Word reached Rome towards the end of April, just as the city was mourning another loss—that of Pope Alexander. This time, at least, there was to be no trouble over the succession: the choice was too obvious. Archdeacon Hildebrand had already wielded effective power in the Curia for some twenty years, during many of which he had been supreme in all but name. When, according to a carefully prearranged plan, the crowd seized him during Alexander's funeral service, carried him to the Church of St Peter in Vinculis and there exultantly acclaimed him Pope, they were doing little more than regularising the existing state of affairs; and the canonical election that followed was the purest formality. Hastily he was ordained a priest—a desirable qualification to the Papacy which seems to have been overlooked during the earlier stages of his career—and was immediately afterwards enthroned as Supreme Pontiff in the name of Gregory VII.
Of the three great Popes of the eleventh century—Leo IX, Gregory VII and Urban II—Gregory was at once the least attractive and the most remarkable. Whereas the other two were aristocrats, secure in the possession of all that noble birth and a first-class education could bestow, he was a Tuscan peasant's son, Lombard by race, whose every word and gesture betrayed his humble origins.1 They assumed the Papacy almost as of right; he achieved it only after a long and arduous—though increasingly influential—apprenticeship in the Curia, and for no other reason than his immense ability and the power of his will. They were both tall, and of outstandingly distinguished appearance; he was short and swarthy, with a pronounced paunch and a voice so weak that, even making allowance for his heavy regional accent, his Roman colleagues often found it difficult to understand what he said. He had none of Leo's obvious saintliness, nor any of Urban's adroit political instinct or diplomatic flair. He was neither a scholar nor a theologian. And yet there was in his character something so compelling that he almost invariably dominated, automatically and effortlessly, any group of which he found himself a member.
His strength lay, above all, in the singleness of his purpose. Throughout his life he was guided by one overmastering ideal—the subjection of all Christendom, from the Emperors down, to the authority of the Church of Rome. But just as the Church must be supreme upon earth, so too must the Pope be supreme in the Church. He was the judge of all men, himself responsible only to God; his word was not only law, it was the Divine Law. Disobedience to him was therefore something very close to mortal sin. Never before had the concept of ecclesiastical autocracy been carried to such an extreme; never before had it been pursued with such unflmching determination. And yet this very extremism was to prove ultimately self-destructive. Confronted by adversaries of the calibre of Henry IV and Robert Guiscard, as determined as himself but infinitely more flexible, Gregory was to learn to his cost that his persistent refusal to compromise, even when his principles were not directly involved, could only bring about his downfall.
One of the Pope's first official acts on his accession was to write his condolences to Sichelgaita. The letter is not included among his collected correspondence, but the version given by Amatus so
1 Hildebrand, or Hildeprand, was a common Lombard name. His father's name, Bonizo, is an abbreviation of Bonipart, which seven centuries later we find again in the form of Buonaparte. Napoleon was also of Lombard stock. He and Hildebrand had much in common.
precisely expresses what we know of Gregory's thinking that it may well have been based on an authentic text. It runs as follows:
The death of Duke Robert, that dearest son of the Holy Church of Rome, has left the Church in deep and irremediable sorrow. The Cardinals and all the Roman Senate do greatly grieve at his death, seeing themselves thereby brought low. . . . But in order that Your Grace should know of Our goodwill and of the perfect love which we bore your husband, We now request you to inform your son that it is the pleasure of the Holy Church that he should receive at her hands all those things which his father held from the Pope Our Predecessor.
