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264
CHAPTER 9
Medieval Empires and Borderlands: The Latin West
was followed by a period of anarchy as Europe faced
further incursions of hostile invaders. During the
eleventh century, however, the Latin West recovered in dramatic fashion. By the end of the century
the Latin kingdoms were strong enough to engage
in a massive counterassault against Islam, in part in
defense of fellow Christians in Byzantium. These
campaigns against Islam, known as the Crusades,
produced a series of wars in the Middle East and
North Africa that continued throughout the Middle
Ages. But the ideals of the crusaders lasted well into
modern times, long after the active fighting ceased.
The transformations in this period raised this question: How did Latin Christianity help strengthen
the new kingdoms of the Latin West so that they
were eventually able to deal effectively with both
barbarian invaders and Muslim rivals?
THE BIRTH OF LATIN
CHRISTENDOM
• H o w did Latin Christendom—the new
kingdoms of western Europe—build on
Rome's legal and governmental legacies
and how did Christianity spread i n these
new kingdoms ?
By the time the Roman Empire collapsed in the
West during the fifth century, numerous Germanic
tribes had settled in the lands of the former
empire. These tribes became the nucleus for the
new Latin Christian kingdoms that emerged by
750 (see M a p 9.1).
Germanic Kingdoms on Roman
Foundations
The new Germanic kingdoms of Latin Christendom created a new kind of society. They borrowed from Roman law while establishing
government institutions, but they also relied on
their own traditional methods of rule. Three elements helped unify these kingdoms. First, in the
Germanic kingdoms personal loyalty rather than
legal rights unified society. Kinship obligations to
a particular clan of blood relatives rather than
citizenship, as in the Roman Empire, defined a
person's place in society and his or her relationship to rulers. Second, Christianity became the
dominant religion i n the kingdoms. The common
faith hnked rulers with their subjects. And
third, Latin served as the language of worship,
learning, and diplomacy in these kingdoms.
German kingdoms based on Roman foundations
appeared in Anglo-Saxon England, Prankish
Gaul, Visigothic Spain, and Lombard Italy.
ANGIO-SAXOM
ENGLAisSD Roman
civilization
collapsed more completely in Britain during the
fifth century than it did on the European continent, largely because of Britain's long distance
from Rome and the small number of Romans
who had settled there. About 400, the Roman
economic and administrative infrastructure of
Britain fell apart, and the last Roman legions left
the island to fight on the continent. Raiders from
the coast of the North Sea called Angles and
Saxons (historians referred to them as AngloSaxons) took advantage of Britain's weakened
defenses and launched invasions. They began to
probe the island's southeast coast, pillaging the
small villages they found there and estabhshing
permanent settlements of their own.
Because the small bands of Anglo-Saxon
settlers fought as often among themselves as they
did against the Roman Britons, the island
remained fragmented politically during the first
few centuries of the invaders' rule. But by 750,
three warring kingdoms managed to seize enough
land to coalesce and dominate Britain: Mercia,
Wessex, and Northumbria.
G A U L Across the English Channel
from Britain lay the Roman province of Gaul.
From the third to the seventh century the
kingdom of the Franks, centered in Gaul, produced the largest and most powerful kingdom in
western Europe. One family among the Franks,
called the Merovingians, gradually gained preeminence. A crafty Merovingian war chief
named Childeric ruled a powerful band of
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The Birth of Latin Christendom
265
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By about 750 the kingdom of the Franks had become the dominant power in western Europe. The Umayyad
caliphate controlled Spain, and the Lombard kingdom governed most of Italy. The Byzantine Empire held power
in Greece, as well as its core lands in Asia Minor.
Franks from about 460 until his death in 481.
With the support of his loyal soldiers, Childeric
laid the foundation for the Merovingian
kingdom. His energetic and ruthless son Clovis
•r. 481-511) made the Franks one of the leading
powers in the western provinces of the old
Roman Empire. Clovis aggressively expanded his
father's power base through the conquest of
northern Gaul and neighboring territories.
He miurdered many of his relatives and other
Frankish chieftains whom he considered rivals.
In 486 Clovis overcame the last Roman strongbold in northern Gaul.
Around 500 the polytheist Clovis converted
to Latin Christianity. About 3,000 warriors, the
core of his army, joined their king in this change
to the new faith. Clovis had a practical reason to
convert. He intended to attack the Visigothic
kingdom in southern Gaul. The Visigoths followed Arian Christianity, but their subjects, the
Roman inhabitants of the region, were Latin
Christians. By converting to Latin Christianity,
Clovis won the support of many of the Visigoths'
subjects. W i t h their help, he crushed the Visigothic king Alaric I I in 507. Clovis now controlled
almost all of Gaul as far as Spain.
