The History of the Renaissance World (4 page)

The Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the English church, disagreed.

Anselm of Canterbury, approaching seventy at the time of the First Crusade, was an innovator, an intellectual maverick. He had been educated at Bec Abbey in Normandy, where the well-known teacher Lanfranc taught in a monastic school: a “famous centre of learning,” says the twelfth-century English historian William of Malmesbury, “where pupils on all sides were puffing out their cheeks and spouting forth dialectic.”
⁴

Dialectic:
the rules of systematic thinking and inquiry laid out by Aristotle. Such an education was new to the twelfth century. Most clerics knew very little of Aristotle; the only works of the great Greek available to them in Latin had been translated by the sixth-century Roman philosopher Boethius, who made it only through the texts on logic before he ran afoul of Theoderic the Ostrogoth and got himself beheaded.
*
Theoderic had merely intended to rid himself of a traitor. Instead, he rid the West of Aristotelian philosophy. No one else undertook the project, so for the next five hundred years, Aristotle was known to the scholar-monks of Europe only as a logician. And Aristotelian logic was not highly regarded by most churchmen. It promised the careful thinker a way to arrive at true conclusions that would apply, universally to the whole world, without making any reference to scripture. Aristotle offered the possibility of truth without God, of reason without faith.

Both the ninth-century Irish theologian Johannes Scotus Erigena and the eleventh-century teacher Berengar of Tours had already made use of Aristotelian categories to argue against the doctrine of
trans-substantio
: the assertion that the bread and wine of the Eucharist, while remaining the same in appearance, changed in
substance
into the body and blood of Christ.
*
Both men were roundly excoriated for daring to use Aristotle in the service of theology. Erigena, fumed the Bishop of Troyes, was a “master of error” who had dared to come to conclusions about “the truth of God . . . without the utterly faithful authority of the Holy Scripture,” and Berengar of Tours found his writings condemned by a series of church councils, over his objections that he was, in fact, an entirely orthodox son of the Church.
⁵

But Aristotle’s ideas survived. Lanfranc, Anselm’s teacher, had studied logic in Italy before entering Bec Abbey: “He brought the liberal arts from Italy to France . . . and gave them fresh polish with his intellect,” William of Malmesbury tells us. Lanfranc taught his students at Bec to use dialectic as a tool for understanding revelation more clearly; and Anselm, studying beneath the master, found in Aristotelian logic a natural compatibility with his own ways of thinking.
⁶

Anselm himself rose from student to teacher at Bec, and in those years he allowed the logic of Aristotle to penetrate further and further into his theology. He dared to ask why God should exist, in a day when no one asked such questions (an age, as G. R. Evans puts it, of “almost universal belief”); and he dared to search for answers using only reason. “I began to ask myself,” Anselm wrote, in the preface to his
Proslogion
, “whether
one
argument might possibly be found, resting on no other argument for its proof, but sufficient in itself to prove that God truly exists, and that he is the supreme good.”
⁷
Resting on no other argument for its proof
: this was Aristotelian dialectic, applied to the most central beliefs of the Christian faith. Anselm, inheriting the benefits of several generations of very cautious scholarship, had struck boldly out past the existing theological frontiers.
*

He continued far into the unknown country, tackling not only the existence of God but also the particular Christian doctrines of incarnation and redemption, with reason alone. (“The following work,” he writes, in the introduction to the 1098
Why God Became Man
, “. . . ends by proving by necessary reasons—Christ being put out of sight, as if nothing had ever been known of him—that it is impossible for any man to be saved without him.”)
⁸

And as he did this, he continued to uphold, almost blindly, the right of the pope alone to appoint bishops.

Anselm spent his entire intellectual life on what must have felt like the edge of disaster: always willing to question what he had received, in faith that there was no tool of logic, no Greek syllogism, no Aristotelian category, that could shake truth. He must have feared, late at night in his rooms, that he was going too far; that one day the truth he held with all his might would indeed crumble in the face of his questions. But he continued to write and to reason.

And, perhaps to assure himself that he was still a good son of the Church, he remained, all of his life, the pope’s man. In 1093, William the Conqueror’s heir, William II, had nominated Anselm to be Archbishop of Canterbury. Anselm agreed to the appointment. But he refused to take the
pallium
, the cloak that symbolized his office, from William II’s hand. Instead, he insisted that the cloak be placed on the altar so that he could then pick it up. According to the syllogism in his head, this meant that he had been appointed by the pope, not the king.
⁹

Anselm’s loyalty meant that he stood staunchly for the papal right of investiture. Eventually, he and Henry fell out so sharply over the issue that Anselm, afraid for his life, fled to Rome. While he took shelter there, Henry continued to demand his rights, Paschal II to refuse them. “It lies heavy on us that you seem to demand of us something that we can by no means grant,” the pope wrote back to the king, “. . . You will say therefore, ‘This is mine of right.’ Not so, indeed for it belongs not to emperors or kings, but to God, it is His alone.” He added, ominously, “In this matter, we would have you contemplate what you lose.”
¹⁰

Which was nothing less than salvation: Paschal II had the authority to excommunicate Henry, declaring him cut off from the Church, the sacraments, and their saving power. He could even place the entire country of England under an interdict. Churches would be closed, crucifixes draped with black cloth, the dead buried in unconsecrated ground—no Masses, no weddings, no bells. Interdict was a theological weapon of mass destruction, likely to make the king who had caused it grossly unpopular with his people.
¹¹

Henry I, involved in a serious war with rebellious barons in Normandy, finally decided that he couldn’t fight both the pope and the Normans. In 1107, he agreed to a compromise; although only Paschal II could appoint English bishops, each bishop would have to go and pay homage to the king before he could take possession of the physical
place
in England where he would serve.