It was, by any standards, a profoundly hypocritical letter. Gregory had no cause to love Robert. The Duke had not lifted a finger to help the Papacy in its recent tribulations, while his brother Geoffrey and Geoffrey's son Robert of Loritello were even now ravaging valuable Church lands in the Abruzzi. On the other hand, the Pope was genuinely anxious that the Guiscard's successor should receive a proper investiture for his lands and titles; the Hautevilles were papal vassals, and he had no intention of allowing them to forget it. Roger Borsa was by all accounts a gentle and pious young man; he should prove a lot more amenable than his tempestuous father. In the circumstances, therefore, it can hardly have been a happy surprise for Pope Gregory when a week or two later he received a reply to his letter, not from a sorrowing widow but from Robert Guiscard himself, now well on his way to complete recovery. He was happy to inform the Pope—and through him, doubtless, the Cardinals and the Senate—that the reports of his death had been without foundation. However, he continued cheerfully, he had been most touched by the kind things the Pope had said about him, and asked nothing more than to be allowed to remain His Holiness's most obedient servant.
Robert must have enjoyed dictating his letter; but he too was anxious for a formal re-investiture. During his Sicilian campaigns the Pope's blessing had been of little significance except as a means of boosting his army's morale; but now that he was concentrating once again on his Italian possessions—and perhaps already beginning to nurse plans for vast enterprises beyond them—a renewed compact with Gregory could only strengthen his hand. It would have a psychological effect on the more obstreperous of his vassals and, more important still, would make it harder for the Pope to withhold his support if Robert should ask it. And so, through the good offices of Abbot Desiderius of Monte Cassino, an interview was arranged between Gregory and the Guiscard, to take place at Benevento on 10 August 1073.
The occasion proved a total fiasco. Indeed it seems possible that the two never even met. There were, for a start, serious difficulties over protocol. The Pope wished to receive Robert in his Benevento palace; the Duke, on the other hand, who may have had some advance warning of an assassination attempt, refused to set foot within the city and proposed that the meeting should take place outside the walls—a solution which Gregory found inconsonant with his papal dignity. Poor Desiderius must have had a thankless task, shuttling backwards and forwards between these two determined and mutually suspicious characters, arguing and cajoling with each in turn in the relentless heat of a Campanian August; but even if his efforts were successful and Duke and Pontiff were at last brought face to face, their confrontation seems to have done more harm than good. The only result was a complete rupture of relations between them—and a recognition by both parties that alliance was impossible and that alternative arrangements would have to be made.
There is something mysterious about the whole Benevento affair. The recent correspondence between the two parties may not have been notable for its sincerity, but it was outwardly cordial—even fulsome—and it revealed on both sides a genuine desire for discussions. What could have happened to alter the situation so radically? The breakdown cannot be ascribed entirely to the Guiscard's suspicions, nor to Gregory's pride. It may be that the Pope had insisted, as an essential preliminary to any agreement, that Robert put a stop to the continual incursions of his brother and nephew into the Abruzzi, and that the Duke had declared himself unable or unwilling to take the necessary action. Certainly Gregory felt very strongly on the matter: he was soon afterwards to send to the affected area a bishop, notorious for his strong-arm methods, whom he had applauded two years earlier for having deprived a number of rebellious monks of their eyes and tongues. But there is no evidence that the Abruzzi question was even raised at Benevento. All we know is that the Pope, on leaving the city, made straight for Capua; that he there confirmed Prince Richard in all his possessions; and that the two of them forthwith concluded a military alliance against the Duke of Apulia.
Back in Rome in the autumn of 1073, Pope Gregory was w
orried. Some months earlier, shortly after his accession, he had received a secret and urgent appeal from the new Byzantine Emperor, Michael VII, in Constantinople. The Empire of the East was facing the gravest crisis in its history. Two years before, at the very moment when Robert Guiscard was ehminating, by the capture of Bari, the last vestiges of Greek power in Italy, the Byzantine army under the Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes had suffered total annihilation by the Seljuk Turks near the Armenian town of Mantzikert. The whole of Asia Minor now lay open to the invaders, and from Asia Minor it was but a short leap to the capital itself. Romanus was taken prisoner by the Seljuks; their leader, Alp Arslan, soon gave him back his liberty, but on his return to Constantinople Romanus found that his stepson Michael had replaced him on the imperial throne. After a brief and futile attempt at a restoration, he had surrendered to the new government on receiving guarantees of his personal safety. With his long experience of Constantinople, he should have known better. The guarantees were forgotten; the old ex-Emperor's eyes were put out with red-hot irons, and five weeks later he was dead. Michael himself had played little active part in these events. He was a scholarly recluse with no appetite for political intrigue, content to be led by his chief mentor and minister, the brilliant but odious Michael Psellus.1 And it may well have been on Psellus' advice that he had written to the Pope imploring him to raise a Crusading army by which Eastern Christendom might finally be delivered from the fearful shadow of the infidel.
