The Council of Sutri in 1046

In 1046 Henry III finally has time to go to Rome and claim the imperial crown. All he wants is get in, get crowned and get out before the Malaria season. He encounters a problem when he finds out that the current pope Gregory VI has bought the papacy for cold hard cash, a sin that could invalidate his coronation. Henry III gets involved, deposes all three competing popes and inadvertently starts a chain of events that ends in what Norman Cantor calls “the first of the three world revolutions”.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans – Episode 28 – 3 Popes with one Stone

In today’s episode we will witness the very beginnings of what Norman Cantor described as the first of the tree world revolutions. We are laying the foundations to that moment Tom Holland compares to the crossing of the Rubicon or the storming of the Bastille. An event that shaped Western Europe into its own specific narrative that let it to get ahead of civilisations far older and far more sophisticated than its own. History would call this the Gregorian Reform, though it starts well before pope Gregory VII and Gregory VII was by no means its intellectual leader.

And like all great revolutions it starts with something the significance of which is overlooked by contemporaries.. Remember Louis XVI diary entry for the 14^th of July 1789 “rien”, nothing.

Well in the case of the Gregorian reform it starts not with a nothing, but with something we have seen many times before in the History of the Germans podcast, a standard imperial expedition to Rome to acquire the imperial crown.

Henry III’s intention was in all likelihood to cruise down to Rome, get crowned during the now traditional winter months and be back across the alps before the malaria season starts in spring. That is what his father Konrad II and his predecessor Henry II had done. Neither of these had had any interest in getting embroiled in Roman affairs. They all remembered Otto III and how that had ended.

In October 1046 Henry III arrives in the capital of the Lombards, Pavia where he holds a synod. He could travel with just his bodyguard. The last 7 years he had made good decisions as regards Italy. It started with his mediation in the Milanese uprising we had discussed in Episode 26. He appointed sensible bishops who supported the reform of the church, and where he had made a mistake, reversed decisions based on advice. The Italians were glad to see him and regarded him as a good, if mainly absent overlord.

In November he meets the current pope, Gregory VI in Piacenza to hammer out the details of the upcoming coronation. Things are fine and both pope and emperor treat each other with the respect their offices afford.

Sometime after this meeting Henry III has concerns. The more he hears about the way Gregory VI has been elevated to the throne of St. Peter, the more he wonders whether his coronation would be valid.

To understand his concerns as well as the background to our much bigger story, I need to bring you up to speed with the history of the papacy since the death of Otto III.

The last time we have seriously talked about Rome was in the last years of Otto III, the young emperor who dreamt of a Renovation of the Roman Empire with its actual capital in the actual city of Rome. Otto III had appointed 2 popes, first Gregory V, one of his close relatives and then his tutor and spiritual counsellor Gregory of Aurilhac, who took the name of Sylvester II.

Gregory V and Sylvester II had tried to clean up the papacy, which for hundreds of years had been a plaything of the Roman gangster aristocrats and had failed to project any spiritual leadership outside the Contado of the city of Rome. Sylvester II tried to bring the two-sword theory into practice. On this general theory the Pope yields the spiritual power and the emperor the secular power. Pope and Emperor are to work in unison at spreading the word of Christ and preparing the people for the coming of the antichrist. He worked tirelessly at improving the moral and educational standards of the clergy, papal administration and ecclesiastical authority.

But Sylvester II only lasted a year after Otto III had died in 1002.

As soon as Otto III had left Rome in 1001 John Crescentius took control of the holy city. John Crescentius was the son of Crescentius II, the man Otto III had executed on the roof of the Castel Sant Angelo and whose body was hung upside down from the gallows of Monte Mario. Unsurprisingly John Crescentius did not like the Germans very much.

Like other secular rulers of the city of Rome before him he appointed a string of tame popes, John XVII, John XVIII and Sergius V, who did as far as I can see pretty much nothing of note. The only thing they did was refusing to crown emperors which is why Henry II took his time to become emperor.