266
CHAPTER 9
Medieval Empires and Borderlands: The Latin West
In the eighth century, however, the Merovingian kings became so ineffectual that real power
passed to the man in charge of the royal household called the "Mayor of the Palace." One
of these mayors, Charles Martel "the Hammer"
(r. 719-741), estaU'isWd Vis personal power by
regaining control over regions that had slipped
away from Merovingian rule and by defeating a n
invading Muslim army at Poitiers in 7 3 2 .
Martel's son, Pepin the Short (r. 7 4 1 - 7 6 8 ) , succeeded his father as Mayor of the Palace, but
dethroned the last of the Merovingian monarchs
and in 7 5 1 made himself king of the Franks.
Pepin relied on the pope to legitimatize his coup,
and in exchange the Franks guaranteed the pope's
safety. Thus, began the vital aUiance between the
Frankish monarchy and the popes i n Rome.
VisiGOTHiC SPAIN The Franks were never able
to conquer Spain, where a Visigothic kingdom
emerged. As in all the Germanic kingdoms,
religion unified the kingdom. Originally Arians,
Visigoth kings converted to Latin Christianity i n
the late sixth century, and Visigothic Spain
became a Latin Christian kingdom. The kings
began to imitate the Byzantine emperors with the
use of elaborate court ceremonies and frequent
church councils as assemblies that enforced their
w i l l . Thus, the key to their success was the abihty
to employ the spiritual authority of the Church
to enhance the secular authority of the king.
However, the autocratic instincts of the Visigoth
kings alienated many of the substantial landowners who were easily lured by the promises of
Mushm invaders to treat them more favorably.
In 7 1 1 invading armies of Muslims from
North Africa vanquished the last Visigothic king.
As a result, most of Spain became part of the
Umayyad caliphate. Many Christians from the
upper classes converted to Islam to preserve their
property and offices. Some survivors of the Visigoth kingdoms held on in the northwest of Spain,
where they managed to keep Christianity alive.
LOMBARD JX^LY
Between 5 6 8 and 7 7 4 , a Germanic
people known as the Lombards controlled most
of northern and central Italy. They were called
Langobardi, or "Long Beards," from which the
name Lombard derives. The Lombard king,
Alboin (r. ca. 5 6 5 - 5 7 2 ) , took advantage of the
weakness of the Byzantine Empire and invaded
Italy in 569. Alboin's army contained soldiers of
diiferent ethnic backgrounds. That lack of unity
made it impossible for Alboin to build a strong,
lasting kingdom.
The Lombard kings also faced two formidable external enemies—the Byzantine forces who
remained in the Exarchate of Ravenna and the
Franks. In 7 5 1 the Lombards' ruler defeated the
Exarchate, leading to the Byzantine abandonment of Ravenna. Internal political disputes,
however, prevented the Lombards from capitalizing on their victory over the Byzantines. Just
two decades later the Frankish king Charlemagne invaded Italy and crushed the Lombards.
Different Kingdoms, Shared Traditions
W i t h the exception of England, where AngloSaxon invaders overwhelmed the Roman population, the leaders of the new Germanic
kingdoms faced a common problem: H o w
should the Germanic minority govern subject
peoples who vastly outnumbered them? These
rulers solved this problem by blending Roman
and Germanic traditions. For example, kings
served as administrators of the civil order in the
style of the Roman emperor, issuing laws and
managing a bureaucracy. They also served as
war leaders in the Germanic tradition, leading
their men into battle in search of glory and loot.
As the Germanic kings defined new roles for
themselves, they discovered that Christianity
could bind all their subjects together into one
community of believers. The merging of Roman
and Germanic traditions could also be traced in
the law, which eventually erased the distinctions
between Romans and Germans, and in the ability of women to own property, a right far more
common among the Romans than the Germans.
Civ!L AUTHORITY: T H E ROMAN LEGACY
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approval. Kings controlled all appointments to
civil, military, and reUgious office. Accompanied
by troops and administrative assistants, they also
traveled throughout their lands to dispense justice, collect taxes, and enforce royal authority.
Frankish Gaul provides an apt example
of how these monarchs adopted preexisting
Roman institutions. When Clovis conquered the
Visigoths in Gaul, he inherited the nearly intact
Roman infrastructure and admmistrative system
that had survived the collapse of Roman imperial
authority. Merovingian kings (as well as Visigoth
rulers in Spain and Lombards in Italy) found it
useful to maintain parts of the preexisting system
and kept the officials who ran them. For
instance, Frankish kings relied on the bishops
and counts in each region to deal with local
problems. Because Roman aristocrats were hterate and had experience in Roman administration
on the local level, they often served as counts.
