The Church and the Empire | Page 8

local factions, Norman adventurers, and their leaders obtaining lands from the local Princes in return for help, sought confirmation of their title from some legitimate authority. The Western Empire had never claimed these lands, but none the less Conrad II and Henry III, in return for the acceptance of their suzerainty, acknowledged the titles which the Norman leaders had already gained from Greek or Lombard. Rome was likely to be their next victim, and Leo IX took the opportunity of a dispute over the city of Benevento to try conclusions with them. A humiliating defeat was followed by a mock submission of the conqueror. The danger was in no sense removed. Pope Stephen's schemes for driving them out of Italy were cut short by his death, and meanwhile the Norman power increased. Thus there could be no question of expulsion, nor could the Papacy risk a repetition of the humiliation of Leo IX. It was Hildebrand who conceived the idea of turning a dangerous neighbour into a friend and protector. A meeting was arranged at Melfi between Pope Nicholas and the Norman princes, and there, while on the one side canons were issued against clerical marriage, which was rife in the south of Italy, on the other side Robert Guiscard, the Norman leader, recognised the Pope as his suzerain, and obtained in return the title of Duke of Apulia and Calabria and of Sicily when he should have conquered it. Pope Leo's agreement, six years before, had been made by a defeated and humiliated ecclesiastic with a band of unscrupulous adventurers. Pope Nicholas was dealing with an actual ruler who merely sought legitimate recognition of his title from any whose hostility would make his hold precarious. Thus resting on the shadowy basis of the donation of Constantine the Pope substituted himself for the Emperor, whether of West or of East, over the whole of Southern Italy. Truly the movement for the emancipation of the Church from the State was already shaping itself into an attempt at the formation of a rival power.
[Sidenote: Alexander II (1061-73) and Milan.]
The value of this new alliance to the Papacy was put to the test almost immediately. On the death of Pope Nicholas (1061) the papal and imperial parties proceeded to measure their strength against each other. The reformers, acting under the leadership of Hildebrand, chose as his successor a noble Milanese, Anselm of Baggio, Bishop of Lucca, who now became Alexander II. He was elected in accordance with the provisions of the recent Lateran decree, and no imperial ratification was asked. On the purely ecclesiastical side this choice was a strong manifesto against clerical marriage. The city of Milan as the capital of the Lombard kingdom of Italy had for many centuries held itself in rivalry with Rome. Moreover, it was the stronghold of an aristocratic and a married clergy, which based its practice on a supposed privilege granted by its Apostle St. Ambrose. But this produced a reforming democracy which, perhaps from the quarter whence it gained its chief support, was contemptuously named by its opponents the Patarins or Rag-pickers. The first leader of this democratic party had been Anselm of Baggio. Nicholas II sent thither the fanatical Peter Damiani as papal legate, and a fierce struggle ended in the abject submission of the Archbishop of Milan, who attended a synod at Rome and promised obedience to the Pope.
[Sidenote: German opposition.]
The weak point in the decree of Nicholas II had been that the German clergy were not represented at the Council which issued it, and it was construed in Germany as a manifest attempt of the reforming party to secure the Papacy for Italy as against the German influence maintained by Henry III. The Roman nobles also had seen in the decree the design of excluding them from any share in the election. It was only by the introduction of Norman troops into Rome that the new Pope could be installed at the Lateran. A few weeks later a synod met at Basle in the presence of the Empress-Regent and the young Henry IV. The latter was invested with the title of Patrician, and the election of Alexander having been pronounced invalid, a new Pope was chosen in the person of another Lombard, Cadalus Bishop of Parma, who had led the opposition to the Patarins in the province of Milan. The Normans were recalled to their dominions, and the imperialist Pope, Honorius II, was installed in Rome. The struggle between the rival Popes lasted for three years (1061-4), and fluctuated with the fluctuations of power at the German court. Here the young King had fallen under the influence of Archbishop Hanno of K?ln, who, surrounded by enemies in Germany, hoped to gain a party by the betrayal of imperial interests in the recognition