John Crescentius died in 1012 probably of natural causes. With his death the Crescenti rule of Rome ended. They were replaced by the other leading family of Rome, the Theophylacts. We met them before. They had graced papal history with such impeccable spiritual leaders like the Senatrix Mariucca and the debauched child Pope John XII.

The intervening years in the wilderness had turned the Theophylacts into battle-hardened warriors. To avoid the whole Malaki of having to find a suitable prelate to be pet pope, count Gregory of Tusculum decides to do the job himself. He gets ordained as priest and elevated to the see of St. Peter on the same day as Pope Benedict VIII.

Benedict VIII was a competent administrator and soldier. He mended the relationship with the empire and crowned Henry II in 1014. He even travelled to Bamberg to consecrate Henry II’s magnificent new cathedral.

When Benedict VIII died his brother had to pick up the job. Another same day ordination, election and elevation takes place. This Tusculum count took the name of John XIX. Things continued pretty much as before. John XIX crowns Konrad II in one of the most splendid and best attended coronations of the Middle Ages. He does however pursue a more independent policy from the empire.

In 1032 the next count of Tusculum ascends the throne, Benedict IX, a nephew of John XIX and Benedict VIII. He was quite young, probably 18 or 20 when he became the leader of Christianity. There are some chroniclers who claim he was only 12 when he was elevated, indulged in rape and murder and even displayed homosexual tendencies, though all that is likely imperial propaganda. But even 20 is not really an age when one should become pope. It is likely that his personal conduct fell somewhat short of the moral demands the office is usually associated with. Be that as it may, the emperors did not care as long as Benedict IX pursued a generally imperial friendly policy. HE even joined Konrad II during his campaign in Southern Italy in 1038.

Things get complicated for him in 1044. A “new aristocracy” in Rome is emerging that challenges the traditional mafia oligarchy that had ruled the city since the 9^th century. The upstarts throw Benedict IX out and bring in a new pope, Sylvester III. By 1045 Benedict IX is back. For reasons that are somewhat unclear he decides that the papacy is not really for him, and he sells it to a gentleman called John Gratian. That sale is not propaganda, that actually happened.

John Gratian takes the title of Gregory VI and it is this pope our friend Henry III encounters in November 1046 in Piacenza.

News trickle through that Gregory VI has paid to become pope, which constitute the sin of Simony. That causes a serious problem for Henry III. If Gregory VI had indeed acquired the papacy in such a crass manner, then what is any of the sacraments worth he will be conducting. Could he, Henry III be taking part in a sinful act if he had himself crowned by a pope whose foul act condemns him to eternal hellfire.

He is now on theologically thin ice. And to say it in German “Wenn ich nicht mehr weiter weiss, gruende ich einen Arbeitskreis” which loosely translates as “if I am at a loss, I will found a taskforce”. That task force was the Council of Sutri in December 1046. For that he convened the main churchmen of Italy as well as the German church leaders who had accompanied him on his journey.

The assembled bishops easily dismissed antipope Sylvester III as uncanonical. When Gregory VI admitted to have bought the papacy in order to bring an end to the travesty that was the papacy of Benedict IX, that made this question easy. And Benedict IX did not even show up. Henry III in one fell swoop deposed all three popes.

He now needed a new one. And this time it had to be a proper churchman who cleans up the mess the papacy has become. Henry III knew a lot of proper churchmen, all of whom were members of the German Imperial church. He first asked Adalbert archbishop of Bremen/Hamburg and eternal scorn of the Saxons but he refused. Bishop Suitger of Bamberg was more amenable and is made Pope Clement II on the spot.

Clement II crowns Henry III and sends him back on his way home to avoid the Malaria. Clement II stays behind and dies of the disease within 10 months. The next volunteer was Poppo, bishop of Brixen, who as Damasus II lasts just 30 days before being taken down by the disease. In 1048 Henry appoints his cousin, Bruno, bishop of Toul to become pope as Leo IX.

Leo IX lasts almost 5 years. These five years are a crucial time for the papacy and ultimately European history.