Based in cities, these officials presided in local
law courts, collected revenues, and raised troops
for the king's army. Most bishops also stemmed
from the Roman aristocracy. In addition to performing their religious responsibihties, bishops
aided their king by providing for the poor, ransoming hostages who had been captured by
enemy warriors from other kingdoms, and bringing social and legal injustices to the monarch's
attention. Finally, the kings used dukes, most of
whom were Franks, to serve as local military
commanders, which made them important
patrons of the community. Thus, the civil and
rehgious administration tended to remain the
responsibihty of the Roman counts and bishops,
but military command fell to rhe Frankish dukes.
WAR
LEADERS
AND
WERGILD:
THE
GERMANIC
LEGACY The kingdoms of Latin Christendom
developed from war bands led by Germanic
chieftains. By rewarding brave warriors with
land and loot taken in war, as well as with revenues skimmed from subject peoples, chieftains
created political communities of loyal men and
their families, called clans or kin groups. Though
these followers sometimes came from diverse
267
backgrounds, they all owed military service to
the clan chiefs. Because leadership in Germanic
society was hereditary, networks of loyalty and
kinship expanded through the generations. The
various political communities gradually evolved
mto distinct ethnic groups led by a king. These
ethnic groups, such as the Lombards and the
Franks, developed a sense of shared history,
kinship, and culture.
Kinship-based clans stood as the most basic
unit of Germanic society. The clan consisted of
all the households and blood relations loyal to
the clan chief, a warrior who protected them and
spoke on their behalf before the king on matters
of justice. Clan chieftains in turn swore oaths of
loyalty to their kings and agreed to fight for him
in wars against other kingdoms. The clan leaders
formed an aristocracy among the Germanic peoples. Like the Roman elites before them, the
royal house and the clan-based aristocracy consisted of rich men and women who controlled
huge estates. The new Germanic aristocrats
intermarried with the preexisting Roman elites
of wealthy landholders, thus maintaining control
of most of the land. These people stood at the
very top of the social order, winning the loyalty
of their followers by giving gifts and parcels of
land. Under the weight of this new upper class,
the majority of the population, the ordinary
farmers and artisans, slipped into a deepening
dependence. Most peasants could not enter into
legal transactions in their own name, and they
had few protections and privileges under the law.
Even so, they were better off than the slaves who
toiled at society's very lowest depths. Valued simply as property, these men, women, and children
had virtually no rights in the eyes of the law.
Though this social hierarchy showed some
similarities to societies i n earlier Roman times,
the new kingdoms' various social groups were
defined by law i n a fundamentally different way.
Unlike Roman law, which defined people by
citizenship rights and obligations, the laws of
the new kingdoms defined people by their
wergild. A Germanic concept, wergild referred
to what an individual was worth in case he or
she suffered some grievance at the hands of
268
CHAPTER 9 Medieval Empires and Borderlands: The Latin West
another. If someone injured or murdered someone else, wergild was the amount of compensation i n gold that the wrongdoer's family had to
pay to the victim's family.
In the wergild system, every person had a
price that depended on social status and perceived
usefulness to the community. For example, among
the Lombards service to the king increased a
free man's worth—his wergild was higher than
that of a peasant. In the Frankish kingdom, if a
freeborn woman of childbearing age was
murdered, the killer's family had to pay 600 pieces
of gold. Noble women and men had higher
wergild than peasants, while slaves and women
past childbearing age were worth very little.
UNITY THROUGH LAV*,? AND CHRSSTIANITY
Within
the kingdoms of Latin Christendom, rulers tried
to achieve unity by merging Germanic and
Roman legal principles and by accepting the
influence of the Church. Religious diversity
among the peoples in their kingdoms made this
unity difficult to establish. As discussed i n
Chapter 7, many of the tribes that invaded the
Roman Empire during the fifth century practiced
Arian Christianity. They kept themselves apart
from the Latin Christians by force of law. For
example, they declared marriage between Arian
and Latin Christians illegal.
These barriers began to collapse when Germanic kings converted to the Latin Christianity
of their Roman subjects. Some converted for reasons of personal belief or because their wives
were Latin Christians. Others decided to become
Latin Christians to gain wider political support.
For instance, when Clovis converted about 500,
laws against intermarriage between Arians and
Latin Christians in Gaul disappeared. More and
more Franks and Romans began to marry one
another, blending the two formerly separate
communities into one and reinforcing the
strength of the Latin Church. By 750 most of the
western European kingdoms had officially
become Latin Christian, though substantial
pockets of polytheist practice survived and
communities of Jews were allowed to practice
their faith.
