Gregorian reform - Grade: A* PDF

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How revolutionary was the Gregorian Reform movement?...

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How far can it be argued that the Gregorian reform movement was revolutionary?

The reform movement of the latter eleventh century sought to eliminate certain illicit ecclesiastical practices which stood in the way of a restoration of the Church to its ancient purity and liberty. In identifying issues like simony, lay investiture, and clerical marriage, the medieval papacy largely invoked traditional principles that had already been articulated by early church theorists and pursued by subsequent church leaders. Therefore, judged solely on its programme of reform, the campaign undertaken in the eleventh can hardly be seen as a dramatic break from the past. However, what was revolutionary about the ‘Gregorian movement’ was the means by which the papacy sought to actualise its reforming objectives and assert its own authority above all others in medieval Christendom. Whilst the Roman pontiffs had enjoyed a position of prestige and centrality since the Carolingian restoration of Pope Leo III to the see of St. Peter in the year 800, the mechanisms supporting that position were subject to transformational refurbishments which fundamentally changed the nature of the relationship between the papacy, laity, and clergy. As a consequence, the Roman Church, led singularly by the pope, was able to assume a position of authority and exercise a degree of power which were both far beyond the reach of the decentralised and incapacitated church of the pre-reform era.

With ‘Gregorian reform’ being so synonymous with the unprecedented struggles between Gregory VII and Henry IV, it is easy to forget that the wider project was mainly concerned with the acceleration of an existing movement to restore the clergy to its former moral integrity and independence. Such standards had been set out in the Acts of the Apostles and had been exhibited by certain monastic communities in Europe. For example, simony had long been perceived as a cause for the corrupted state of Christendom by the fact that it allowed untrained and uneducated churchmen to occupy ecclesiastical office, rendering local bishops and abbots incompetent and often uncooperative when carrying out their episcopal duties. Simony had been outlawed since the pontificate of Gregory I, who had established various classifications for the illicit acquisition of ecclesiastical dignities based on the biblical example of Simon Magus (Acts of the Apostles 8:18-19). The deposition of Pope Gregory VI in 1046 on account of the monetary transactions made during his election shows that the Gregorian campaign against simony was hardly revolutionary in this respect of its reform. That these clerical standards were already understood is also evident in the case of clerical celibacy, which had remained largely unenforced “despite six hundred years of decrees, canons, and increasingly harsh penalties” 1 dating back to the Council of Nicea in 325. Benedictine and Cluniac foundations had advocated the celibate monastic lifestyle independent of papal direction, whilst many of those who opposed Gregory VII were themselves keen supporters of reform. Sigebert of Gembloux was a Benedictine monk and scholar who sympathised with the reforming ideals pursued by the papacy yet ended up with a 1 A. L. Barstow, Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy (1982), p. 45.

reputation of a fierce “anti-Gregorian polemicist” 2 in the service of the imperial government. Therefore, the roots of the controversial aspects of eleventh century reform must not be traced to the second-hand programme it followed, but to the novel institutional means through which it was implemented. A crucial innovation of the Gregorian church was the papal synod, which brought revolutionary changes to the reforming capabilities of the episcopacy. Before the pontificate of Leo IX, synods held by the pope were provincial, concerned with issues specific to the Roman see, and attended almost exclusively by the local suburbicarian bishops. However, the Leonine council of Rheims in October 1049 summoned bishops from dioceses outside of Roman and imperial territories, and under the sole presidency of the pope, issued decrees which were binding on the whole of Latin Christendom. The synods, which were subsequently held biannually at the palace of St. John Lateran in Rome, functioned as the highest tribunal of the Church and as a legislative assembly responsible for the propagation of reforming decrees. The development of such an institution served to transform the relationship between the papacy and the episcopate. This is evident in the suspension of Archbishop Liemar of Bremen by Gregory VII for his failure to attend a Lenten synod in Rome after he had refused to hold a reforming synod in 1074. Liemar’s complaints were directed at the novel Gregorian expectation of bishops to either “do their bidding and summon a synod or to come to Rome and explain [themselves]”3. The synods therefore expanded papal influence at the expense of metropolitan authority, facilitating a revolutionary restructuring of the episcopal order. Whereas the office of bishop was traditionally defined by their inviolable rights to control the religious affairs of their diocese, under Gregory VII loyalty and obedience to the supreme authority of the pontiff assumed much greater significance. It is for this reason that bishops under Gregory VII’s pontificate complained of being treated “like bailiffs on his estates” and voiced their grievances towards the pope not in relation to the reforms he wished to introduce, but to the lack of respect shown towards the traditional ordo ecclesiasticus, which had been undermined by the centralising institutions built by the reforming papacy.