The first smart thing Leo IX does is to make his acceptance of the papal crown dependent upon the consent of the Romans. That may not be quite a free election as such given Leo arrives with a contingent of imperial soldiers, but he shows the Romans respect which they appreciate. He is also coming back to a city of Rome that has changed. The Crescenti have died out and the counts of Tusculum are on the run. The whole place is looking for a new equilibrium.

The new thing is that the pope is now appearing on the international stage. Leo IX will undertake three major journeys to Germany in his 5-year reign, travel extensively across Italy and will hold a total of 12 synods. The key topics of his synods were simony, the purchasing of holy offices and the marriage of clergy.

Until Leo IX these gatherings of German or Italian bishops were usually presided over by the king or emperor. Now the pope takes a more hands-on role in managing the church. He begins a fundamental reform of the church infrastructure. That includes introducing the college of cardinals as an administrative body. Up until then the cardinal was just a honorific given to priests of the major basilicas of Rome. Now they get directly involved in the management of the global church. Leo paves the way to solve theological disputes using the new techniques of logic and dialectic that would ultimately become the scholastic method which will dominate European thinking in the high Middle Ages. The objective here is not just to make management as usual more effective, no, Leo IX is driving fundamental change and reform.

To understand the significance of Leo IX we have to see his actions in the context of some major changes happening in the early 11^th century.

The 11^th century is not short of momentous change. For one, there is a dramatic rise in economic activity brought about by climate change, improved agricultural methods and the replacement of slavery with feudal obligations. The agricultural surplus allows for the creation of markets, trade and cities. People as a whole are wealthier. They are climbing up Maslow’s pyramid having much higher security of food and shelter than 150 years ago. That drives the demand for peace, as defined as the absence of violence we discussed last episode. In areas where such security is provided, self-actualisation becomes a more and more significant desire.

In the 11^th century being the person, you always wanted to be did not involve yoga, veganism or podcasting. What people wanted to do is live the right life so that they would be chosen at the day of judgement. And the day of judgement was imminent as a 1000 years had passed since the passion of Christ.

We have encountered these extreme forms of piety amongst lay men already in the personalities of Otto III and Henry II. As the century progresses, more and more often just ordinary people feel the need to follow Christ’s example without becoming priests or monks They spend long time in religious devotion, give money or their labour to the church, help the poor and in extremis embark on self-flagellation or wearing of hair shirts. Going on arduous pilgrimages to Rome or Jerusalem is no longer something only churchmen and holy hermits do, in 1034 Robert, duke of Normandy leaves his worldly possessions to his 8-year-old bastard son and goes on pilgrimage to Jerusalem where he dies. In 1096 ordinary people follow Pope Urban’s call for a crusade and set off on foot to Jerusalem, crossing Germany and the Balkans before being sent to their certain death by the Byzantine emperor.

This rise in lay piety scared the church no end. How can the church maintain their moral authority in society when the flock lives more saintly lives than the vicars sent to lead them in prayer. At the same time the laymen ask how effective prayer by a bent prelate could be.

We have been talking about church reform several times before. Led by the Abbey of Cluny and the reform monasteries inside the empire the church had responded. Since the time of Henry II monasteries were regularly reviewed as to their adherence to the rules of Saint Benedict.

Weakness in discipline usually meant (i) priests and monks living in relationships or even got married, (ii) the sin of Simony, i.e., the buying of selling of holy offices, which usually led to (iii) laziness, greed and incompetence.

If weaknesses in discipline are discovered, the abbot would be replaced, and things were put right.

The chronicler Hermann of Reichenau, himself a monk at that famous monastery describes the process as follows:

Quote: “In Reichenau on the death of Abbot Werner the brethren elected the monk henry. King Henry (that is Henry II), loathed his arrogance -although he had received money from him. Henry was hostile to the brethren, who had been subject of accusations in his presence. Against their will he appointed to rule them a certain Immo. Abbot of Gorze, a harsh man who at the time also held Prum. Some of the brethren, therefore, left that place on their own accord and some of them were severely afflicted by him with fasts, scourges and exile. Thus the noble monastery suffered for its sins a heavy loss in great men, books and church treasures..” unquote.