Germanic kings adopted Latin Christianity,
but they had no intention of abandoning their
own Germanic law, which differed from Roman
law on many issues, especially relating to the
family and property. Instead, they offered their
Roman subjects the opportunity to live under the
Germanic law that governed the king. Clovis's
Law Code or Salic Law, published sometime
between 508 and 5 1 1 , illustrated this development. The Law Code applied to Franks and to
any other non-Roman peoples in his realm who
chose to live according to Frankish law. Because
the Romans dwelling i n the Frankish kingdom
technically still followed the laws of Byzantium,
Clovis did not presume to legislate for them.
Romans could follow their o w n law if they
wished, or they could follow his laws and
become Franks. By 750, however, most Romans
had chosen to abandon their legal identity as
Romans and live according to Frankish law, and
the distinction between Roman and Frank lost
all meaning. A similar process occurred in the
orher Germanic kingdoms. This unification of
peoples under one law happened without
protest, a sign that various groups had blended
politically, religiously, and culturally.
WOMEN
AND PROPERTS'
Roman
law
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books anc
Christendom. It also p r o m p t e d Germanic rulers t o
reconsider the question of a woman's right to
inherit land. I n the Roman Empire, women had
inherited land without difficulty. Indeed, perhaps as
much as 25 percent of the land in the entire empire
had been owned by women. In many Germanic
societies, however, men coidd inherit land and property far more easily than women. Attitudes about
female inheritance began to shift when the Germanic settlers established their homes in previously
Roman provinces—and began to marry Roman
women who owned property.
By comparing the law codes of the new
kingdoms over time, historians have detected the
impact of Roman customs on Germanic inheritance laws. By the late eighth century, women in
Frankish Gaul, Visigothic Spain, and Lombard
THE
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The Birth of Latin Christendom
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stected the
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restriction that they had to eventually pass it on to
their sons. Despite these hmitations, the new laws
transformed women's hves. A woman who
received an inheritance of land could live more
independently, support herself if her husband
died, and have a say in the community's decisions.
The Spread of Latin Christianity in the
New Kingdoms of Western Europe
269
Byzantines, Gregory had to look elsewhere for
help. Through clever diplomacy, Gregory successfully cultivated the good will of the Christian communities of western Europe by offering religious
sanction to the authority of friendly kings. He
negoriated skillfully with his Lombard and Frankish neighbors to gain their support and establish
the authority of the Roman church. He encouraged
Chrisdan missionaries to spread the faith in
England and Germany. In addition, he took steps
As Latin Christianity spread as the official religion through the new kingdoms, churchmen
decided that they had a moral responsibility to
convert all the people of these kingdoms and
beyond. They sent out missionaries to explain
the religion to nonbelievers and challenge the
worship of polytheist gods.
Meanwhile, bishops based in cities
directed people's spiritual hves, instilling the
moral and social conventions of Christianity
through sermons delivered in church. Monks
such as Boniface, who introduced this chapter,
traveled from their home monasteries in Ireland, England, and Gaul to spread the faith to
Germanic tribes east of the Rhine. Monasteries
became centers of intellectual life, and monks
replaced urban aristocrats as the keepers of
books and learning.
GROH'TH C-I- THE PAPACV
In theory, the
Byzantine emperors still had political authority over the city of Rome and its surrounding
lands during this violent time. However,
strapped for cash and troops, these distant
rulers proved unequal to the task of defending
the city from internal or external threats. In
the resulting power vacuum, the popes
stepped in to manage local affairs and
became, in effect, princes who ruled over a
significant part of Italy.
THE
Gregory the Great (r. 590-604) stands out
as the most powerful of these popes. The
pragmatic Gregory wrote repeatedly
to
Constantinople, pleading for military assistance
that never came. Without any relief from the
POPE GREGORY THE GREAT A N D THREE
SCRIBES
In this tenth-century ivory depicting the influential sixthcentury Pope Gregory, writing symbolizes his power and
influence. During early Middle Ages, the church alone
kept literacy and writing alive in the West.
Source: St. Gregory writing with scribes, Carolingian, Franco-German
School, c. 850-875 (ivory). Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna,
U Auslria/Bridgeman Art Library
306
CHAPTER 10 Medieval Civilization: The Rise of Western Europe
security and trading
monopolies—necessary
because of the weakness of the German imperial
government.
