Pope Gregory VII

“ I, king Henry, on account of the murmuring and enmity which the archbishops and bishops, dukes, counts and other princes of the realm of the Germans, and others who follow them in the same matter of dissension, bring to bear against me, will, within the term which our master pope Gregory has constituted, either do justice according to his judgment or conclude peace according to his counsels—unless an absolute impediment should stand in his way or in mine. ”

“ The whole life-work of Gregory VII. was based on his conviction that the church has been founded by God and entrusted with the task of embracing all mankind in a single society in which His will is the only law; that, in her capacity as a divine institution, she outtops all human structures; and that the pope, qua head of the church, is the vice-regent of God on earth, so that disobedience to him implies disobedience to God—or, in other words, a defection from Christianity. ”

“ Therefore the papal ax must be laid at the very root of the evil, [449] namely, lay investiture and the secular control of the clergy.
In his first efforts to realise his lofty ideal, Gregory VII. desired to unite all Christendom under the suzerainty of the Pope and through this submission to conquer the world for God. On the very day of his consecration (April 30th) he sent Cardinal Hugo to Spain to replace the Gothic with the Roman ritual and thus to secure Spain as a papal fief. ”

“ It is indeed a little difficult to see wherein it was possible for any successor of Gregory VII to make an advance upon the claims put forward by that Pope. Gregory in fond of pointing out that the power of binding and loosing given to St. Peter was absolutely comprehensive, including all persons and secular as well as spiritual matters. Innocent tells the Patriarch of Constantinople that the Lord left to Peter not only the whole Church, but the whole world to govern. ”

“ This battle for the foundation of papal omnipotence within the church is connected with his championship of compulsory celibacy among the clergy and his attack on simony. Gregory VII. did not introduce the celibacy of the priesthood into the church, for even in antiquity it was enjoined by numerous laws. He was not even the first pope to renew the injunction in the 11th century, for legislation on the question begins as early as in the reign of Leo IX. But he took up the struggle with greater energy and persistence than his predecessors. ”

“ But Louis died in the same year, and the pope followed him, without having succeeded in giving a permanent form to the new tribunal which had been introduced into France.
Gregory IX., who ascended the pontifical throne in 1227, finally established the Inquisition: he had been the zealous protector of St. Dominic, and the intimate friend of St. Francis d'Assiz. Cardinal Roman was more fortunate than the legates who preceded him: the nobles, weary of a war which had lasted twenty years, wished for peace. ”

“ Mark well, beloved, if this pope so severely judges the friend or companion of those with whom, on account of their actions he is angry, with what condemnation he will visit the man himself with whose actions he is displeased. ”

“ A man of heart, power, and lofty purpose—a ruler who saw the opportunity and need of the Christian Church in Western Europe, who felt her new impulses, and who could guide her through a crucial period to a great and useful career—such a man the Roman senate, clergy, and people believed that they had found in the monk Gregory. He alone could save them from Teutonic anarchy, on the one hand, and from Roman decay on the other.
Although elected Pope unanimously by the senate, clergy, and people of Rome, Gregory did not want the office. ”

“ In such a state of things Pope Gregory the Great raised the Papacy [A. D. 590] to a position of decisive eminence, and marked out the course of its future policy. The piety of emperors and nobles had conferred lands on the Roman Church, not only in Italy, but in Sicily, Corsica, Gaul, and even in Asia and Africa, until the Bishop of Rome had become the largest landholder in Italy. To defend his Italian lands against the incursions of the Lombards was a course suggested to Gregory by self-interest ”

“ Of all the early Popes, save Leo I and Gregory I, it is true that we may be tolerably at home in the history of their times without knowing much about them. No Pope is ranked among the leading Western Fathers. The only considerable theologian who occupied the Holy See, before the year 1000, is Gregory I ”

