Freaks of Fanaticism, and Other Strange Events

The Vallombrosian monks appealed to Pope Alexander II. against the bishop,32 their thirst for martyrdom whetted not quenched.33 If the Pope desired it, they would try the ordeal of fire to prove their charge. Hildebrand, then only sub-deacon, but a power in the councils of the Pope, urged on their case, and demanded the deposition of the bishop. But Alexander, himself among the most resolute opponents of simony, felt that there was no case. There was no evidence, save the prattle of an old man over his wine-cups. He refused the petition of the monks, and was supported by the vast majority of the bishops – there were over a hundred present.34

Even St. Peter Damiani, generally unmeasured in his invectives against simony, wrote to moderate the frantic zeal of the Vallombrosian monks, which he denounced as unreasonable, intemperate, unjust.

But the refusal of the Pope to gratify their resentment did not quell the vehemence of the monks and the faction adverse to the bishop. The city was in a condition of chronic insubordination and occasional rioting. Godfrey Duke of Tuscany was obliged to interfere; and the monks were driven from their monastery of St. Salvi, and compelled to retire to that of St. Settimo outside of the gates.

Shortly after, Pope Alexander visited Florence. The monks piled up a couple of bonfires, and offered to pass between them in proof of the truth of their allegation. He refused to permit the ordeal, and withdrew, leaving the bishop unconvicted, and therefore unrebuked.

The clergy of Florence now determined to demand of the bishop that he should either go through the ordeal himself, or suffer the monks to do so. As they went to the palace, the people hooted them: "Go, ye heretics, to a heretic! You who have driven Christ out of the city! You who adore Simon Magus as your God!"

The bishop sullenly refused; he would neither establish his innocence in the fire, nor suffer the monks to convict him by the ordeal.

The Podesta of Florence then, with a high hand, drove from the town the clergy who had joined the monastic faction. They went forth on the first Saturday in Lent, 1067, amidst a sympathising crowd, composed mostly of women,35 who tore off their veils, and with hair scattered wildly over their faces, threw themselves down in the road before the confessors, crying, "Alas! alas! O Christ, Thou art expelled this city, and how dost Thou leave us desolate? Thou art not tolerated here, and how can we live without Thee? Thou canst not dwell with Simon Magus. O holy Peter, didst thou once overcome Simon? and now dost thou permit him to have the mastery? We deemed him bound and writhing in infernal flames, and lo! he is loose, and risen again to thy dishonour."

And the men said to one another, "Let us set fire to this accursed city, which hates Christ."36

The secular clergy were in dismay; denounced, deserted, threatened by the people, they sang no psalms, offered no masses. Unable to endure their position, they again visited the bishop, and entreated him to sanction the ordeal of fire. He refused, and requested the priests not to countenance such an unauthorised venture, should it be made. But the whole town was bent on seeing this ordeal tried, and on the Wednesday following, the populace poured to the monastery of St. Settimo. Two piles of sticks were heaped near the monastery gate, measuring ten feet long by five wide, and four and a half feet high. Between them lay a path the length of an arm in width.

Litanies were chanted whilst the piles were reared, and then the monks proceeded to elect one who was to undergo the fire. The lot fell on a priest named Peter, and St. John Gualberto ordered him at once to the altar to say mass. All assisted with great devotion, the people crying with excitement. At the Agnus Dei four monks, one with the crucifix, another with holy water, the third with twelve lighted tapers, the fourth with a full censer, proceeded to the pyres, and set them both on fire.

This threw the people into an ecstasy of excitement, and the voice of the priest was drowned in the clamour of their tongues. The priest finished mass, and laid aside his chasuble. Holding the cross, in alb and stole and maniple, he came forth, followed by St. John Gualberto and the monks, chanting. Suddenly a silence fell on the tossing concourse, and a monk appointed by the abbot stood forth, and in a clear voice said to the people, "Men, brethren, and sisters! we do this for the salvation of your souls, that henceforth ye may learn to avoid the leprosy of simony, which has infected nearly the whole world; for the crime of simony is so great, that beside it every other crime is as nothing."

The two piles were burning vigorously. The priest Peter prayed, "Lord Christ, I beseech Thee, if Peter of Pavia, called Bishop of Florence, has obtained the episcopal throne by money, do Thou assist me in this terrible ordeal, and deliver me from being burned, as of old Thou didst deliver the three children in the midst of the burning furnace." Then, giving the brethren the kiss of peace, he stepped fearlessly between the burning pyres, and came forth on the farther side uninjured.