Urban civilization, one of the major achievements of the Middle Ages, thrived from the
commerce of the economic boom. From urban
civilization came other achievements. A l l the
cities built large new cathedrals to flaunt their
accumulated wealth and to honor God. New
educational institutions, especially imiversities,
trained the sons of the urban, commercial elite in
the professions. However, the merchants who
commanded the urban economy were not necessarily society's heroes. The populace at large
viewed them with deep ambivalence, despite the
immeasurable ways in which they enriched society. Churchmen worried about the morality of
making profits. Church councils condemned
usury—the lending of money for interest—even
though papal finances depended on it. Theologians promulgated the idea of a "just price," the
idea that there should be a fixed price for any
particular commodity. The just price was anathema to hardheaded merchants who were committed to the laws of supply and demand. Part of
the ambivalence toward trade and merchants
came from the inequities created in all marketbased economies—the rewards of the market
were unevenly distributed, both socially and geographically, as St. Francis's protest demonstrated. T h e prosperous merchants symbolized
disturbing social changes, but they were also the
dynamic force that made possible the intellectual
and artistic flowering of the High Middle Ages.
THE CONSOLIDATION OF
ROMAN CATHOLICISM
• H o w did the Catholic Church consolidate
its hold over the Latin West?
The late eleventh through thirteenth centuries
witnessed one of the greatest periods of religious vitality in the history of Roman Catholicism. Manifest by the Crusades (discussed in
Chapter 9), the rise of new religious orders,
remarkable intellectual creativity, and the final
triumph over the surviving polytheistic tribes of
northern and eastern Europe, the religious vitalit)' of the era was due in no small part to the
effective leadership of a series of able popes.
They gave the Church the benefits of the most
advanced, centralized government in Europe.
The Task of Church Reform
As the bishops of the Church accepted many of
the administrative responsibilities that in the
ancient world had been performed by secular
authorides, their spiritual mission sometimes
suffered. They became overly involved in the
business of the world. In addidon, over the centuries wealthy and pious people had inade large
donations of land to the Church, making many
monasteries, in particular, immensely wealthy.
Such wealth tempted the less pious to corruption, and the Roman popes were unlikely to
eliminate the temptations from which they benefited. Even those popes who wanted to were slow
to assemble the administrative machinery necessary to enforce their will across the unruly lands
of Roman Catholicism. The impulse for reform
derived in many respects from the material success of the Church and the monasteries.
The slow but determined progress of the
popes from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries to
enforce moral reform is the most remarkable
achievement of the medieval papacy. The movement for reform, however, did not begin with the
popes. It came out of the monasteries. Monks
thought the best way to clean up corruprion in the
Chiu-ch would be to improve the morals of individuals. If men and women conducted themselves
with a sense of moral responsibility, the whole
institudon of the Church could be purified. Monks
and nuns, who set an example for the rest of the
Church, provided the model for self-improvement
for society at large. The most influential of the
reform-minded monasteries was Cluny in Burgundy, estabhshed in 910. Cluny itself sustained
the reform movement through more than 1,500
Cluniac monasteries throughout Europe.
The Consolidation of Roman Catholicism
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From the very beginning Cluny was exceptional for several reasons. First, its aristocratic
founder offered the monastery as a gift to the
pope. As a result, the pope directed the activities
of the Cluny monastery from Rome and kept it
independent from local polidcal pressures, which
so often caused corruption. The Rome connection positioned Cluniacs to assist in reforming
the papacy itself. Second, the various abbots who
headed Cluny over the years closely coordinated
reform activities of the various monasteries in
the Cluniac system. Some of these abbots were
men of exceptional abihty and learning who had
a European-wide reputation for their moral
stature. Third, Cluny regulated the life of monks
much more closely than did other monasteries,
so the monks there were models of devotion. To
the Cluniacs moral purity required complete
renunciation of the benefits of the material world
and a commitment to spiritual experiences. The
elegantly simple liturgy in which the monks
themselves sung the text of the mass and other
prayers symbolized Cluniac purity. The beauty of
the music enhanced the spiritual experience, and
its simplicity clarified rather than obscured the
meaning of the words. Because of these attractive
traits, the Cluniac liturgy spread to the far corners of Europe.
The success of Cluny and other reformed
monasteries provided the base from which
reform ideas spread beyond the isolated world of
monks to the rest of the Church. The first candidates for reform were parish priests and bishops.
Called the secular clergy (in Latin saeculum,
meaning "secular") because they lived in the
secular world, they differed from the regular
clergy (in Latin regula, those who followed a
"rule") who lived in monasteries apart from the
world. The hves of many secular clergy differed
little from their lay neighbors. [Laypeople or the
laity referred to all Christians who had not taken
religious vows to become a priest, monk, or nun.)
In contrast to celibate monks, who were sexually
chaste, many priests kept concubines or were
married and tried to bequeath church property to
their children. I n contrast to the Orthodox
Church, in which priests were allowed to marry.
307
the Catholic Church had repeatedly forbidden
married priests, but the prohibitions had been
ineffective until Cluniac reform stressed the ideal
of the sexually pure priest. During the eleventh
century bishops, church councils, and reformist
popes began to insist on a celibate clergy.
