summoned a council, the second Lateran council in Rome. A hundred and thirteen bishops obeyed A.D. 1059. the call. The first decree of this assembly April 13. wrested at once the power of nominating the Pope from the lower clergy, the turbulent barons, and the populace. It left to the people and to the Emperor a barren approbation, but it vested the actual election solely in the higher clergy. With the cardinal bishops was the initiative; the assent of the cardinal priests and deacons was first required, then that of the laity, and finally that of the Emperor. The higher spiritual aristocracy took the lead, the others were to be their humble followers.h Besides this, it established a kind of prerogative right in the Roman clergy to the Pontificate: only in default of a fit person within that Church was a stranger to be admitted to the honour. Rome was to be the place of election; but even Rome, by tumult or by contumacy, might forfeit her privilege. Wherever the cardinals were assembled, there was Rome. It had been at Sienna or at Sutri. In case the election could not take place within the city—and of this they were the sole judges -the cardinals, assisted by some of the religious clergy and religious laity, even though few (their religion would be their fidelity to their party), might proceed elsewhere to the election. The Imperial rights were reserved vaguely and ambiguously.

rem quantocyus accelerare compellat." -Peter Damian. i. Epist. xx.

"Nimirum cum Electio illa per Episcoporum Cardinalium fieri debeat principale judicium; secundo loco jure "Et ideo religiosissimi viri præpræbeat clericus assensum; tertio duces sint in promovendâ pontificis popularis favor attollat applausum; electione: reliqui autem sequaces." sicque suspendenda est causa, usque The religiositas unhappily was estidum regiæ celsitudinis consulatur auc- mated solely by rank in the Church. toritas nisi, sicut nuper contigit, "Cardinales Episcopi, cum relipericulum fortassis immineat, quod giosis clericis, Catholicisque Laicis,

This decree, and an anathema of more than usual terror (the most dreadful imprecations in the Scripture were selected with sedulous care), was ratified by the consent of all, by the signature of above 70 bishops, with many other ecclesiastics. The anathema con

demned the offender against the statute to irrevocable excommunication, to be counted among the wicked to all eternity. "May he endure the wrath of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and that of St. Peter, and St. Paul, in this life and the next! May his house be desolate, and no one dwell in his tents! Be his children orphans, his wife a widow, his sons outcasts and beggars! May the usurer consume his substance, the stranger reap his labours; may all the world and all the elements war upon him, and the merits of all the saints which sleep in the Lord, confound and inflict visible vengeance during this life! Whosoever, on the other hand, shall keep this law, by the authority of St. Peter is absolved from all his sins." Yet two years were hardly passed, when on the death of Nicolas a contested election distracted the Church of Rome; and some of the subscribing bishops are found in each furious faction.

The same Council, the second Lateran Council, which had thus made provision for the unity of the church by a new form of election, which had wrung the misused power from a lawless and irresponsible body, and seemed to repose it in security in the most holy and intelligent of the sacerdotal order; aspired also to esta

licet paucis, jus potestatis obtineant | reverentiâ Henrici, qui in presentiarum eligere Apostolicæ sedis pontificem, rex habetur, et futurus imperator ubi congruere viderint."-Conc. ii. speratur." The last clause cited above Lateran. Throughout, however, there has in the copy in Pertz: "Ubi cum is a respectful reservation of the im- rege congruentius judicaverunt."perial right: "Salvo debito honore et Pertz, Leges, ii. App. p. 177.