His linen alb, his silken stole and maniple, were unburnt. He would have again rushed through the flames in the excess of his confidence, but was prevented by the pious vehemence of the people, who surrounded him, kissed his feet, clung to his vestments, and would have crushed him to death in their eagerness to touch and see him, had he not been rescued by the strong arms of burly monks.

In after years he told, and talked himself into believing, that as he passed through the fire, his maniple fell off. Discovering his loss ere he emerged, he turned back, and deliberately picked it up. But of this nothing was said at the time.37

A letter was then drawn up, appealing to the Pope in the most vehement terms, to deliver the sheep of the Florentine flock from the ravening wolf who shepherded them, and urging him, not obscurely, to use force if need be, and compel by his troops the evacuation of the Florentine episcopal throne. Peter of Pavia, the bishop, a man of gentle character, yielded to the storm. He withdrew from Florence, and was succeeded by another Peter, whom the people called Peter the Catholic, to distinguish him from the Simoniac. But Muratori adduces evidence that the former continued to be recognised by the Pope some time after his supposed degradation. Thus ended the schism of Florence in the entire triumph of the Patarines. Hildebrand was not unobservant; he proved afterwards not to be forgetful of the lesson taught by this schism, – the utilization of the rude mob as a powerful engine in the hands of the fanatical or designing. It bore its fruit in the canons of 1074.

II

Anselmo de Badagio, Bishop of Lucca, had succeeded Nicholas II. to the Papal throne in 1061. Cadalus of Parma had been chosen by the German and Lombard prelates on October 28th, and he assumed the name of Honorius II. But no Roman Cardinal was present to sanction this election. Cadalus was acknowledged by all the simoniacal and married clergy, when he entered Italy; but the Princess Beatrice and the Duke of Tuscany prevented him from advancing to Rome. From Parma Cadalus excommunicated Alexander, and from Rome, Alexander banned Honorius. The cause of Alexander was that of the Patarines, but the question of marriage and simony paled before the more glaring one, of which of the rival claimants was the actual Pope.

The voice of Landulf Cotta was silenced. A terrible cancer had consumed the tongue which had kept Milan for six years in a blaze of faction. But his room was speedily filled by a more implacable adversary of the married clergy – his brother, Herlembald, a stern, able soldier. An event in Herlembald's early life had embittered his heart against the less rigid clergy. His plighted bride had behaved lightly with a priest. He was just returned from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, his zeal kindled to enthusiasm. He went to Rome, where he was well received by Alexander II. He came for authority to use his sword for the Patarines. The sectaries in Milan had said to him, "We desire to deliver the Church, besieged and degraded by the married priests; do thou deliver by the law of the sword, we will do so by the law of God." Alexander II., in a public consistory, created Herlembald "Defender of the Church," gave him the sacred banner of St. Peter, and bade him go back to Milan and shed blood – his, if necessary, those of the anti-Patarines certainly – in this miserable quarrel.

The result was that the Patarines were filled with new zeal, and lost all compunction at shedding blood and pillaging houses. Herlembald established himself in a large mansion, which he fortified and filled with mercenaries; over it waved the consecrated banner of St. Peter. From this stronghold he issued forth to assail the obnoxious clergy. They were dragged from their altars and consigned to shame and insult. The services of the Church, the celebration of the sacraments, were suspended, or administered only by the one or two priests who adhered to the Patari. It is said that, in order to keep his rude soldiery in pay, Herlembald made every clerk take a solemn oath that he had ever kept innocence, and would wholly abstain from marriage or concubinage. Those who could not, or would not, take this oath were expelled the city, and their whole property confiscated to support the standing corps of hireling ruffians maintained by the Crusader. The lowest rabble, poor artisans and ass-drivers, furtively placed female ornaments in the chambers of the priests, and then, attacking their houses, dragged them out and plundered their property. By 1064, when a synod was held at Mantua by the Pope, Milan was purged of "Simoniacs and Nicolaitans," and the clergy who remained were gathered together into a house to live in common, under rule.

Guido of Milan and all the Lombard prelates attended that important synod, which saw the triumph of Alexander, his reconciliation with the Emperor, and the general abandonment of the anti-Pope, Cadalus.