The clerical reform movement also tried
to eliminate the corrupt practices of simony
and lay investiture. Simony was the practice of
buying and selling church offices. Lay investiture
took place when aristocrats, kings, or emperors
installed churchmen and gave them their symbols
of office ("invested" them). Through this practice, powerful lords controlled the clergy and
usurped the property of the Church. In exchange
for protecting the Church, these laymen conceived of church offices as a form of vassalage
and expected to name their own candidates as
priests and bishops. The reformers saw as sinful
any form of lay authority over the Church—
whether the authority was that of the local lord
or the emperor himself. As a result of this controversy, the most troublesome issue of the eleventh
century became establishing the boundaries
between temporal and spiritual authorities.
Religious reform
required tmity within the Church. The most important step in building unity was to define what it
meant to be a Catholic. In the Middle Ages, Roman
Catholicism identified itself in two ways. First, the
Church insisted on conformity in rites. Rites consisted of the forms of public worship called the
hturgy, which included certain prescribed prayers
and chants, usually in Latin. Uniform rites meant
that Catholics could hear the Mass celebrated in
essentially the same way everywhere from Poland
to Portugal, Iceland to Croatia. Conformity of
worship created a cultural unity that transcended
differences in language and ethnicity. When
Catholics from far-flung locales encountered one
another, they shared something meaningftil to them
all because of the uniformity of rites. The second
thing that defined a Catholic was obedience to
the pope. Ritual uniformity and obedience to the
pope were closely interrelated because both the ritual and the pope were Roman. There were many
T H E POPE BECOMES A MONARCH
308
J
CHAPTER 10
Medieval Civilization; The Rise of Western Europe
I.
bishops in Cliristianity, but as one monk put it,
"Rome is.. .the head of the world."
Beginning i n the late eleventh centtiry the
task of the popes became to make this theoretical
assertion of obedience real—in short, to make the
papacy a rehgious monarchy. Among the reformers who gathered in Rome was Hildebrand (ca.
1 0 2 0 - 1 0 8 5 ) , one of the most remarkable figures
in the history of the Church, a man beloved as
saintly by his admirers and considered an ambitious, self-serving megalomaniac by many others.
From 1055 to 1073 during the pontificates of
some four popes, Hildebrand became the power
behind rhe throne, helping enact wide-ranging
reforms that enforced uniformity of worship and
estabhshing the rules for electing new popes by
the college of cardinals. I n 1073 the cardinals
elected Hildebrand himself pope, and he took the
name Gregory V I I (r. 1 0 7 3 - 1 0 8 5 ) .
Gregory's greatness lay in his leadership over
the internal reform of the Church. Every year he
held a Chujch council i n Rome where he decreed
against simony and married priests. Gregory centralized authority over rhe Church itself by sending out papal legates, representatives who
delivered orders to local bishops. He attempted
to free the Church from external influence by
asserting the superiority of the pope over all other
authorities. Gregory's theory of papal supremacy
led him into direct conflict with the German
emperor, Henry TV (r. 1056-1106). The issue was
lay investiture. During the eighth and ninth centuries weak popes relied on the Carolingian kings
and emperors to name suitable candidates for
ecclesiastical offices i n order to keep them out of
the hands of local aristocrats. A t stake was not
only power and authority, but also the income
from the enormous amount of property controlled by the Church, which the emperor was in
the best position to protect. During the eleventh
century, Gregory V I I and other reform-minded
popes sought to regain control of this property.
Without the ability to name his own candidates
as bishops, Gregory recognized that his whole
campaign for church reform would falter. When
Pope Gregory tried to negotiate with the emperor
over the appointment of the bishop of Milan,
Henry resisted and commanded Gregory to
resign the papacy in a letter with the notorious
salutation, "Henry, King not by usurpation, but
by the pious ordination of God to Hildebrand
now not Pope but false monk."
Gregory struck back i n an escalating confrontation now known as the Investiture Controversy. He deposed Henry from the imperial tlurone
and excommunicated him. Excommunication prohibited the sinner from participating in the sacraments and forbade any social contact whatsoever
with the surrounding community. People caught
talking to an excommunicated person or writing a
letter or even offering a drink of water could themselves be excommunicated. Excommunication was
a form of social death, a dire punishment indeed,
especially if the excommunicated person were a
king. Both sides marshaled arguments from Scripture and history, but the excommunication was
effective. Henry's friends started to abandon him,
rebeUion broke out in Germany, and the most
powerful German lords called for a meeting to
elect a new emperor. Backed uito a corner, Henry
plotted a clever counterstroke.