Two years later “King Henry, after hearing at last of the cruelty of Immo, removed him and appointed Bern, a learned and pious man….he was joyfully received and gathered the scattered brethren together again.”

This little story tells us not just about the effort going into the church reform but also the degree of success. Leaving aside the hypocrisy that Henry II had taken money from the abbot elect. But bringing Immo in and accepting a loss in the economic viability of a monastery as important as Reichenau was a considerable financial effort on Henry II’s part. However, it seems the measures did not achieve their ultimate goal as Immo had to be removed. The new Abbot presumably had to scale down standards to entice the brethren to return.

Such ultimately half-hearted efforts failed to cut the mustard with the increasingly pious laymen. They were looking for more and for better.

In the 1030s the next iteration of church reform, call it Church Reform 2.0 took hold. This next generation of reformers had little in common with the grand abbots of Cluny. They revived the ancient tradition of hermits and holy men who had thrived in the Eastern Roman Empire since the 5^th century.  

According to Norman Cantor Ascetics came back in fashion in Western Europe during the 11^th century because now people had enough to eat. Before that everyone was going hungry, making it hard to differentiate between a poor man and a saint.

We have met some of these hermits already, unsurprisingly in the company of Otto III the epitome of lay piety amongst early medieval rulers. There was St. NIlus who accused the emperor of overreach when he had Crescentius II cut to pieces and pope John XVII mutilated and humiliated. Another was St. Romuald who founded his own ascetic order. His motto was: Sit in your cell as in paradise. Put the whole world behind you and forget it. Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman watching for fish. The path you must follow is in the Psalms — never leave it.

From this purely eremitic tradition the community of Vallombrosa near Florence emerged. Their aim was to combine the ascetic, eremitic lifestyle with life in the community, preaching the gospel and doing good works. The rules were much stricter than the traditional Benedictine rule and involved vows of silence, seclusion and poverty.

It is out of these communities and spiritual tradition that two of the four most important Gregorian reformers come.

The first one is St. Peter Damian or Pietro Damiano.  He was born an orphan of a noble but impoverished family. He was badly mistreated in his early youth before being taken in by a cousin who was a priest. Once his intelligence is noticed, he is sent to study theology and canon law at the cathedral schools of Ravenna and Parma. In Parma he becomes a lecturer at the age of 25. 

He joins the hermitage of Fonte Avellano where he becomes prior in 1043. He will remain in this role until the end of his life. Pietro Damiano embraces the life of an ascetic hermit enthusiastically and subjects himself to extreme forms of devotion and penitence, including regular flagellation up to a point where he is near death.

But the solitary life of an hermit is not really for him. His true passion is to meet people, preach on street corners and squares, reaching out to the Common man.. In between excessive religious exercises and itinerant preaching he gets involved in the controversies that shake the church in his time. He has a habit of sending out treatises analysing and judging ecclesiastical decisions.

How smart or well informed they are, is a bit doubtful since he constantly declares individuals as the harbingers of a golden age, which includes the debauched Pope benedict IX and the simonistic Gregory VI, two issues he is particularly opposed to. 

His pet hates were Simony and Homosexuality.

Simony probably needs a bit of explanation. It is named after Simon the Sorcerer who makes an appearance in the deeds of the Apostles, chapter 8 verse 9 to 25. A sorcerer, as we all know is a wizard without a hat. Simon was -according to the account – a very successful sorcerer with a large followership in Samaria. When he saw the apostle Philip preach, he became a believer, was baptised and began to follow him around amazed by all the great signs and miracles Philip performed. At one point they were joined by Peter and John who could bring down the Holy Spirit by placing their hands on the heads of the believers.

Simon was mightily impressed by that and offered Peter and John money to learn this skill. He said that they should give him this ability so that everyone on whom he lays his hands may receive the holy spirit.

Peter was not happy and answered: ““May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money! You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord in the hope that he may forgive you for having such a thought in your heart. For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin.”

