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VOLTAIRE



ANCIENT AND MODERN HISTORY



IN SEVEN VOLUMES

VOL. II

GERMANY, 1056 ENGLAND, 1400



LIST OF PLATES
VOL. XXV

FACE

APOLLO AND THE MUSES . .. Frontispiece

MURDER OF THOMAS A BECKET ... 52

GENGHIS KHAN . . . . . .154

THE INVASION OF ITALY , 244



ANCIENT AND MODERN
HISTORY.



CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE EMPIRE OF ITALY EMPEROR HENRY IV. AND

POPE GREGORY VII. ROME AND THE EMPIRE IN

THE ELEVENTH CENTURY.

IT is now time to return to the ruins of Rome, and
that shadow of the throne of the Caesars, which
began to appear again in Germany.

It was yet uncertain who was to reign in Rome,
or what was to be the fate of Italy. The German
emperors thought themselves by right masters of
the whole western empire: and yet they were
scarcely sovereigns in Germany, where the great
feudal governments of the lords and bishops began
to take deep root. The Norman princes, who had
conquered Apulia and Calabria, formed a new
power. The Venetians had, by their example,
inspired all the great towns of Italy with the love
of liberty and independence. The popes were not
yet sovereigns, but wanted to be so.

1056 The right of the emperors to nominate
the popes began to be established ; but it is easy to



6 Ancient and Modern History.

see that the first favorable circumstance might give
a sudden turn to affairs. This soon occurred under
the minority of the emperor Henry IV., who was,
in the lifetime of his father, Henry III., acknowl-
edged as his successor.

Even in the time of this last emperor the impe-
rial authority began to decline in Italy. His sister,
the countess or duchess of Tuscany, mother of that
true benefactress of the popes, the countess Mathilda
d'Este, contributed more than anyone to stir up
Italy against her brother. Together with the mar-
quisate of Mantua, she possessed Tuscany and a
part of Lombardy. Having had the imprudence to
come to the German court, they detained her a con-
siderable time, a prisoner there. Her daughter, the
countess Mathilda, inherited her ambition, and
hatred to the imperial house.

During the minority of Henry IV., many popes
were made by intrigues, money, and civil dissen-
sions. At length, in 1061, Alexander II. was elected,
without the imperial court being consulted. That
court in vain nominated another pope: its interest
was on the decline in Italy; Alexander II. carried
his point, and obliged his competitor to leave Rome.

Though Henry IV., upon attaining his majority,
saw himself emperor of Italy and Germany, yet
he was much circumscribed in his power. Part
of the secular and ecclesiastical princes of his own
country entered into cabals against him; and it
is well known that he had no way of being master



Henry IV. and Gregory VII. 7

of Italy except at the head of a powerful army.
His power was trifling, but his courage was supe-
rior to his fortune.

1073 Some authors relate that, being accused
in the Diet of Wiirzburg of having intended to
assassinate the dukes of Suabia and Carinthia, he
offered to fight the accuser, who was only a simple
gentleman. The day was fixed for the combat, and
the accuser not appearing, the emperor was acquitted
of the charge.

As soon as the authority of a prince comes to
be disputed, an attack is generally made on his
morals. Henry was publicly reproached with hav-
ing mistresses, while the meanest priest was suf-
fered to keep them with impunity. He wanted to
be divorced from his wife, the daughter of a marquis
of Ferrara, with whom he pretended he had never
been able to consummate his marriage. Some little
irregularities of his youth contributed to sour the
minds of the people still more, and his conduct had
weakened his power.

