There were now three Popes, by themselves or by their factions engaged in deadly feud. They had Three Popes. laid aside, or had taught each other to despise, their spiritual arms; they encountered with the carnal weapons of ordinary warfare. For Benedict had not obtained his bride; Gerard de Saxo had joined the faction of Silvester III. Benedict's brother would not brook the obscuration of the house of Tusculum: they brought back, not unreluctant, the abdicated Pope and reinstated him on his throne. Benedict held the Lateran, Gregory Santa Maria Maggiore, Silvester St. Peter's and the Vatican.

Christendom could not longer be ignorant of, or endure this state of things. Peter the Archdeacon of Rome, commissioned by the vows and prayers of a great number of the clergy, the monks, and more devout people, crossed the Alps, and threw himself at the feet of the Emperor, imploring his succour. The Emperor Henry III. was called upon by his title to the Empire, by his own grave and religious character, by the open or the tacit summons of the pious throughout Europe, and even of those who respected the Church: he was implored, in popular verse, to dissolve this odious Trigamy of the Church, and to interpose his irresistible authority. He crossed the Alps, and was received either with loud acclamations or with silent awe. Piacenza, Gregory, supposing his own claims to the papacy irrefragable, ventured to meet him." Henry gave no answer, but advanced to Sutri, about thirty

have acquiesced in the Pope's discharge of his sacred functions by a deputy.— William of Malmes. lib. ii.

"Una Sunamitis nupsit tribus maritis, Rex Henrice, Omnipotentis vice, Solve conuubium triforme dubium."

At

Some writers, summed up by Luden (Geschichte der Deutschen, vol. viii. p. 191), suppose a secret understanding between the Emperor and Pope Gregory.

miles north of Rome. There he assembled a Council of

of Benedict

many prelates: among them were the Patriarch A.D. 1046. of Aquileia, the Bishop of Augsburg, and the Dec. 20. Archbishop of Arles. In this Council he proceeded to examine the claims of the conflicting Popes. Degradation Silvester was condemned at once as an usurper, IX. and and delivered up, degraded from his holy Gregory VI. orders, to be imprisoned for life in a monastery. The voluntary abdication of Benedict annulled his claim.a Gregory fondly thought that there was now no obstacle to his universal recognition. But he was called upon to give an account of his own election. He could not deny, he could not attempt to extenuate, the flagrant simony of those proceedings by which he had bought the papacy. He admitted his guilt, his disqualification, stripped off the pontifical robes, and intreating forgiveness, quietly surrendered up the papacy. He retired, not without compulsion, into a monastery in Germany; his involuntary companion in his exile was no less than the famous Hildebrand.c

"Maximè cum ipse, Romanus Pontifex, se judicaverit deponendum." b Ego Gregorius Episcopus, servus servorum Dei, propter turpissimam venalitatem simoniacæ heræseos, quæ

antiqui hostis versutiâ meæ electioni irrepsit, a Romano episcopatu judico me submovendum."-Bonizo. Victor in Dialog. lib. iii,

c Muratori, sub ann. 1046.

BOOK VI.

CHAPTER I.

The German Popes.

THE evil of the degraded papacy lay deeper: it was absolutely necessary to rescue it entirely and for ever from the Counts of Tusculum and the Barons of Rome. The only remedy was the appointment of a stranger. Murmurs were heard that no one could canonically be elected Pope, who had not been ordained Deacon and Priest in the Church of Rome. The insulting language of the Germans was, that in the whole Church there was scarcely one who was not disqualified either as illiterate, or as tainted with simony, or as living in notorious concubinage."

Clement II.

Suidger, the Bishop of Bamberg, was consecrated Pope at Sutri; the first Pope consecrated out of Rome. On the arrival of the Emperor at Rome, the usual appeal was made to the Roman people whether they knew one worthier to be Pope. The German soldiers stood around; the people preserved an

a "Neminem ad Romanum debere bad historian for the past, but an ascendere pontificatum, qui non in unexceptionable evidence of the vioeâdem ecclesiâ presbyter et diaconus." lence of the Italian feelings against a -Bonizo, apud Efelium. "Ut in German pope. Compare Leo Ostiens. tantâ ecclesiâ vix unus reperiri potuit, and Victor III. quin vel illiteratus, vel simoniacus, vel esset concubinatus." Bonizo is a

b So at least says Bonizo. Compare Herman. Contract. A.D. 1096.

obsequious silence. The Bishop of Bamberg was led by Henry himself to the papal throne: the people seemed to assent by their acclamations. Suidger took the name of Clement II., the first, it might be hoped, of a new line of apostolic pontiffs, called after the immediate successor of St. Peter. Henry and his Empress Agnes received the imperial crown from the hands of the new Pope. The coronation was celebrated with unusual Christmas. pomp and solemnity. The Pope exacted from the religious Emperor, not merely the most full confession of faith, and the oath of fidelity and of protection to the Roman see, but of chastity, justice, humility, and charity. The Pope enforced on the Emperor, the Emperor with the most profound submission pledged himself in the face of heaven to observe these Christian virtues.d

1046.

The first act of reformation, which the religious part of Christendom expected from the promotion of this blameless and holy stranger to the Roman see, was the summoning a Council at Rome to brand the all-prevailing vice of the times. Simony was condemned in the strongest general terms and in all its various forms; but even this Council was obliged to mitigate its censure. The severer bishops proposed the absolute degradation of any one of their order who had been guilty of this sacrilegious sin; they were reduced to the melancholy confession, that the Church would be nearly deprived of all its pastors, since

Jan. 1047.

c If Benzo of Albi is to be believed Henry told them to elect any one present. The Romans replied, that in the presence of the Emperor the election was not according to their will: "Ubi adest præsentia regis, non est electionis consensus in arbitrio

nostræ voluntatis."
Menckenium, i. 393.

Benzo, apud

d Cenni Monumenta, ii. 261, contains the ordo for the coronation of Henry and Agnes. Höfler devotes many pages to the ceremony, i. 236250.