k

blish the endangered unity of doctrine, and authoritatively to decide the most perilous theological controversy which had arisen in Latin Christendom. Berengar of Tours had been persuaded or compelled to appear before the Lateran Council. He had his choice between death and the recantation of his tenets. But logic makes no martyrs. The temperament of Berengar's mind was not that of a reckless fanatic. He fairly confesses that the fear of death extracted from him the humiliating admission of his errors; he accepted a creed equivocal according to his view, and elusive of the main question, in which the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist was distinctly asserted, though not in the strongest terms of transubstantiation. No sooner was he beyond the power of his adversaries, than Berengar recanted his recantation; reassumed the contemptuous language of a superior mind towards Pope Nicolas himself; reasserted the doctrines of his master Erigena, whom in the presence of danger he had not hesitated to forswear. But though the decree of the Lateran Council had no effect on Berengar, it had for a short time the effect of almost suppressing his doctrine. Yet as will appear, it was

m

k Compare Berengar's own account of these proceedings: he claims the victory, and boastfully avers that, by their own terms, the bread, as he had always asserted, remains after consecration.-p. 70 et seq. "Dum dicitur, panis in altari consecratio, vel panis sanctus, panis sacrosanctus est Christi corpus, omni veritate panis superesse conceditur."

Among the most bold of Berengar's assertions was his protest against the assumption so perpetually made, that a certain doctrine, because supported |

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by the majority, is the doctrine of the whole Church. He boasts multitudes who hold his opinions: "Quod nomen Ecclesiæ totiens ineptorum multitudini tribuis, facis contra sensa majorum :-quod dicis omnes tenere hanc fidem-contra conscientiam tuam dicis, quam latere non potest, usque eo res agitata est, quam plurimos aut pæne infinitos esse cujuscunque ordinis, qui tuum de sacrificio Ecclesiæ execrantur errorem, atque Pascasii Corbejensis Monachi."-p. 27.

not altogether swallowed up in the more absorbing question, the marriage of the clergy.

By the decree of the Lateran Council the popedom was restored to Italy, to Rome. The great organised and simultaneous effort of the higher Clergy, to become as it were the chief feudatories and to choose their monarch, had been successful. But the decree of a Council was only a mass of idle words, unless the Papacy could command some strong military force to secure its independence against domestic and against foreign foes. Either the Emperor must still dictate, or the Roman barons overawe the election. The Pope with all his magnificent pretensions was but a defenceless vassal, a vassal dependent on foreign resources for his maintenance on his throne.

The second great act of the pontificate of Nicolas II. was the conversion of the hostile, the unbelieving Normans into the faithful allies, the body guard of the Pope. The Normans were now in almost undisputed possession of the whole of Southern Italy: the Greek Argyrous, the last Catapan, the ally of Leo IX., had retired in despair, finding his dominions almost shrunk to the one faithful city of Reggio at the very verge of Calabria, to Constantinople. The Normans were not less politic than brave; they were not without superstition; their policy and their superstition might render them the allies, the protectors of the Papacy. Robert Alliance Guiscard, the most powerful of the Norman Normans, princes, no doubt knowing how such advances would be received, sent an embassage to Rome, to request the revocation of the ban of excommunication, still in force against his Normans. The Pope made a progress, partly of a spiritual, partly of a secular character, in the South. He held a synod at

with the

June 24,

1059.

n

Melfi; the extirpation of concubinage, universal among the Neapolitan clergy, was the pretext; " the Norman treaty the real object. The Normans wanted a more imposing title than that of conquest to their Italian possessions. They were not disposed to question the right of one, who was on his part disposed to make such title on his own authority. The Pope wanted the Norman aid, he scrupled not to advance the enormous pretension of a seignorial suzerainty over the whole kingdom of Naples, how devolved and how obtained, or on what ground, no one ever presumed or cared to inquire, and no one as yet has been able to answer, though few for centuries could safely dispute. He invested the Norman Richard in the principality of Capua; Robert Guiscard in the Dukedom of Apulia, of Calabria, and of Sicily, which he was to recover from the Saracens.

The Sovereign was not long in putting his feudatories to the test of their fidelity. The Pope returned to Rome, followed by his new Prætorian guards. Their first duty, which they undertook with fierce delight, was the extermination, or at least the humiliation of those ruthless nobles, who had so long ruled over Rome. They trampled on the pride of the Counts of Tusculum, Præneste, and Nomentana," who looked out from their