“ Gregory does not stop with asserting the pope's complete supremacy over the Church; he goes still further and claims for him the right to restrain the civil government when it seems necessary in the cause of righteousness. He says that "the Pope is the only person whose feet are kissed by all princes"; that he may depose emperors and "absolve subjects from allegiance to an unjust ruler." No one shall dare to condemn one who appeals to the pope. No one may annul a decree of the pope, though the pope may declare null and void the decrees of all other earthly powers ”

“ The church was half filled with soldiers armed to the teeth, and drawn up on either side, and his body-guard of Roman nobles, stood even within the railing of the altar, capped and motionless, conveying, as everything else does, the irresistible impression that it was the worship of the Pope, not of God.
Gregory the sixteenth, is a small old man, with a large heavy nose, eyes buried in sluggish wrinkles, and a flushed, apoplectic complexion. He sits, or is borne about with his eyes shut, looking quite asleep, even his limbs hanging lifelessly. ”

“ S. Gregory II. was ordained sub-deacon by pope Sergius I., and under the four succeeding popes he acted as treasurer and librarian to the Church in Rome. When elected pope, he signalized himself by his unwearied zeal in defending the pure faith against heresy, and in combating the Iconoclasts who, protected by the Emperor Leo the Isaurian, waged war against sacred pictures and images. ”

“ There is a famous manoeuvre in the Spanish bull-fights, which may prove successful once, but which means death to the torreador should he attempt to repeat it. The result of Gregory's second bann was not unlike it. A storm of indignation rose against the pope, and the Lombard and German bishops rallied to Henry. First in Bamberg, then in Mainz, and finally in Brixen (see No. 13) , Gregory was declared deposed. Wibert of Ravenna was made pope in his stead. Gregory's letter of justification, written to Bishop Herrmann of Metz (see No. 14) , shows a power of reasoning worthy of the Jesuits. ”

“ It would seem that in all the tumultuous and factious city there was but one thought of horror at the 249 sacrilege, and determination to save the Pope if it were still possible. Gregory was not, like his great predecessor the first of that name, the idol of his people. He had not the wealth with which many great ecclesiastics had secured the homage of the often famished crowd; and a stern man, with no special geniality of nature, and views that went so far beyond the local interests of Rome, he does not seem the kind of ruler to have secured popular favour. ”

“ In contrast to this, the distant Emperor was too feeble to send any effective help against the Lombards, while the fiscal oppression of his representatives added to the miseries of the starving people. The practical wisdom, administrative capacity, and Christian zeal of Gregory I. led the people of Rome and the neighbouring regions to look upon the Pope as their head in temporal as well as in spiritual matters. The Papacy became a national centre to the Italians, and the attitude of the Popes towards the Emperor showed a spirit of independence which rapidly passed into antagonism and revolt. ”

“ Gregory to do it!
In every public or private trouble or upheaval, as well as in every effort to reorganise and restore, his name, his presence is dominant. After becoming Pope, he lived chiefly at the Lateran palace, then the official Papal residence, and they still keep there the narrow pallet that served him for a bed, and—mark this, ye modern schoolboys!—the little rod which he had to use to keep his dark-eyed, rampageous young choristers in order!
The men who can govern others with the most unerring wisdom are often entirely mistaken in their appreciation of themselves. ”

“ The bishops of Rome had for some time meditated the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons. Pope Gregory, who is surnamed the Great, affected that pious design with an uncommon zeal; and he at length found a circumstance highly favorable to it in the marriage of a daughter of Charibert, a king of the Franks, to the reigning monarch of Kent. This opportunity induced Pope Gregory to commission Augustin, a monk of Rheims, and a man of distinguished piety, to undertake this arduous enterprise. ”

“ At last, after six years of what must have been the most anxious work, requiring all that the great man had of wisdom and firmness and tact, he returned to Italy—to find his beloved Rome in terrible distress from a visitation of the pestilence. Gregory at once devoted himself to the care of the sick and dying, and one can fancy how the poor people’s eyes lighted up when he appeared among them again. Then the good Pope Pelagius succumbed to the disease, and at once all eyes turned to Gregory, who was unanimously elected as his successor. ”