In the following year, Henry IV. was under the tutelage of Adalbert of Bremen; he had escaped from Anno, Archbishop of Cologne, who had favoured the strict faction and Alexander II. The situation in Lombardy changed simultaneously. Herlembald had assumed a power, an authority higher than that of the archbishop, whom he refused to recognise, and denounced as a heretic. Guido, weary of the nine years of strife he had endured, relieved from the fear of interference from Germany, resolved on an attempt to throw off the hateful yoke. The churches of Milan were for the most part without pastors. The married clergy had been expelled, and there were none to take their place. The Archbishop had been an obedient penitent for five years, compromising his one hundred years of penitence by payments into the Papal treasury; but as the cause of Alexander declined, his contrition languished, died out; and he resumed his demands for fees at ordinations and institutions, at least so clamoured Ariald and Herlembald in the ears of Rome.

A party in Milan had long resented the despotism of the "Law of God and the law of the sword" of Ariald and Herlembald, and an effort was made to break it, with the sanction, no doubt, of the Archbishop. A large body of the citizens rose, "headed," says Andrew of Strumi, "by the sons of the priests," and attacked the church and house of Ariald, but, unable to find him, contented themselves with wrecking the buildings. Thereupon Herlembald swept down at the head of his mercenaries, surrounded the crowd, and hewed them to pieces to the last man, "like the vilest cattle."38

Guido, the Archbishop, now acted with resolution, and boldly took up the cause of the married clergy. Having heard that two priests of Monza, infected with Patarinism, had turned their wives out of their houses, he ordered the arrest of the priests, and punished them with imprisonment in the castle of Lecco. On hearing this, the Patarines flew to arms, and swarmed out of Milan after Ariald, who bore the banner of St. Peter, as Herlembald was absent at Rome. They met the mounted servants of the Archbishop near Monza, surprised them, and wrested from them a promise to surrender the priests. Three days after, the curates were delivered up. Ariald, at the head of the people, met them outside the gates, received them with enthusiasm, crying, "See, these are the brave martyrs of Christ!" and escorted them to a church, where they intoned a triumphant Te Deum.

Herlembald returned from Rome to Milan with a bull of excommunication fulminated by the Pope against the Archbishop. Guido summoned the Milanese to assemble in the cathedral church on the vigil of Pentecost.

In the meantime the Patarines were torn into factions on a subtle point mooted by Ariald. That demagogue had ventured to assail in a sermon the venerable custom of the Milanese, which required them to fast during the Rogation days. Was he greater than St. Ambrose? Did he despise the authority of the great doctor? On this awful subject the Patarines divided, and with the division lost their strength.

Neither Herlembald nor Ariald seems to have been prepared for the bold action of the Archbishop. On the appointed day the cathedral was filled with substantial citizens and nobles. Herlembald missed the wolfish eyes, ragged hair, and hollow cheeks of his sectaries, and, fearing danger, leaped over the chancel rails, and took up his position near the altar. The Archbishop mounted the ambone with the bull of excommunication in his hand. "See!" he exclaimed, "this is the result of the turbulence of these demagogues, Ariald and Herlembald. This city, out of reverence to St. Ambrose, has never obeyed the Roman Church. Shall we be crushed? Take away out of the land of the living these disturbers of the public peace who labour day and night to rob us of our ancient liberties."

He was interrupted by a shout of "Let them be killed." Guido paused, and then cried out, "All who honour and cleave to St. Ambrose, leave the church, that we may know who are our adversaries." Instantly from the doors rolled out the dense crowd, seven hundred in number, according to the estimation of Andrew, the biographer of Ariald. Only twelve men were left within who stood firm to the Patarine cause. Ariald had, in the meantime, taken refuge in the choir beside Herlembald. The clergy selected Ariald, the laity Herlembald, for their victims. Ariald was dragged from the church, severely wounded. Herlembald escaped better; using his truncheon, he beat off his assailants till he had climbed to a place of safety, whence he could not be easily dislodged.

As night fell, the Patarines gathered, stormed, and pillaged the palace of the Archbishop, and, bursting into the church, liberated Herlembald. Guido hardly escaped on horseback, sorely maltreated in the tumult. His adherents fled like smoke before the tempest. Ariald was found bleeding and faint, and was conveyed by the multitude in triumph to the church of St. Sepolcro. Then Herlembald called to the roaring mob to be still. "Let us ask Master Ariald whose house is to be first given up to sack."