The interesting point about simony is that it is not a sin of bad intention but a sin of bad means. Simon the sorcerer is not ill disposed to the church. Au contraire, he wants to  do good, spread the gospel and bring the Holy Spirit to the believers. His sin is that he wants to buy the skills needed, which shows that his heart is not right. Hence when Gregory VI tried to justify his payment to Benedict IX with the argument that it was all for the good of the church, the argument does not cut it. He may have the right intention but uses the wrong means. We will find out how important that distinction is.

Pietro Damiano wrote a long work on Simony and how to define it and what its consequences are. The important question is what constitutes the “offer of money”. In the case of Gregory VI it is quite obvious, I pay you X to become pope. But what about the usual payments a new bishop or Abbot has to pay to his new liege lord? What about the abbot or bishop’s feudal obligations to the king? And then there is the question, are the sacraments performed by a simonistic priest still valid? Is a priest ordained by a simonistic bishop properly ordained, and if not, are his sacraments invalid as a fruit of the poison tree? Pietro Damiano writes three books on this subject, generally taking a somewhat pragmatic view.

Where he is not pragmatic at all is on licentiousness. His argument was -not unreasonably – that a priest or bishop engaging in every kind of immorality undermines the authority of the church and would bring down the wrath of the pious laity on them. He is particularly concerned about sexual relationships between priests and adolescent boys that were often covered up by their superiors – plus ca change. And then he is a full on rabid homophobe promising fire and brimstone to men loving men. Just when you thought, maybe the guy is not so bad, that thing comes out.

The other thought leader of the Gregorian reforms who appears in the 1040s is Humbert, usually called da Silva Candida after the church whose priest he was in Rome. He was a lot more dogmatic and radical than Pietro Damiano. In particular he believed that all sacraments of simonistic priests were invalid, including the acts of priests ordained by a simonistic priest. He also firmly believed in a very wide definition of simony that included any involvement of the emperor in the election of bishops or abbots.

I guess you get an idea of what is going on here. The church is under pressure to improve its image. Reform has been ongoing for a long time, but the outcome is underwhelming against the backdrop of growing lay piety. That creates room for new and revolutionary ideas about monastic life, priestly conduct and ultimately the roles of temporal and spiritual power.

And Pope Leo IX, cousin of emperor Henry III, member of the imperial church jumps right on to that bandwagon. Actually, the emperor himself is massively in favour of the early reform.

For Leo IX, Henry III, the mighty abbot of Cluny and even Pietro Damiano, there is no question whatsoever who should ultimately lead the reform effort, the emperor. After 200 years of papal agony and irrelevance, there simply cannot be anyone else who has the moral and physical assets to push through major change.

Ever since Otto the Great the world had operated in what Norman Cantor called the early medieval equilibrium. The world and the Church are one and the same. The rule of the world is in principle divided between the spiritual and the temporal, the pope and the emperor. But they are just two sides of the same coin. The emperor brings not just peace and justice, he also promotes Christianity to far-flung pagan lands and looks after the spiritual well-being of his people. Him getting involved in theological debates or church reform is not meddling, but part of the job. The pope should in principle do the same, but in all protagonists’ lifetime to date never did any of it. Henry III was simply happy that his cousin was shouldering some of the work.

A papacy that actually does something is new. Being present, living a moral life and caring about the spiritual well-being of the people dramatically improves the standing of the papacy. That is why Leo IX is so important. His change in papal standing creates an alternative that simply did not exist before. If the realm of the spiritual is managed well, there is less justification for an emperor to be involved. If we have a well run church, why do we have a theocratic ruler who claims to be the vicar of Christ on earth? After Leo IX the direct involvement of the emperor in church affairs is no longer the natural state of affairs. The two sides of the medal are drifting apart.

The other component that allows the two sides to drift apart is even less obvious to Leo IX and even more unexpected. The Normans.

I told you in episode 25 that the Normans will appear in the narrative and that they matter, like a lot. The Normans I talk about are not exactly the ones you probably think about right now. I am talking about the Sicilian Normans.