“ An eastern Council, at his prompting, strives to make that bishop the second bishop of the whole Church on a false foundation, because Constantinople is Nova Roma. Every Byzantine monarch adds his stone to the Byzantine bishop's pillar of pride. St. Leo exposes and censures the assumption. Pope Gelasius does not reckon him among the patriarchs. Justinian enacts him to be ecumenical patriarch, which St. Gregory pronounces to be a title of diabolical pride: being, in fact, the building of spiritual power on temporal lordship. ”

“ He may depose emperors. He may be judged by no one. He may absolve from their allegiance the subjects of the wicked. The Roman Church never has erred, and never can err, as the Scriptures testify." Gregory did not originate these doctrines, but he was the first pope who ventured to make a practical application of them.
DECREE AGAINST LAY INVESTITURE, 1075 A.D. Two years after Gregory became pope he issued a decree against lay investiture. It declared that no emperor, king, duke, marquis, count, or any other lay person should presume to grant investiture, under pain of excommunication. ”

“ In the years of conflict that followed Gregory looked far beyond this point; he set his aim ever higher; until, in the end, his idea was to concentrate all ecclesiastical power in the hands of the pope, and to raise the papacy to the dominion of the world. Thus was to be realized the old dream of Augustine: that of a Kingdom of God on earth under the rule of the Church. But it was not given to Gregory to reach this goal, and his successors had to return again to the strife over investiture. ”

“ He completed his commentary on Job, and collected endless stories of devils and angels, saints and sinners, visions and miracles; until one day, in 590, the Romans broke into the austere monastery with the news that Pelagius was dead and Gregory was to be his successor. He fled from Rome in horror, but he was the ablest man in Italy, and all united to make him Pope.
If these things do not suffice to show that Gregory was the first mediæval Pope, read his Dialogues, completed a few years later; no theologian in the world to-day would accept that phantasmagoria of devils and angels and miracles. ”

“ A Roman pope, at least an Italian pope, was the universal outcry. The conclave must be overawed; the hateful domination of a foreign, a French pontiff, must be broken up, and forever. This was not unforeseen. Before his death Gregory XI had issued a bull conferring the amplest powers on the cardinals to choose, according to their wisdom, the time and the place for the election. It manifestly contemplated their retreat from the turbulent streets of Rome to some place where their deliberations would not be overborne, and the predominant French interest would maintain its superiority. ”

“ Gregory was the organiser, reformer, and to some extent the author of the Antiphoner of the Mass. It is, of course, more difficult to say definitely what his work actually was in these three divisions, but a quite sufficient amount of certainty has been attained for us to realize the extent and the nature of the debt which succeeding ages have owed to the great Pope, and so far the attacks that have been made on the tradition have only resulted in setting it on a firmer and more definite basis. ”

“ Gregory IX. (Ugolino Conti de Segni) , pope from the 19th of March 1227, to the 22nd of August 1241, was a nobleman of Anagni and probably a nephew of Innocent III. He studied 574 at Paris and Bologna, and, having been successively archpriest of St Peter’s, papal chaplain, cardinal-deacon of Sant’ Eustachio, cardinal-bishop of Ostia, the first protector of the Franciscan order, and papal legate in Germany under Innocent III., and Honorius III., he succeeded the latter in the papacy. ”

“ For a time, he devoted himself to preaching the Crusade; and later, at the request of Pope Gregory X, caused the studies which the late wars had practically suspended to be resumed in the Dominican convent at Rome. After the death of Pope Gregory X he retired to one of the convents of his order, whence he was summoned by Innocent V and sent as papal legate to Tuscany. He restored peace between Venice and Genoa and also between Florence and Pisa. His name was inserted in the Roman Martyrology in 1577. His biographers exhibit his life as one of perfect humility. ”