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out to cross the Alps to meet with the German
lords. When Gregory reached the Alpine passes,
however, he learned that Emperor Henry was on
his way to Italy. In fear of what the emperor would
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but as a supphcant asking the pope to hear his confession. As a priest Gregory could hardly refuse to
hear the confession of a penitent sinner, but he
nevertheless attempted to humiliate Henry by
making him wait for three days, kneeling in the
snow outside the castie. Henry's presentation of
himself as a penitent sinner posed a dilemma for
Gregory. The German lords were waiting for Gregory to appear in his capacity as the chief justice of
Christendom to judge Henry, but Henry himself
was asking the pope to act in his capacity as priest
to grant absolution for sin. The priest in Gregory
won out over die judge, and he absolved Henry.
Even after the deaths of Gregory and Henry,
the Investiture Controversy continued to poison
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The Consolidation of Roman Catholicism
relations between the popes and emperors until the
Concordat of Worms in 1 1 2 2 resolved the issue in
a formal treaty. The emperor retained the right to
nominate high churchmen, but in a concession to
the papacy, the emperor lost the ceremonial privileges of investiture that conveyed spiritual authority. Without the ceremony of investiture, no bishop
could exercise his office. By refusing to invest
unsuitable nominees, the popes had the last word.
Gregory W s vision of papal supremacy over all
kings and emperors persevered.
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The most lasting accom-
plishment of the popes during the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries derived less from dramadc
confrontations with emperors than from the humdrum routine of the law. Begiiming with Gregory
V I I , the papacy became the supreme court of the
Catholic world by claimmg authority over a vast
range of issues. To justify these claims, Gregory
and his assistants conducted massive research
among old laws and treatises. These were organized into a body of legal texts called canon law.
Canon law came to encompass many kinds
of cases, including all those involving the clergy,
disputes about church property, and donations
to the Church. The law of the Church also
touched on many of the most vital concerns of
the laity including annulling marriages, legitimating bastards, prosecuting bigamy, protecting
widows and orphans, and resolving inheritance
disputes. Most of the cases originated in the
courts of the bishops, but the bishops' decisions
could be appealed to the pope and cardinals sitting together in the papal consistory. The consistory could make exceptions from the letter of the
law, called dispensations, giving it considerable
power over kings and aristocrats who wanted to
marry a cousin, divorce a wife, legitimate a bastard, or annul a w i l l . By the middle of the twelfth
century, Rome was awash with legal business.
The functions of the canon law courts became so
important that those elected popes were no
longer monks but trained canon lawyers, men
very capable in the ways of the world.
I
The pope also presided over the curia,
the administrative bureaucracy of the Church.
309
The cardinals in the curia served as ministers i n
the papal administration and visited foreign
princes and cities as ambassadors or legates.
Because large amounts of revenue were flowing
into the coffers of the Church, the curia functioned as a bank. Rome became the financial
capital of the West.
In addition to its legal, administrative, and
financial authority, the papacy also made use of
two powerful spiritual weapons against the disobedient. Any Christian who refused to repent of
a sin could be excommunicated, as the Emperor
Henry TV had been. The second spiritual weapon
was the interdict, the suspension of the sacraments in a locality or kingdom whose ruler had
defied the pope. During an interdict the churches
closed their doors, creating panic among the
faithful who could not bapdze their children or
bury their dead. The interdict, which encouraged
a public outcry, could be a very effective weapon
for undermining the political support of any
monarch who ran afoul of the pope.
T H E PINNACLE OP THE MEDIEWM PAPACY: POPE INNO-
CENT 11! The most capable of the medieval
popes was Innocent I I I (r. 1 1 9 8 - 1 2 1 6 ) . To him,
the pope was the overlord of the endre world.
He recognized the right of kings to rule over the
secular sphere, but he considered it his duty to
prevent and punish sin, a duty that gave him
wide ladtude to meddle in the affaus of kings
and princes.
Innocent's first task was to provide the
papacy with a strong territorial base of support
so that the popes could act w i t h the same freedom as kings and princes. Historians consider
Innocent the founder of the Papal State in central Italy, an independent state that lasted until
1 8 7 0 and survives today in a tiny fragment as
Vatican City.
Innocent's second goal was keeping alive the
crusading ideal. He called the Fourth Crusade,
which went awry when the crusaders attacked
Constantinople instead of conquering Jerusalem.
He also expanded the definition of crusading by
calling for a crusade to eluninate heresy within
Christian Europe. Innocent was deeply concerned
CHAPTER 10 Medieval Civilization: The Rise of Vi/estern Europe
310
about the spread of new heresies, which attracted
enormous numbers of converts, especially in the
growing cities of southern Europe. By crusading
against Christian heretics—the Cathars and
Waldensians (see the following discussion)—
Innocent authorized the use of mihtary methods
to enforce uniformity of belief.
