes were steadily supported by the Papacy. Their party (the Guelph) was also the Papal parl.v; and though outside the cities there were many territorial nobles and inside there was always a noble faction that looked toward the Emperor, the great mas.ses of the rising industrial population, organized in their craft and merdiant guilds, were sturdily Guelph and in evcrv crisis expected the support of the Pope. Il'enry VI., sou of Frederick I. (11!>0- 97), had elaborate plans for refeinlalizing Itiily and sinking the communes in greater territorial units. Through his marriage with the heiress of the Norman kingdom in the south and the birth of a son in 1104, he seemed to see the reali- Ziition of the Hohenstaufen policy. His death, the consequent confusion in Germany, and the accession of the great Pope Innocent 111. (IIOS- 1216) saved Italy for the time and gave to the Papal power one of its greatest moments of triumph.

Innocent III. realized more completely than any pope before or after him the Hildebrandine ideal. He was able to bring King .Tohn of Eng- land to surrender the overlnrdship of the land to him for his support against his nobles. He compelled Philip .ugustus of France to take back his rejected wife. In the struggle for the German crown he championed Otlio the Guelph against Philip of Hohenstaufen (11081208). but when Otlio as King (1208-14) pro-ed that no Emperor could be a Guelph. as no Pope could be a Ghibelline, Innocent turned against him at once. He gave his support to France against Germany and England in the battle of Bouvines ( 1214), by