opposed to the official priesthood according to Rome’s needs.
Urban was the first to proclaim with emphasis the necessity of
a close association of the Curia with the religious orders, and
this he made the essential basis of the theocratic government.
As the originator of the first crusade, Urban is entitled to
the honour of the idea and its execution. There is no doubt
that he wished to satisfy the complaints that emanated
from the Christians dwelling in Jerusalem and
The First Crusade.
from the pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre, but it is
no less certain that he was disturbed by the fears
aroused throughout the Latin world by the recrudescence of
Mussulman invasions, and particularly by the victory won by
the Almoravides over the Christian army at Zalaca (1086).
The progress of these African Mussulmans into Spain and
their incessant piracies in Italy were perhaps the occasional
cause that determined Urban II. to work upon the imagination
of the infidels by an expedition into Syria. The papacy of
that time believed in the political unity of Islam, in a solidarity—which
did not exist—among the Mussulmans of Asia Minor,
Syria, Egypt and the Barbary coasts; and if it waited until the
year 1095 to carry out this project, it was because the conflict
with the Germanic Empire prevented the earlier realization
of its dream. The essential reason of Urban II.’s action, and
consequently the true cause of the crusade, was the ambition
of the pope to unite with Rome and the Roman Church the
Churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria and even Constantinople,
which the Greek schism had rendered independent.
This thought had already crossed the minds of Leo IX. and
Gregory VII., but circumstances had never allowed them to
put it into execution. Armed by the reformation with a moral
authority which made it possible to concentrate the forces of
the West under the supreme direction of the Church and its
leaders. Urban II. addressed himself with his customary decision
to the execution of this enormous enterprise. With him, as with
all his successors, the idea of a collective expedition of Europe
for the recovery of the Holy Places was always associated with
the sanguine hope of extinguishing the schism at Constantinople,
its very centre, by the substitution of a Latin for a Byzantine
domination. Of these two objects, he was only to realize the
former; but the crusade may well be said to have been his own
work. He created it and preached it; he organized it, dominated
it, and constantly supervised it. He was ever ready to act,
either personally or through his delegates, and never ceased
to be the effective leader of all the feudal soldiers he enrolled
under the banner of the Holy See. He corresponded regularly
with his legates and with the military leaders, who kept him
accurately informed of the position of the troops and the progress
of the operations. He acted as intermediary between the
soldiers of Christ and their brothers who remained in Europe,
announcing successes, organizing fresh expeditions, and spurring
the laggards to take the road to Jerusalem.
The vast conflict aroused by the Hildebrandine reformation,
and particularly the investiture quarrel, continued under the
three successors of Urban II.; but with them it
of the assumed a different character, and a tendency arose
to terminate it by other means. The violence and
disorders provoked by the struggle brought about a
Settlement
of the Investiture Quarrel.
reaction, which was organized by certain prelates who advocated
a policy of conciliation, such as the Frenchman Ivo, bishop
of Chartres (c. 1040–1116). These conciliatory prelates were
sincere supporters of the reformation, and combated simony,
the marriage or concubinage of priests, and the immorality of
sovereigns with the same conviction as the most ardent followers
of Gregory VII. and Urban II.; but they held that the intimate
union of Church and State was indispensable to the social order,
and that the rights of kings should be respected as well as
the rights of priests. The text they preached was harmony
between the priesthood and the state. Dividing what the irreconcilables
of the Hildebrandine party considered as an indissoluble
whole, they made a sharp distinction between the property
of the Church and the Church itself, between the political and
territorial power of the bishops and their religious authority,
and between the feudal investiture which confers lands and
jurisdiction and the spiritual investiture which confers ecclesiastical
rights. This doctrine gradually rallied all moderate
minds, and finally inspired the directors of Christendom in
Rome itself. It explains the new attitude of Paschal II. and
Calixtus II., who were both sincere reformers, but who sought in
a policy of compromise the solution of the difficult problem of
the relations of Church and State.
History has not done sufficient justice to the Italian monk,
Paschal II., who was the equal of Urban in private virtues,
personal disinterestedness, and religious conviction,
but was surpassed by him in ardour and rigidity
of conduct. Altered circumstances and tendencies
of opinion called for a policy of conciliation. In France,
Paschal II., 1099–1118.
Paschal granted absolution to Philip I.—who had many
times been anathematized by his predecessors—and reconciled
him solemnly with the Church, on the sole condition that he
should swear to renounce his adulterous marriage. The pope
could be under no delusion as to the value of this oath, which
indeed was not kept; he merely regularized formally a state of
affairs which the intractable Urban II. himself had never been
able to prevent. As for the French question of the investitures,
it was settled apparently without any treaty being expressly
drawn up between the parties. The kings of France contemporary
with Paschal II. ceased to practice spiritual investiture,
or even to receive feudal homage from the bishops. They did
not, however, renounce all intervention or all profit in the
nominations to prelacies, but their intervention was no longer
exhibited under the forms which the Hildebrandine party held
to be illegal. In England, Paschal II. put an end to the long
quarrel between the royal government and Anselm of Canterbury
by accepting the Concordat of London (1107). The crown in
England also abandoned investiture by the pastoral staff and
ring, but, more fortunate than in France, retained the right
of receiving feudal homage from the episcopate. As for Germany,
the Emperor Henry V. wrung from the pope, by a display
of force at Rome, concessions which provoked the indignant
clamours of the most ardent reformers in France and Italy.
It must not, however, be forgotten that, in the negotiations
at Sutri, Paschal had pride and independence enough to propose
to the emperor the only solution of the conflict that was entirely
logical and essentially Christian, namely, the renunciation by
the Church of its temporal power and the renunciation by the
lay lords of all intervention in elections and investitures—in
other words, the absolute separation of the priesthood and the
state. The idea was contrary to the whole evolution of medieval
Catholicism, and the German bishops were the first to repudiate
it. At all events, it is certain that Paschal II. prepared the way
for the Concordat of Worms. On the other hand, with more
acuteness than his predecessors, he realized that the papacy
could not sustain the struggle against Germany unless it could
rely upon the support of another Christian kingdom of the
West; and he concluded with Philip I. of France Alliance
with
France.
and Louis the Fat, at the Council of Troyes (1107),
an alliance which was for more than a century the
salvation of the court of Rome. It is from this time that
we find the popes in moments of crisis transporting themselves
to Capetian territory, installing their governments and
convening their councils there, and from that place of refuge
fulminating with impunity against the internal and external
foe. Without sacrificing the essential principles of the reformation.
Paschal II. practised a policy of peace and reaction in every
way contrary to that of the two preceding popes, and it was
through him that the struggle was once more placed upon the
religious basis. He refused to retain Hugo, bishop of Die
(d. 1106), as legate; like Urban and Gregory, he gave or confirmed
monastic privileges without the protection he granted to the
monks assuming a character of hostility towards the episcopate;
and, finally, he gave an impulse to the reformation of the chapters,
and, unlike Urban II., maintained the rights of the canons
against the claims of the abbots.
Guy, the archbishop of Vienne, who had been one of the