The delivery of reform was also transformed by the role of the papal legate as a connecting link between the curia and the secular and ecclesiastical leaders of Christendom. Unlike the traditional Roman envoys of the early medieval church, Gregorian legates acted as agents of reform and were delegated to provinces in which the inhabitants were commanded to “hear and obey him in all things” 4 related to the church – a superior authority which was acknowledged in the fourth sentence of Gregory VII’s Dictatus Papae. Cardinal Hildebrand himself was a legate, along with fifteen of the 2 I. S. Robinson, ‘Periculosus homo: Pope Gregory VII and Episcopal Authority’, Viator, ix (1978). 3 I. S. Robinson, The Papacy, 1073-1198: Continuity and Innovation (1990), p. 153 4 Ibid, p. 150.

nineteen popes who served between 1073 and 1198, allowing for a generation of reforming popes to gain the practical political and administrative experience needed to sustain the transformation of papal government in the period. As legates were required to report back to the curia, they allowed the bishop of Rome to have greater control over the direction of church reform being taken in the various kingdoms of Christendom, undermining the authority of native secular and ecclesiastical authorities. In Germany, Gregorian legates coordinated rebellion against Henry IV, deposing bishops, such as the aforementioned Liemar of Bremen, who were loyal to the excommunicate emperor. The legate Hugh of Die held a council at Autun in 1077 which saw him consecrate an archbishop and suspend from their duties a considerable number of French bishops, including Archbishop Manasses of Rheims, who had been described by Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury as “one of the columns of the church”. That legates of relatively lower episcopal ranking were able to wield such a degree of authority clearly unsettled bishops and kings across Europe, particularly as they could be used as an instrument of international papal government, best seen in the central role played by Adhemar of Le Puy as the spiritual leader of the First Crusade. Unlike traditional reform which was implemented by local bishops in negotiation with their secular rulers, legate action created two rival hierarchies within the church: one loyal to the ruler, and the other obedient to the papacy.

These institutional innovations speak to a Gregorian ecclesiology which took as its starting point a revolutionary doctrine of papal primacy which was inspired by the perceived inefficiencies of the traditional episcopal structure of the Church. Based partly on the authentic Petrine texts of the New Testament and the inauthentic eighth century forgery of the Donatio Constantini, Gregory VII presented the Roman church as “the prince and universal mother of all the churches and peoples”, the unique repository of authority in Christendom. Reinterpreting the fifth century Gelasian distinction between the executive power of the secular ruler and the legislative authority of the church, Gregory VII claimed in sentence 7 of the Dictatus Papae that “for him alone it is lawful, according to the needs of the time, to make new laws”. Throughout the Investiture Contest, Gregory VII’s insistence that the emperor had to be “obedient, humbly devoted, and wholly useful to holy Church” 5 represented a subversion of the accepted theory that papacy and empire were a divinely ordained duality that worked together in the governance of Christendom. Instead, Gregory VII argued that since it was the church which converted the monarchy from a satanic to a Christian institution, the first duty of a king was to be obedient to the pope, who claimed supreme judgement on Earth. It was this belief in the universal jurisdictional authority of the papacy that Gregory VII fashioned for himself a novel position to intervene in the affairs of secular kingdoms across Europe.

