The Dictates of the Pope

It was Hildebrand who in the 1070s, as Pope Gregory VII, turned the reform movement of the church against the very imperial authority which had led the Cluniac reformers during the tenth and early eleventh centuries.

Gregory had been well prepared to ascend the papal throne. He had been the dominant force in the reigns of the popes Nicholas II ( 1058-1061) and Alexander II ( 1061-1073). Also, in 1073 at the age of fifty, he was ready to exercise the enormous will and pride and personal authority for which he was notorious. Peter Damian ( 1007-1072), who had been associated with him in the struggle for papal supremacy since the 1050s, once addressed him as "my holy Satan," and said: "Thy will has ever been a command to me -- evil but lawful. Would that I had always served God and Saint Peter as faithfully as I have served thee." 9_A modern scholar has described Gregory as a man with an overpowering

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sense of mission, who pressed his ideas with "frightening severity and heroic persistence... regardless of the consequences to himself or to others [and who] had, to say the least, the temper of a revolutionary." 1 0_

Once he became pope, Gregory did not hesitate to use revolutionary tactics to accomplish his objectives. In 1075, for example, he ordered all Christians to boycott priests who were living in concubinage or marriage, and not to accept their offices for the sacraments or other purposes.

Lacking armies of its own, how was the papacy to make good its claims? How was it to overcome the armies of those who would oppose papal supremacy? And apart from the problem of meeting forceful opposition, how was the papacy to exercise the universal jurisdiction it had asserted? How was it effectively to impress its will on the entire Western Christian world, let alone Eastern Christendom, over which some claims of jurisdiction were also made?

An important aspect of the answers to these questions was the potential role of law as a source of authority and a means of control. During the last decades of the eleventh century, the papal party began to search the written record of church history for legal authority to support papal supremacy over the entire clergy as well as clerical independence of, and possible supremacy over, the entire secular branch of society. The papal party encouraged scholars to develop a science of law which would provide a working basis for carrying out these major policies. At the same time, the imperial party also began to search for ancient texts that would support its cause against papal usurpation.

There was, however, no legal forum to which either the papacy or the imperial authority could take its case -- except to the pope or the emperor himself. This, indeed, was the principal revolutionary element in the situation. In 1075 Pope Gregory VII responded to it by "looking within his own breast" and writing a document -- the Dictatus Papae (Dictates of the Pope) -- consisting of twenty-seven terse propositions, apparently addressed to no one but himself, including the following:

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1. That the Roman church is founded by the Lord alone.

2. That the Roman bishop alone is by right called universal.

3. That he alone may depose and reinstate bishops.

4. That his legate, even if of lower grade, takes precedence, in a council, over all bishops and may render a sentence of deposition against them.

7. That to him alone is it permitted to make new laws according to the needs of the times.

9. That the pope alone is the one whose feet are to be kissed by all princes.

10. That his name alone is to be recited in churches.

11. That he may depose emperors.

16. That no synod should be called general without his order.

17. That no chapter or book may be regarded as canonical without his authority.

18. That no judgment of his may be revised by anyone, and that he alone may revise [the judgments] of all.

21. That the more important cases of every church may be referred to the Apostolic See.

27. That he may absolve subjects of unjust men from their [oath of] fealty." ¹²

This document was revolutionary -- although Gregory ultimately managed to find some legal authority for every one of its provisions. ¹³

In December 1075 Gregory made known the contents of his Papal Manifesto, as it might be called today, in a letter to Emperor Henry IV in which he demanded the subordination of the emperor and of the imperial bishops to Rome. Henry replied, as did twenty-six of his bishops, in letters of January 24, 1076.

In response, Gregory excommunicated and deposed Henry, who in January 1077 journeyed as a humble penitent to Canossa, where the pope was staying, and waited three days for the opportunity to present himself barefoot in the snow and to confess his sins and declare his con­

-96- trition. Thus appealed to in his spiritual capacity, the pope absolved Henry and removed the excommunication and deposition. This gave Henry a chance to reassert his authority over the German magnates, both ecclesiastical and secular, who had been in rebellion against him. The struggle with the pope, however, was only postponed for a short time. In 1078 the pope issued a decree in which he said: "We decree that no one of the clergy shall receive the investiture with a bishopric or abbey or church from the hand of an emperor or king or of any lay person, male or female. But if he shall presume to do so he shall clearly know that such investiture is bereft of apostolic authority, and that he himself shall lie under excommunication until fitting satisfaction shall have been rendered." 15_ The conflict between pope and emperor broke out again and the Wars of Investiture resulted.