But Ariald earnestly dissuaded from further violence, and entreated the vehement dictator to spare the lives and property of their enemies.

The surprise to the Archbishop's party was, however, temporary only. By morning they had rallied, and the city was again in their hands. Guido published an interdict against Milan, which was to remain in force as long as it harboured Ariald. No mass was said, no bells rang, the church doors were bolted and barred. Ariald was secretly removed by some of his friends to the village of St. Victor, where also Herlembald had been constrained to take refuge with a party of mercenaries. Thence they made their way to Pavia and to Padua, where they hoped to obtain a boat, and escape to Rome. But the whole country was up against them, and Herlembald was obliged to disband his soldiers, and attempt to escape in disguise. Ariald was left with a priest whose acquaintance Herlembald had made in Jerusalem. But a priest was the last person likely to secrete the tyrant and persecutor of the clergy. He treacherously sent word to the Archbishop, and Ariald was taken by the servants of Olivia, the niece of Guido, and conveyed to an island on the Lago Maggiore. He was handed over to the cruel mercies of two married priests, who directed his murder with cold-blooded heartlessness, if we may trust the gossips picked up later. His ears, nose and lips were cut off. He was asked if he would acknowledge Guido for archbishop. "As long as my tongue can speak," he replied, "I will not." The servants of Olivia tore out his tongue; he was beaten by the two savage priests, and when he fainted, was flung into the calm waters of the lovely lake. Andrew of Vallombrosa, or Strumi, followed in his trace, and hung about the neighbourhood till he heard from a peasant the awful story. He sought the mangled body.39 It was found and transported to Milan on the feast of the Ascension following. For ten days it was exposed in the church of St. Ambrose, that all might venerate it, and was finally disposed in the convent of St. Celsus. In the memory of man, never had such a crowd been seen. The Archbishop deemed it prudent to retire, and Herlembald profited by his absence to recover his power, and make the people swear to avenge the martyr, and unite to the death for the "good cause." The events in Milan had their counterpart in the other cities of Lombardy, especially at Cremona, where the bishopric had been obtained by Arnulf, nephew of Guido of Milan. In that city, twelve men, headed by one Christopher, took the Patarine oath to fight the married clergy; the people joined them, and forced their oath on the bishop-elect before he was ordained. But, as in 1067, he seized a Patarine priest, a sedition broke out, in which the bishop was seriously injured. The inhabitants of Cremona, after Easter, sent ambassadors to the Pope, and received from him a reply, given by Bonizo, exhorting them not to allow a priest, deacon or sub-deacon, suspected of concubinage or simony, to hold a benefice or execute his ministry. The consequence of this letter was that all suspected clerks were excluded from their offices; and shortly after, the same course was followed at Piacenza. Asti, Lodi, and Ravenna also threw in their lot with the Patarines.

In 1067, Alexander II. sent legates to Milan to settle the disturbances therein. Adalbert of Bremen had fallen, and again the Papal party were in the ascendant. The fortunes of Milan fluctuated with the politics of those who held the regency in the minority of Henry IV.

Guido, now advanced in years, and weary of ruling so turbulent a diocese, determined to vacate a see which he had held for twenty-seven years; the last ten of incessant civil war. He burdened it with a pension to himself, and then made it over to Godfrey, the sub-deacon, along with the pastoral staff and ring. Godfrey crossed the Alps, took the oath of allegiance to the Emperor, promised to use his utmost endeavours to exterminate the Patarines, and to deliver Herlembald alive into the hands of the Emperor, laden with chains. Friend and foe, without scruple, designate the followers of the Papal policy as Patarines; it is therefore startling, a few years later, when the Popes had carried their point, to find them insisting on the luckless Patarines being given in wholesale hecatombs to the flames, as damnable heretics. It was an ungracious return for the battle these heretics had fought under the banner of St. Peter.

But Herlembald refused to acknowledge Godfrey, he devastated the country with fire and sword wherever Godfrey was acknowledged, and created such havoc that not a day passed in the holy Lenten fast without the effusion of much Christian blood. Finally, Herlembald drove the archbishop-elect to take refuge in the strong fortress of Castiglione. Guido, not receiving his pension, annulled his resignation, and resumed his state. But he unwisely trusted to the good faith of Herlembald; he was seized,40 and shut up in a monastery till his death, which took place August 23, 1071.