Gregory was deeply affected by the appeal. The two Churches
' The character of Psellus is nicely illustrated by the letter which he wrote at this time to the dying Romanus. Himself the principal author of the old man's downfall, he now congratulated him on the fortunate martyrdom by which, he argued, the Almighty had deprived him of his eyes because He had found him worthy of a higher light.
might be in schism, but he still considered himself responsible before God for the entire Christian world. Besides, this was a heaven-sent opportunity to bring the Byzantines back once again into the Roman fold, and he was determined not to let it pass him by. On the other hand he could not possibly launch an effective Crusade in the east while he was under a constant threat at home from Robert Guiscard and his Normans. They must be eliminated, once and for all. But how? He had few expectations of his new alliance with Richard of Capua, which he had concluded largely to prevent the two Norman leaders from joining forces themselves. Robert Guiscard was unquestionably the stronger of the two, but it was plain from their years of intermittent warfare that neither would ever be able to achieve a decisive victory over the other. The Pope's only remaining southern ally, Gisulf of Salerno, was an even more hopeless case. The Normans had already relieved him of nearly all the territory that had once made his principality the most powerful in the peninsula; and now, as the winter of 1073 drew near, came the news of another serious blow to his fortunes: Amalfi had voluntarily placed herself under the protection of the Duke of Apulia. It was Gisulf's own fault. He had never forgiven the Amalfitans for the part they had played in the assassination of his father twenty-one years before. Though never strong enough to capture the city by force of arms, he had always made life as unpleasant as he could for its people; and many hair-raising tales were told of the sufferings endured by such luckless Amalfitan merchants as from time to time fell into his clutches.1 When in 1073 Duke Sergius of Amalfi died, leaving only a child to succeed him, his subjects had therefore taken the one sensible course open to them. Robert had naturally accepted their offer. He loathed his brother-in-law Gisulf and had long had his eye on Salerno—which, but for the family feelings of Sichelgaita, he would probably have attacked long before. The possession of Amalfi would make his task much easier when the moment came.
1 Amatus speaks of one unfortunate victim whom Gisulf kept in an icy dungeon, removing first his right eye and then every day one more of his fingers and toes.
He adds that the Empress Agnes—who was now spending much of her time in South Italy— personally offered a hundred pounds of gold and one of her own fingers in ransom, but her prayers went unheard.
This new and unexpected success for the Guiscard disturbed Pope Gregory more than ever. At once he set to work to raise an army. As 1074 opened, papal messengers were already speeding north from Rome—to Beatrice of Tuscany and her daughter Matilda, and to Matilda's husband, Godfrey the Hunchback of Lorraine,1 to Azzo, Marquis of Este and William, Count of Burgundy, who was further instructed to pass the appeal on to Counts Raymond of Toulouse and Amadeus of Savoy. The Pope left them in no doubt of his intentions, nor of the order of priority in which he had determined to carry them out. He was not, as he was careful to emphasise, gathering this great host together simply to shed Christian blood; indeed he hoped that its very existence might prove an adequate deterrent to his enemies. 'Furthermore,' he added, 'we trust that yet further good may emerge in that, once the Normans are subdued, we may continue to Constantinople to the aid of those Christians who, beset by most frequent Saracen attacks, do insistently implore our aid.'
