A Century of Great Crises and Radical Reforms: IOOO—IIOO
Around the mid-eleventh century, signs of change were everywhere. In 1054 the church split into the Eastern and the Western churches, a schism that was to last for a millennium, that still exists, and that promises to continue.
The break helped to accelerate change, but it was also a highly visible symptom of profound changes already in operation. A comparison between successive decades can be illuminating.During the first half of the eleventh century, Rome was still the preferred abode of a rough and ignorant clergy given to simony and corruption. Pope John XIX (d. 1032), whose first concern was not his pontifical duties but improving the fortunes of his “house,” the powerful Tuscolani family, was emblematic of the state of the clergy.[45] Strong reformist sentiments developed during the pontificate of Nicholas II (d. 1061). Among the champions of reform was Humbert de Moyenmoutier, who wrote an important treatise, Contra simoni- acos in 1058. The most prominent reformer, however, was Cardinal Hildebrand, born perhaps in Rome, perhaps in Soana, near Grosseto. In 1073 he became pope as Gregory VII, and in 1075 he published a famous text, the Dietatus Papae, whose twenty-seven propositions outlined the prerogatives of the pope and of the hierarchy subordinate to him. Thus the most important act of this movement for reform, which came to be called “Gregorian” after the pope who was its most ardent proponent, was launched at the highest level of Christianity and from Rome.
Radical currents radiated from Rome throughout Europe. In many ways they were the most evident symptom of a reawakening, but they synchronized with other, equally far-reaching movements for renewal that preceded or coincided with them. These broad movements worked to reform canonical life by defining new “orders” of reformed canons such as the “Olivetans” of the Church of Sts.
Peter and Paul of Oliveto, or the “Mortarians” of the Church of Santa Croce of Mortara. Monastic life was also being recast, thanks to the reinterpretation and spread of the Benedictine Rule that had begun with the Cluniacs at Cluny, in Burgundy, as far back as 910 and that was continued by the Camaldolese (from Camaldoli, near Arezzo) after 1012, by the Vallombrosans (from Vallombrosa, near Florence) after 1030, and by the Cistercians (from Citeaux, in Burgundy) after about 1098, and thanks to the decisive break with the feudal world urged by the Cistercian Rule of St. Bernard.A historical reconstruction of the precise relationships between parallel phenomena is a difficult, if not impossible, task. It is even more difficult to state that one particular event was the determining cause of another. Nonetheless, one thing seems evident: in every field of human activity signs could be seen of a will for renewal; in only a few decades an extremely fluid state of affairs had opened the way to a new era. Historiography usually calls the centuries of this new era the “Renaissance of the twelfth century,”[46] or, more generally, the “Medieval Renaissance.”[47]
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