The year before this, 1070, Adelheid, Margravine of Turin, mother-in-law of the young Emperor, attacked the Patarines, and burnt the cities of Lodi and Asti. On March 19, 1071, as Herlembald was besieging Castiglione, a terrible conflagration broke out in Milan, and consumed a great part of the city and several of the stateliest churches. Whilst the army of Herlembald was agitated by the report of the fire, Godfrey burst out of Castiglione, and almost routed the besiegers. Before the death of Guido, Herlembald, with the sanction of the Pope, had set up a certain Otto to be Archbishop, nominated by himself and the Papal legate, without consulting the electors of Milan or the Emperor, January 6, A.D. 1072.

Otto was but a youth, just admitted into holy orders, likely to prove a pliant tool in the strong hand of the dictator. It was the Feast of the Epiphany, and the streets were thronged with people, when the news leaked out that an archbishop had been chosen, and was now holding the customary banquet after election in the archiepiscopal palace.

The people were furious, rose and attacked the house, hunted the youthful prelate out of an attic, where he had taken refuge, dragged him by his legs and arms into the church, and compelled him to swear to renounce his dignity. The Roman legate hardly escaped with his robes torn.

Herlembald, who had been surprised, recovered the upper hand in Milan on the morrow, but not in the open country, which was swept by the imperial troops. The suffragan bishops of Lombardy assembled at Novara directly they heard of what had taken place in Milan, and consecrated Godfrey as their archbishop.

Otto appealed to Rome (January, 1072), and a few weeks later the Pope assembled a synod, and absolved Otto of his oath extorted from him at Milan, acknowledged him as archbishop, and struck Godfrey with interdict. Alexander II. died April 21, 1073, and the tiara rested on the brows of the great Hildebrand.

On June 24, Hildebrand, now Gregory VII., wrote to the Margravine Beatrice to abstain from all relations with the excommunicated bishops of Lombardy; on June 28, to William, Bishop of Pavia, to oppose the usurper, the excommunicate Godfrey of Milan; on July 1, to all the faithful of Lombardy to refrain from that false bishop, who lay under the apostolic ban. From Capua, on September 27, he wrote to Herlembald, exhorting him to fight valiantly, and hold out Milan against the usurper Godfrey. Again, on October 9, to Herlembald, bidding him be of good courage; he hoped to detach the young Emperor from the party of Godfrey, and bade him receive amicably those who, with true sentiments of contrition, came over to the Patarine, that is, the Papal side.

On March 10, 1074, Gregory held one of the most important synods, not of his reign only, but ever held by any Pope. The acts of this assembly have been lost or suppressed, but its most important decisions were summed up in a letter from Gregory to the Bishop of Constance. This letter has not been printed in the Registrum; but fortunately it has been preserved by two contemporary writers, Paul of Bernried, and Bernold of Constance, the latter of whom has supplied a detailed apology for the law of celibacy promulgated in that synod. Gregory absolutely forbade all priests sullied with the crimen fornicationis, which embraced legitimate marriage, either to say a mass or to serve at one; and the people were strictly enjoined to shun their churches and their sacraments; and when the bishops were remiss, he exhorted them themselves to enforce the pontifical sentence.41

The results shall be described in the words of a contemporary historian, Sigebert of Gemblours. "Many," says he, "seeing in this prohibition to hear a mass said by a married priest a manifest contradiction to the doctrine of the Fathers, who believed that the efficacy of sacrament, such as baptism, chrism, and the Body and Blood of Christ, is independent of the dignity of the minister, thence resulted a grievous scandal; never, perhaps, even in the time of the great heresies, was the Church divided by a greater schism. Some did not abandon their simony, others disguised their avarice under a more acceptable name; what they boasted they had given gratuitously, they in reality sold; very few preserved continence. Some through greed of lucre, or sentiments of pride, simulated chastity, but many added false oaths and numerous adulteries to their debaucheries. The laity seized the opportunity to rise against the clerical order, and to excuse themselves for disobedience to the Church. They profaned the holy mysteries, administering baptism themselves, and using the wax out of their ears as chrism. They refused on their death-beds to receive the viaticum from the married priests; they would not even be buried by them. Some went so far as to trample under foot the Host, and pour out the precious Blood consecrated by married priests."42