There was at that time at Rome a monk of Cluny,
lately made a cardinal, a man of a restless, fiery,
and enterprising disposition, and one who knew
very well, upon occasion, how to join artifice to
an ardent zeal for the pretensions of the Church.
Hildebrand was the name of this daring man, who
afterwards came to be the famous pope, Gregory
VII. He was born at Soana, in Tuscany, of obscure
parents; was brought up at Rome, received into



8 Ancient and Modern History.

the order of the Monks of Cluny, under the abbot
Odilon; and, being deputed to Rome upon some
affairs of his order, was afterwards employed by
the popes in all affairs which required dexterity
and resolution; and began already to distinguish
himself in Italy by an intrepid and violent zeal.
The public voice declared him the successor of Alex-
ander II., under whose pontificate he governed
everything. The various characters, favorable and
unfavorable, which so many writers have given us
of this Gregory, may be found in a picture which
a Neapolitan painter drew of him, in which he was
represented with a shepherd's crook in one hand,
and a whip in the other, trampling upon sceptres;
and by his side St. Peter's nets and fish.

Gregory engaged Pope Alexander to strike an
unheard-of blow, in summoning young Henry to
appear at Rome before the tribunal of the holy
see. This was the first example of so signal an
exploit; and in what times was it hazarded?
When Rome had been accustomed by Henry III.,
the father of this very Henry, to receive her bishops
at the sole command of the emperor. Now it was
precisely this mark of servitude which Gregory
aimed at throwing off ; and to prevent the emperors
from giving laws in Rome, he resolved that the
pope should give laws to the emperor. This bold
step was attended with no consequence at that time.
In all this affair Alexander II. seems like a forlorn
hope despatched by Hildebrand, against the empire



Henry IV. and Gregory VII. 9

before he would venture to give it battle. The
death of Alexander followed soon after this first
act of hostility.

1073 Upon the demise of this pontiff, Hilde-
brand had credit enough to get himself elected and
installed by the people of Rome, without waiting
for the emperor's permission. But he soon after
obtained it, upon promising to be faithful to his
interests ; and Henry, accepting his excuses, sent
his chancellor to Italy to confirm his election at
Rome. Upon this occasion, the emperor being
cautioned by his courtiers to beware of Gregory,
publicly declared that this pope could never be
ungrateful to his benefactor; but no sooner was
Gregory settled in the papal chair than he declared
he would excommunicate all who should receive
benefices from laymen, and every layman who should
presume for the future to confer them. He had
formed a design of depriving all lay patrons of the
right of presentation to church livings. This was
engaging the Church in an open quarrel with the
sovereigns of all nations. The violent temper of
this pontiff broke out at the same time against Philip
L, king of France. The affair related to some
Italian merchants who had been ransomed by the
French. The pope wrote a circular letter to the
bishops of France, in which he delivers himself
thus : " Your king is rather a tyrant than a king ;
he spends his days in infamy and vice ; " and imme-



io Ancient and Modern History.

diately upon these indiscreet expressions follow the
usual threats of excommunication.

1075 Not long after, while Henry was engaged
in a war with the Saxons, the pope sent two legates
to him, with a summons to come and answer to
the charge of having granted the investiture of
benefices, and threatening him with excommuni-
cation, in case of non-compliance. The two legates
who brought this strange summons delivered their
message just as the emperor had obtained a com-
plete victory over the Saxons, and had returned
crowned with glory, and more powerful than they
expected. It is easy to conceive with what indigna-
tion a young emperor of twenty-five, victorious, and
jealous of his dignity, must have received such an
embassy : yet he did not inflict any exemplary pun-
ishment on the deputies, the prejudices of those
times not allowing such a step; he contented him-
self with treating this piece of insolence with the
contempt it deserved, and left these indiscreet legates
to the insults of the servants attending his court.