The replies to these letters seem to have been prompt and favourable. By March the Pope was able to announce at the Lenten Synod that his army would assemble the following June at a point near Viterbo, whence it would march against the Duke of Apulia and his followers—whom, for good measure, he now excommunicated. As the weeks went by and more and more troops gathered at the appointed place his spirits began to rise again, until at the beginning of June he felt strong enough to give his enemy one more chance. Peremptory as always, he summoned Robert to meet him at Benevento for a final conference.
Now it was the Guiscard's turn to feel alarm. A generation ago, at Civitate, he and his brothers and Richard of Aversa had successfully routed a papal army, but in those days the Normans were united. This time they were split, the Prince of Capua firmly aligned with the Pope. Robert and his men, fighting without allies, would have to proceed with caution. But perhaps after all there was still a chance of agreement. The reply he returned to Gregory was unctuously humble. His conscience was clear; he had never given the Pope cause for offence or disobeyed him in any way; and he would of course be honoured, anywhere and at any time, to present himself before His Holiness. And so, accompanied by a heavy escort —for he still did not trust Gregory an inch—he rode back to Benevento.
In his long and rampageous career Robert Guiscard had often been astonishingly lucky; but never had Fortune smiled on him more kindly than at this moment. Three days he waited at the gates of the city; the Pope never appeared. Just as all Gregory's plans had been laid and his army stood in readiness for the assault, dissension had broken out in its ranks. Once again the fault lay with Gisulf of Salerno. In recent years the conduct of his ships on the high seas had come dangerously close to piracy. The Amalfitans had probably suffered most, but many Pisan merchantmen had fared little better. When, therefore, the Pisan contingent among the troops provided by the Countess Matilda found themselves face to face with Gisulf in person, they made no secret of their feelings towards him. As soon as Gregory saw what was happening, he hastily packed the Prince of Salerno off to Rome; but it was too late. Sides had been taken up and the whole army was split. Within days it had broken up in confusion.
For the Pope this was disaster—and, where his relations with the Guiscard were concerned, an intense personal humiliation. Everything seemed to conspire against him. The army in which he had put his trust had disintegrated without taking a step into Norman territory; the Crusade which he had as good as promised the Byzantine Emperor and on which he had staked his reputation was more remote than ever; the opportunity for reuniting the Churches under his authority was slipping once again from his grasp. Worst of all, he—the Vicar of Christ on earth—had been made to look a fool in front of his enemies. And even this was not the end of his tribulations. A party of the Roman aristocracy—disaffected as always— was now actively plotting to get rid of him. He did not know that one of his own cardinals, a member of this group, had recentl
y approached Robert Guiscard and offered him the imperial crown in return for his assistance; or that Robert, seeing that the whole plan was hopelessly unrealistic, had refused to become involved. Even if he had, the knowledge would hardly have given him much consolation.
On Christmas Eve 1075 his enemies struck. The Pope was dragged from the altar in the crypt of S. Maria Maggiore when he was saying Mass, and carried off to a secret prison. He was soon found and released by an indignant populace, and had the satisfaction of personally saving his erstwhile captor from being lynched; but not before the world had seen just how shaky were the foundations on which his throne rested.
And now, when he was least ready to sustain it, Gregory received his first intimation of the greatest blow of all—that from which he would never altogether recover. Young Henry IV, King of the Romans and Western Emperor-elect, was preparing to descend into Italy, to dethrone the Pope and to have himself crowned Emperor.
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EXCOMMUNICATIONS AND INVESTITURES
Henry, not by usurpation but by God's holy will King, to Hildebrand, not Pope but false monk.
This salutation thou hast deserved, upraiser of strife, thou who art cursed instead of blessed by every order in the Church. . . . The archbishops, bishops and priests thou hast trodden under thy foot like slaves devoid of will. . . . Christ has called us to the Empire but not thee to the Papacy. Thou didst acquire it by craft and fraud; in scorn of thy monastic cowl thou didst obtain by gold favour, by favour arms, and by arms the throne of peace, from which thou hast destroyed peace. . . .
The Normans In The South Page 24