The third objective was to assert the authority of the papacy over political affairs. Innocent
managed the election of Emperor Frederick I I . He
also assumed the right to veto imperial elections.
He excommunicated King Philip I I of France to
force him to take back an imwanted wife. And
Innocent placed England under the interdict to
compel King John to cede his kingdom to the
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papacy and receive it back as a fief, a transaction
that made the king of England the vassal of the
pope. Using whatever means necessary, he made
papal vassals of the rulers of Aragon, Bulgaria,
Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, and Serbia. Through the use of the feudal law of vassalage. Innocent brought the papacy to its closest
approximation of a universal Christian monarchy (see Map 10.2).
Innocent's fourth and greatest accomplishment was to codify the rites of the liturgy and to
define the dogmas of the faith. This monumental
task was the achievement of the Fourth Lateran
Council, held in Rome in 1215. This council,
attended by more than 400 bishops, 800 abbots,
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Besides his direct control of
the Papal States in central
Italy, Pope Innocent III made
vassals of many of the kings
of Catholic Europe. These
feudal ties provided a legal
foundation for his claim to
be the highest authority in
Christian Europe.
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The Consolidation of Roman Catholicism
and the ambassadors of the monarchs of Cathohc
Europe, issued decrees that reinforced the celebration of the sacraments as the centerpiece of
Christian hfe. They included rules to educate the
clergy, define their qualificadons, and govern
elections of bishops. The council condemned
heretical beliefs, and it called for yet another crusade. The council became the guidepost that has
since governed many aspects of Catholic practice,
especially with regard to the sacraments. It did
more than any other council to fulfill the goal of
uniformity of rites in Catholicism.
T H E TROUBLED
LEGACY
OF THE PAPAL
MOMARCKY
Innocent was an astute, intelligent man who in
single-minded fashion pursued the greater good
of the Church as he saw it. N o one succeeded
better than he in preserving the unity of the
Catholic world in an era of chaos. His policies,
however, were less successful in the hands of his
less able successors. Their blunders undermined
the pope's spiritual mission. Innocent's successors went beyond defending the Papal State and
embroiled all Italy in a series of bloody civil wars
between the Guelfs, who supported the popes,
and the Ghibellines, who opposed them. The
pope's position as a monarch superior to all others collapsed under the weight of immense folly
during the pontificate of Boniface V I I I (r.
1294-1303). His claims to absolute authority
combined with breathtaking vanity and ineptitude corroded the achievements of Innocent I I I .
In 1302 Boniface promulgated the most
extreme theoretical assertion of papal superiority over lay rulers. The papal bull, Unam Sanctum, decreed that " i t is absolutely necessary for
salvation that every human creature be subject
CHRONOLOGY: THE PAPAL MONARCHY
1073-1085
1075-1122
1198-1216
1215
1294-1303
Reign of Pope Gregory VII
The Investiture Controversy
Reign of Pope innocent III
Fourth Lateran Council
Reign of Pope Boniface VIII
311
to the Roman pontiff." Behind the statement
was a specific dispute with King Philip I V of
France (r. 1285-1314), who was attempting to
try a French bishop for treason. The larger
issue behind the dispute was simdar to the
Investiture Controversy of the eleventh century,
but this time no one paid much attention to the
pope. The loss of papal moral authority had
taken its t o l l . In the heat of the confrontation,
King Philip accused Pope Boniface of heresy,
one of the few sins of which he was not guilty,
and sent his agents to arrest the pope who died
shortly after. W i t h Boniface the papal monarchy died as well.
T H E RELIGIOUS OUTCASTS: CATKARS AND W A L D E N -
5IAN3 I n its efforts to defend the faith, the
Church during the first half of the thirteenth
century began to authorize bishops and other
clerics to conduct inquisitions (formal inquiries)
into specific instances of heresy or perceived
heresy. The so-called heretics tended to be faithful people who sought personal purity i n religion. During the thirteenth and early fourteenth
centuries, inquisitions and systematic persecutions targeted the Cathars and Waldensians,
who at first had lived peacefully w i t h their
Catholic neighbors and shared many of the
same beliefs with them.
The name Cathar derives from the Greek
w o r d for purity. The Cathars were especially
strong in northern Italy and southern France.
Heavily concentrated around the French t o w n
of A l b i , the Cathars were also known as A l b i gensians. They departed from Catholic doctrine, which held that God created the Earth,
because they believed that an evil force had created all matter. To purify themselves, an elite
few—known as "perfects"—rejected their own
bodies as corrupt matter, refused to marry and
procreate, and in extreme cases gradually
starved themselves. These purified perfects provided a dramatic contrast to the more worldly
Catholic clergy. For many, Catharism became a
f o r m of protest against the wealth and power
of the Church. By the 1150s the Cathars had