1076 Almost at the same time this pope also
excommunicated the Norman princes of Apulia and
Calabria mentioned in the thirteenth chapter. So
many excommunications following one another
would in these times be looked upon as the height
of folly and imprudence; but it should be consid-
ered that, when Gregory issued his menaces against
the king of France, he addressed his bull to the
duke of Aquitaine, that king's vassal, who was



Henry IV. and Gregory VII. II

nearly as powerful as the king himself ; that when
he broke out against the emperor, he had a part of
Italy on his side, together with the countess
Mathilda, Rome, and half of Germany ; and that,
as to the Normans, they were then his declared
enemies ; so that, on the whole, Gregory's behav-
ior will appear rather the effect of an insolent and
overbearing temper, than of rashness or folly. He
was sensible that in endeavoring to set up his own
dignity above that of the emperor, and all other
crowned heads, he should have all the other
churches on his side, who would be proud of a head
who knew so well how to pull down every superior
power: and his design was not only to throw off
the yoke of the emperors, but at the same time to
bring Rome, the emperors and kings in general,
under the papal dominion. This project was such
a one as might have cost him his life, and he could
expect no other result; but the greater the danger
the greater the glory.

Henry had too much business on his hands in
Germany to suffer him to go over to Italy ; and his
first step seemed rather that of an Italian lord than
an emperor of Germany. Instead of employing a
general and an army, he is said to have made use of
a ruffian named Cencius, famous for his robberies,
who seized upon the pope in the church of St. Mary
Maggior, at the very time he was celebrating divine
service. Some resolute fellows, his accomplices,
gave the pontiff several wounds, and hurrying him



12 Ancient and Modern History.

away, shut him up in a tower of which Cencius had
the possession.

Henry acted more in the character of a prince, in
calling a council at Worms, consisting of bishops,
abbots, and doctors, in which he deposed the pope;
and the sentence was agreed to by all present, except
two. But this council wanted troops to make its
decisions respected at Rome. Henry only lessened
his authority by writing to the pope that he had
deposed him, and to the people in Rome, forbidding
them any longer to acknowledge Gregory as their
pontiff.

As soon as the pope received these insignificant
letters, he addressed himself in these words to a
council he summoned upon the occasion : " In the
name of almighty God, and by your authority, I
prohibit Henry, the son of our Emperor Henry, from
governing the Germanic kingdom, and Italy. I
release all Christians from their oath of allegiance
to him ; and strictly forbid all persons from serving
or attending him as king." This is well known to
be the first instance of a pope's pretending to
deprive a sovereign of his crown. We have already
seen Louis the Debonnaire deposed by his bishops;
but there was at least some excuse for that step.
They condemned Louis in appearance only to do
public penance; and no one had since the first
founding of the Church, presumed to talk in the
same strain as Gregory. The circular letters written
by this pontiff breathe the same spirit as his sen-



Henry IV. and Gregory VII. 13

tence of deposition. He there repeats several times
that " bishops are superior to kings, and made to
judge them;" expressions alike artful and pre-
sumptuous, and calculated to bring all the church-
men of the world to his standard.

There is the greatest probability that when Greg-
ory thus deposed his sovereign only by pronouncing
a few words, he knew very well that he had in his
favor the civil wars of Germany, which began to
break out anew with the greatest fury. A bishop of
Utrecht, who had been greatly instrumental in
Gregory's condemnation, being stricken with a
sudden and painful illness, of which he died,
repented, it is said, upon his death-bed of what he
had done, as an act of sacrilege. This repentance
of the bishop, whether true or false, imposed on
the people. These were no longer the times when
Germany was united under the Othos. Henry saw
himself surrounded near Spires by the army of the
confederates, who availed themselves of the pope's
bull. The feudal government which then prevailed
in Germany, naturally produced such revolutions.
Each German prince was jealous of the imperial
power, as the higher nobility of France were of their
king. The flame of civil war still lay smothering,
and a bull properly worded was sufficient to set it
into a blaze.

The confederate princes granted Henry his lib-
erty, only on condition that he should live as a
private person, and under sentence of excommuni-



14 Ancient and Modern History.

cation at Spires, without exercising any function
either of a Christian or a king, till the pope came
to preside at a diet of princes and bishops, to be
assembled at Augsburg, and by whom he was to be
tried.