The first casualties of the Wars of Investiture were in the German territories, where the emperor's enemies took advantage of his controversy with the pope to elect a rival king, whom Gregory eventually supported.

The immediate political issue of the Wars of Investiture was that of the power of emperors and kings to invest bishops and other clergy with the insignia of their offices, uttering the words, "'Accipe ecclesiam!" Behind this issue lay the question of loyalty and discipline of clergy after election and investiture. These issues were of fundamental political importance. Since the empire and the kingdoms were administered chiefly by clergy, they affected the very nature of both the ecclesiastical authority and the imperial or royal authority. Yet even more was involved -- something deeper than politics -­namely, the salvation of souls. Previously, the emperor (or king) had been called the deputy ("vicar") of Christ; it was he who was to answer for the souls of all men at the Last Judgment. Now the pope, who had previously called himself the deputy of St. Peter, claimed to be the sole deputy of Christ with responsibility to answer for the souls of all men at the Last Judgment. Emperor Henry IV had written to Pope Gregory VII that according to the church fathers the emperor can be judged by no man; he alone on earth is "judge of all men"; there is only one emperor, whereas the Bishop of Rome is only the first among bishops. This indeed was orthodox doctrine that had pre­

-97- vailed for centuries. Gregory, however, saw the emperor as first among kings, a layman, whose election as emperor was subject to confirmation by the pope and who could be deposed by the pope for insubordination.

Ultimately, neither popes nor emperors could maintain their original claims. Under the Concordat of Worms in 1122, the emperor guaranteed that bishops and abbots would be freely elected by the church alone, and he renounced his right to invest them with the spiritual symbols of ring and staff, which implied the power to care for souls. The pope, for his part, conceded the emperor's right to be present at elections and, where elections were disputed, to intervene. Moreover, German prelates were not to be consecrated by the church until the emperor had invested them, by scepter, with what were called the "regalia," that is, feudal rights of property, justice, and secular government, which carried the reciprocal duty to render homage and fealty to the emperor. (Homage and fealty included the rendering of feudal services and dues on the large landed estates that went with high church offices.) Prelates of Italy and Burgundy, however, were not to be invested by the scepter and to undertake to render their homage and fealty to the emperor until six months after their consecration by the church. The fact that the power of appointment had to be shared -- that either pope or emperor could, in effect, exercise a veto -- made the question of ceremony, the question of procedure, crucial.

In England and Normandy, under the earlier settlement reached at Bec in 1107, King Henry I had also agreed to free elections, though in his presence, and had renounced investiture by staff and ring. Also, as later in Germany, he was to receive homage and fealty before, and not after, consecration.

The concordats left the pope with extremely wide authority over the clergy, and with considerable authority over the laity as well. Without his approval clergy could not be ordained. He established the functions and powers of bishops, priests, deacons, and other clerical officials. He could create new bishoprics, divide or suppress old ones, transfer or depose bishops. His authorization was needed to institute a new monastic order or to change the rule of an existing order. Moreover, the

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pope was called the "principal dispenser" of all church property, which was conceived to be the "patrimony of Christ." The pope also was supreme in matters of worship and of religious belief; and he alone could grant absolution from certain grave sins (such as assault upon a clerk), canonize saints, and distribute indulgences (relief from divine punishment after death). None of these powers had existed before 1075.

"The Pope," in the words of Gabriel LeBras, "ruled over the whole church. He was the universal legislator, his power being limited only by natural [law] and positive divine law [that is, divine law laid down in the Bible and in similar documents of revelation]. He summoned general councils, presided over them, and his confirmation was necessary for the putting into force of their decisions. He put an end to controversy on many points by means of decretals, he was the interpreter of the law and granted privileges and dispensations. He was also the supreme judge and administrator. Cases of importance -- mazores causae -- of which there never was a final enumeration, were reserved for his judgment." ¹⁷- None of these powers had existed before 1075.

Gregory declared the papal court to be "the court of the whole of Christendom." 18From then on, the pope had general jurisdiction over cases submitted to him by anyone-he was "judge ordinary of all persons." This was wholly new.

Over the laity the pope ruled in matters of faith and morals as well as in various civil matters such as marriage and inheritance. In some respects, his rule in these matters was absolute; in other respects, it was shared with the secular authority. Also, in still other matters which were considered to belong to the secular jurisdiction, the papal authority often became involved. Prior to 1075 the pope's jurisdiction over the laity had been subordinate to that of emperors and kings and generally had not been greater than that of other leading bishops.

The separation, concurrence, and interaction of the spiritual and secular jurisdictions was a principal source of the Western legal tradition.