Although this still gave Henry some control over who ended up in bishoprics, Paschal II agreed, since it was clear that this was the biggest concession that the king was willing to make. But the pope saved some face by tacking onto the formal agreement, the “Concordat of London,” a further provision. Bishops had to carry out the homage part only until the “rain of prayers” offered by the faithful softened Henry’s heart and caused him to willingly abandon the practice.
¹²

Henry agreed to the provision. Possibly he had less faith in the efficacy of the prayers than Paschal II.

This temporarily reconciled the pope and England, and Anselm returned to Canterbury, where he would serve just two more years before his death. But the struggle for supremacy was not over in England, merely in abeyance.

IN
1105, the strong-minded Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV, abdicated. This left his nineteen-year-old son and co-ruler, Henry V, in sole control of the Holy Roman Empire: the uneasy collection, under a single crown, of German duchies and northern Italian cities.

It did not, however, make young Henry the emperor. Over the previous three centuries, an uneven tradition had emerged; the heir to the empire could assume power through the right of royal inheritance, but the actual title of Holy Roman Emperor was not awarded until the pope agreed to hold a coronation ceremony in Rome.

But once on the throne, Henry V showed himself to be just as strong-minded as his legendary father. He did not intend to trade power for papal recognition, and he was willing to delay his imperial coronation until the matter of investiture had been thoroughly discussed. He began to argue, with increasing heat, for the royal right to appoint clergy within the empire; and Paschal II, at first willing to make a few concessions to keep peace with the new ruler, continued to refuse.

1.1 England and the Holy Roman Empire

Henry V was a deep man, even at a young age, and he was playing a deep game. Looking around for his most natural ally, he settled on the king of England, still unsoftened by the rain of prayers directed his way. In 1110, he negotiated a betrothal between himself and the English king’s nine-year-old daughter, Matilda, which brought him a very large dowry. Then, with Henry I’s money, he assembled an army and marched down to the Papal States of Italy to bring the controversy to an end.

With a hostile army waiting just outside his borders, Paschal agreed to a compromise. Henry V would yield his right to appoint bishops, giving the pope the right to decide who would hold spiritual authority. But in return, Paschal would give back all of the lands, political perks, and privileges that had gotten entwined, over the centuries, with the bishoprics.

This neatly pulled apart the sacred and the secular privileges of investiture. The bishops of the empire might be under papal authority, but they would no longer control the vast tracts of land that had made them powerful. It was a victory for Henry, and Paschal knew it; he insisted on keeping the terms secret as long as possible.
¹³

Henry V, still running on his fiancée’s money, traveled to Rome in the early weeks of 1111, signed the agreement on the night of February 11, and then proceeded to St. Peter’s the next morning to be crowned. At the beginning of the ceremony, the terms of the treaty were read out. This was an unwelcome surprise to most of the gathered bishops, who hadn’t realized that the pope was willing to give away quite so many of their privileges. When the reading reached the central passage, the one that barred bishops (under sentence of excommunication) from profiting in any way from “cities, duchies, marks, counties, rights of coinage, rights of till, rights of market, militia, and castles of the kingdom,” the bishops raised so much noise and protest that the reading stopped.
¹⁴

In the face of such outcry, Paschal refused to hold to the terms. At once, Henry announced that, since Paschal wouldn’t be able to carry out his side of the bargain, he, Henry, wouldn’t give up the right of investiture. Paschal retorted that he wouldn’t crown Henry emperor after all; at that point Henry ordered his men to take the pope into “protective custody” so that the bishops wouldn’t harm their shepherd.

He hauled Paschal outside of Rome and kept him prisoner for two weeks, after which Paschal issued a new decree. “Your kingdom is connected in a singular way to the holy Roman church,” it said. “Therefore . . . we concede to Your Love . . . that you confer investiture of crozier and ring on the bishops and abbots of your kingdom.”
¹⁵

Henry then allowed Paschal to declare him Holy Roman Emperor, and turned for home. He had won the quarrel, but the extorted agreement was widely unpopular with both the churchmen and the German aristocrats in his own kingdom who feared his growing power. He spent the next decade putting down territorial revolts in Germany, stretched thinner and thinner by the constant warfare.

Paschal’s death, in 1118, gave him a chance to back down with dignity. In 1122, after a long series of negotiations at the German city of Worms, Henry V and the new pope Calixtus II finally came to terms. Henry V, at long last, agreed to renounce the right of investiture, and Calixtus II agreed that, in Germany only, newly appointed bishops would do homage to Henry V as king
before
their consecration, thus assuring that in the heartland of the emperor, loyalists alone would wear the bishop’s miter.

The Concordat of Worms, like the Concordat of London, was a pragmatic solution: a brief document, five paragraphs outlining Henry’s concessions, four listing the privileges Calixtus was yielding. It answered none of the theological questions and solved none of the underlying conflicts. The knot of secular and sacred power had not been untwisted. It had merely been hidden, temporarily, beneath a thin covering of apparent agreement.