We are in the year 1048 now, 18 years before William the Conqueror sets sail for the English coast.  Normandy is the most tightly run state in western Europe outside the empire. Like in the empire central power is able to maintain order, prevent the construction of castles and stop the nobles from feuding. That is great for peasants but not great for the second, third, fourth and fifth sons of the Norman knightly class.

One outlet for their ambition had been to take service as a mercenary in Southern Italy. Southern Italy was a perennial mess where Lombard dukes, Byzantine viceroys, independent cities and the emir of Sicily are tied up in near incessant fighting. The Normans, the superheroes of the 11^th century, show up from 999 onwards and everyone wants them in their army. Initially they work for cold hard cash, but as that is scarce, accept land and fiefs as payment. Konrad II for the first time enfeoffs a Norman lord with the county of Aversa in the 1030s.

From there it goes bang, bang, bang. Ranulf of Aversa takes over the much bigger Capua. Then the 7 Hauteville brothers arrive. They were the sons of a Norman nobleman, Tancred of Hauteville. The first to come to prominence was William, called Iron hand. The name came about when he decapitated the emir of Sicily with just one stroke of his sword. He becomes count of Puglia in 1042 after taking it from the Byzantines. William and his brother Drogo then attacked Calabria. William died in 1046 and was succeeded by Drogo who was murdered by a local mercenary. On whose orders, nobody knows. But there were still a lot of Hauteville brothers left. The next count of Apulia was Humbert. Humbert picks up Bari and by now, large parts of Southern Italy is in the hands of various Norman lords, with the Hauteville family the most powerful.

The rise of the Normans concerns Leo IX a lot. The last couple of hundred years the papacy’s neighbours to the south were the Lombard princes of Benevento, Capua and Spoleto. These guys may be well armed but spent most of the time fighting each other or the Byzantines or the Emir of Sicily, leaving the pope well alone. Projecting the development of the last 15 years forward Leo IX concluded that soon the Byzantines and Lombards would be gone, and he would look down the barrel of a heavily armed force of Scandinavian giants.

In 1053 he decided to act. Leo IX raised an army amongst the Lombards and Northern Italians supported by a small contingent of imperial troops. Near the town of Civitate in Puglia, the papal army meets the Norman forces led by Humbert of Hauteville and another Hauteville brother Robert Guiscard (“The Cunning”). The Normans were outnumbered and undersupplied. The situation was so dire that Humbert asked for a truce which Leo IX refused. When the two sides met the Normans did however win quite unexpectedly. The Norman troops displayed the discipline and cohesion needed to hold the line, something the motley crew of Papal allies lacked. Only the Imperial troops in the centre fought all the way to the end but were ultimately defeated. Pope Leo IX was captured and brought to Benevento, which the Normans quickly annexed.

Leo IX was held for nearly a year and treated with all the honours of his office. He finally made an agreement with Humphrey and Robert Guiscard, the contents of which are not known.

One man in Leo IX’s company direct observed these developments and drew his own conclusions, Hildebrand Cardinal priest of the Basilica of St. Paul outside ethe Walls. He realised the Normans were not only a military force that could counterbalance any emperor’s troops in Italy but also that they craved acceptance by the Holy See. Even before Hildebrand ascended the papal throne as Gregory VII did he forge an alliance with Robert Guiscard which made the latter king of Sicily and the former the most powerful Pope the world had ever seen.

We will spend a lot of time talking about Gregory VII in the upcoming episodes, so there will be a lot of opportunity to dive into his background, worldview and deeds as we go along. The only thing to point out here is a grandiose twist of Irony. Gregory VII whose great reform objective was to end Simony started his career in the chancery of pope Gregory VI, the one and only pope who definitely bought the papacy for cold hard cash. Hildebrand followed Gregory VI into exile in Cologne, never officially renounced him and even chose his papal name after his old simonistic boss.

Next week we will go back to Germany and look at the remaining years of Henry III’s reign, where we will find the other strains of history that inevitably drag the Salian regime onto the frozen field outside the castle of Canossa.  I hope to see you then.