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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 FRANKSSH The Birth of Latin Christendom 265 Europe, ca. 750 ,^,;-x^jltbTs^; •"'WALES ^^-;.\ Worth IRISH IRISH ! Sea KINGOOMSJ /• ,;--v ANGLO-SAXON KINGQQMS u r ^ A ; f'lV ISM; M ^ - -Kr i j o^a --V^'O^-'V--'' BALTIC U TOIDC<: TRIBES 1f ATLANTIC , OCEAN BRITTANY^ FRANKISH,, • KINGDOM ' SLAVS •\ STEPPE PEOPLES ' STEPI AVAR KINGDOM t Poitiers /AQUITANE; BASQUES KINGDOM OF THELOMBAMS BULGARS ,/ Black Sea UMAYYAD CA L I P H A T E , ^ Mediterranean 0 400 Itm I H 0 / ' ^ \ ; •••-If" - '"'K} • • ^ *^ Sea -1 1 400 mi MAP 9.1 Europe, ca. 750 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 In imita- tion of Roman practice, the monarchs of Latin Christendom designated themselves the source of all law a approval civil, m i l by troop; traveled tice, colli Fran of how Roman i Visigoth: Roman i that had authorit] rulers i n useful to and kep instance, and coui problems ate and h on the Ic Based in law court for the ki from the forming aided the soming 1 enemy w ; ing socia attention whom w commanc patrons ( religious responsit but militj WAR LE/ LEGACY developec chieftains land and enues ski created p their fam: these folJ Ik The Birth of Latin Christendom which the bard Icing, tage of the nd invaded soldiers of ck of unity d a strong, 0 formidaforces who na and the efeated the : abandon1 disputes, 3m capitalitines. Just i g CharleLombards. raditions ere Angloman popuGermanic em: H o w :rn subject :m? These ng Roman iple, kings rder in the laws and served as in, leading 'f and loot. roles for ihristianity : into one of Roman ; traced in istinctions 11 the abilt far more Germans. In imitas of Latin ; source of all law and believed that they ruled with God's 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 influenced more than just local administration in Latin Italy coi restrictic their son trans forr received indepenc died, anc The Sp New Ki I As Latin gion thrc decided t convert a beyond. ' the religic worship c Meat directed j moral an through s such as B. traveled f land, Eng Germanic became c( replaced i 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 GROV Byzantine ity over tf lands duj strapped i rulers pro' the city fr the result stepped i: became, ir significant Gregoj as the mc pragmatic Constantin that never The Birth of Latin Christendom istianity, ng their Roman I to the :ed their nder the Clovis's ometime develops and to dm who Because cingdom zantium, )r them. if they iws and Romans entity as law, and ank lost :d in the :ation of without blended :ifluenced in Latin rulers to right to men had erhaps as re empire Germanic and propdes about I the Gerpreviously ry Roman • the new stected the nic inheriwomen in Lombard Italy could inherit land, though often under the 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 Drders, e final ibes of s vitalto the popes, e most ope. lany of in the secular retimes in the he cene large ; many wealthy. ;orrupcely to y benere slow 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. How phshr thirta confri drum VII, t Cathc range and ] amon ized u C Early in the winter of 1077 Pope Gregory set 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 do, Gregory retreated to the castle of Canossa, of cas dispui to thi touchi the la matin where he expected to be attacked. H e n r y surprised Gregory, however, by arriving not with an army, 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 nomu the p; leges ity.W could unsui Gregc kings widov disput courts could ting tc tory c( law, C; power marry tard,o centur The fu imporl longer very a Th the ad 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. y to rious I, but )rand conmtroirone I pro:acraoever lught ing a hem1 was deed, ere a icripwas him, most ig to [enry How THE POPES RULED •y set rman isses, IS on 'ould ossa, •rised irmy, conse to J t he •I by 1 the in of a for •Gre:ice of imself priest egory iry. lenry, oison 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 ^SGMMC KINGDOM OF ; ' • SICILY' - |l197-n98| The Papal States under Innocent I Vassal states of the Pope Intervention by the Pope Black Sea Constantinople i ; 1215 Universal Monarchy of Pope Innocent III |1200| ]na];^dvo •--'y Rome* s : ._ 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, i,UriN;EMPmE, f; ;H *5'^>., Mediterranean Sea 10.2 Universal Monarchy of Pope Innocent I I I 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. MAP and the Europe bration Christi; clergy, election heretics sade. T since g( cspecia more t unifori THE I f Innoce single-] of the better Cathol h owe VI less ab the po sors wi embroi betwee and th pope's ers coll during 1294-1 combir tude cc In extrem ity ove turn, di salvatii • I 107: 107i 119) 121i 129' 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