Although he cited Pope Zacharias’ deposition of the last Merovingian king Childeric II and appointment of the Carolingian Pippin III in 751, Gregory VII’s excommunication of Henry IV 5 Gregory VII letter to Herman of Metz, 15 March 1081.

according to his belief in the papal right “to depose emperors'' was unprecedented in medieval Europe and had no backing in the books of canon law. It would have been inconceivable for one of the Crescentii or Tusculan popes to receive the kind of penitence given by Henry IV at Canossa in 1077, “without any royal ornament, pitiful in appearance, barefoot and clad in woollen garments''. This public act made it clear that the Gregorian papacy was markedly different from its predecessors by its ability to govern affairs which had traditionally belonged under the purview of secular lords. The synod of November 1078 formulated the most innovative decree of Gregory VII’s pontificate: “that no clerk may receive investiture… from the hands of emperor or king or any lay person”. This represented an assault on the traditional monarchical right to make ecclesiastical appointments and an unprecedented effort to undo royal control of the church. Whilst the basis for these claims lay in the ancient traditions of the Christian faith, never before had they been pursued to the extent that they were under the reformed papacy, which saw Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury choose to go into exile two times in defence of ecclesiastical liberties. Whilst this particular episode also speaks to the fact that the reach of the Gregorian revolution was limited in certain polities like England which had stronger central monarchies, it also shows how the reform movement brought the papacy from the periphery to the centre in the politics of medieval Christendom.

The transformation of the medieval Roman Church is best seen in the emergence of a temporal dimension to the activities of the papacy as it sought to consolidate and build upon its programme of reform. No longer able to count upon imperial protection to maintain its tenuous position in Rome, the papacy actively set out to build what were essentially secular diplomatic alliances with various European leaders. By far the greatest supporter of the reform papacy was Countess Matilda of Tuscany, who primarily provided protection to the see of Rome through her control of virtually all the Apennine passes into Italy from the north. An illustration from her biography shows that it was the countess who received the pleas of Henry IV at her castle at Canossa in 1077. It was also Matilda who melted down the treasure of the Saint Apollonio monastery to send financial aid to Gregory VII after he had been frozen out of his patrimonial revenues during the pontificate of Clement III. That her will donated all her allodial lands in Tuscany and Lotharingia to the Roman Church demonstrates how the unique authority of the reform papacy allowed it to become a viable political ally to a much wider range of secular leaders. Furthermore, the similarity of the relationships between Gregorian popes and Norman princes to those shared between lords and vassals speaks to how the papal curia became capable of imitating the language of the feudal oaths in order to harness the power of diplomatic alliances. The granting of the ‘vexillum sancti Petri’ to Robert Guiscard in 1061, William of Normandy in 1066, and Pisan fighters in Mahdia in 1087 are all examples of the curia’s ability to harness secular power across Christendom in the interests of the church. Whilst the crusade preached by Urban II at Clermont in 1095 was a fundamentally innovative proposition, its conceptual and

practical foundations were certainly forged by the experience of the Gregorian papacy as an active player in the political landscape.

It was this transformation of the Roman Church from a ceremonial and spiritual institution to a challenging political force that made the Gregorian reform movement seem so revolutionary to both its contemporaries and later commentators. It should be acknowledged that in all key aspects – clerical reform, institutional development, and political activity – the papacy invoked ancient traditions and rights which take away from the extent that we can see this as an innovative religious revolution. Indeed, there is great reason to be sceptical of exactly how much supposedly transformational changes impacted the lives of most Christian worshippers whose contact with the Church was almost exclusively restricted to their local parish priest. However, this should not distract from the fact that the experience of Gregorian reform brought about a fundamental restructuring of the medieval Church, setting new horizons for churchmen to explore in the coming centuries. It is also worth noting that the revolutionary character of the reforming movement, which was propagated by a range of actors, if reflected in the historian’s decision to remember it as the ‘Gregorian’ reform. Gregory VII, renowned for his flexibility and zeal, was unique in his ambitious pursuit of libertas ecclesiae. It was this ambition, which he infused into the papal insignia, that transformed the image of the Roman pontiff from the disposable and incapacitated priest of the early eleventh century to the ‘periculosus homo’ feared and respected by contemporaries of the Gregorian church. It is this changing reputation of the figurehead of the Roman Church which best speaks to the revolutionary character of the reform movement in the latter eleventh century.

Bibliography A. L. Barstow, Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy (1982) M.Barber, The Two Cities : Medieval Europe 1050-1300 R.W.Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages C.Morris, The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250 I.S.Robinson, The Papacy, 1073-1198: Continuity and Innovation (1990) I.S.Robinson, ‘Periculosus homo: Pope Gregory VII and Episcopal Authority’, Viator, ix (1978)...