It is certain that those princes who had a right
to choose the emperor had a right to depose him ;
but to make the pope president of the council
appointed for trying him was in fact to acknowl-
edge the pontiff as the supreme judge of both
emperor and empire. This was the victory of Greg-
ory and of the popedom; and Henry, reduced to
these extremities, still added to the triumph.

Willing to prevent this fatal trial at Augsburg,
he took an unheard-of resolution, in suddenly pass-
ing the Alps in Tyrol, with a few domestics, to
present himself to ask absolution of the pope. Greg-
ory was then with the countess Mathilda in the
town of Canossa,the ancient Canusium,on the Apen-
nines, near Reggio, a fortress in those times
deemed impregnable. This emperor, so celebrated
for his victories, presents himself at the gates of
the fortress without either guards or attendants.
They stopped him in the inner court, stripped him
of his clothes, and put on him a haircloth.

1077 I n this condition, and barefooted, he was
permitted to remain in the court, though it was
then the month of January. They afterwards made
him fast three days before he was admitted to kiss
the pope's feet, who all that time was shut up with



Henry IV. and Gregory VII. 15

the countess Mathilda, whose spiritual director he
had long been. It is not at all surprising that this
pope's enemies should have reproached him for his
conduct with regard to the countess. It is true he
was an old man of seventy-two years of age; but
then he was a spiritual director, and Mathilda was
a weak young woman. The devout language which
we find in the pope's letters to this princess, com-
pared with the violence of his ambition, might
tempt one to believe that he made use of religion
for a mask to all his passions: 'but, on the other
hand, we have not a single fact or circumstance
to authorize such suspicions. The hypocritical
debauchee has neither the settled enthusiasm nor
the intrepid zeal of Gregory, whose great austerity
made him so very dangerous.

At length the emperor was permitted to throw
himself at the pontiff's feet, who deigned to grant
him absolution, but not till he had sworn to wait
for his solemn decision at the Diet of Augsburg, and
to be perfectly obedient to him in all things. Some
bishops and German lords of the emperor's party
made the same submission. Gregory, then look-
ing upon himself, and not without reason, as the
lord and master of all the crowned heads of the
earth, said in several of his letters that it was his
duty to pull down the pride of kings.

The people of Lombardy, who still held out for
the emperor, were so incensed at his mean submis-
sion, that they were on the point of deserting him.



1 6 Ancient and Modern History.

Gregory was more hated by them than even in Ger-
many. Happily for the emperor, their detestation
of the pope's arrogance overbalanced their indigna-
tion at his meanness. Henry turned this to his
advantage; and, by a change of fortune hitherto
unknown to the German emperors, he met with a
strong party in Italy, when he was abandoned in
Germany. All Lombardy took up arms against the
pope, while he on his side was raising all Germany
against the emperor.

1078 On the one hand the pope made use
of every art to get another emperor elected in Ger-
many, and Henry left nothing undone to persuade
the Italians to choose another pope. The Germans
chose Rudolph, duke of Suabia ; upon which Greg-
ory wrote that he would determine between Henry
and Rudolph, and give the crown to him who would
show the most submission to his authority. Henry,
however, trusted more to his troops than to the
decision of the holy father ; but meeting with some
ill successes, the pope growing more insolent, excom-
municated him a second time, in 1080. " I deprive
Henry of his crown," says he, " and bestow the
empire of Germany on Rudolph : " and to make
the world believe that he really had the disposal
of empires, he made a present to Rudolph of a
golden crown on which this verse was engraved :
Petra dedit Petro, Petrus diadema Rodolpho.

" The rock gave Peter the crown, and Peter gives
it to Rudolph."



Henry IV. and Gregory VII. 17

This verse at once contains a wretched pun, and
an affectation of haughtiness, which were equally
the taste of those times.

1080 In the meantime Henry's party began to
gather strength in Germany; and this very prince,
who, clad in haircloth and barefooted, had waited
three days at the mercy of one whom he looked upon
as his subject, now took two resolutions which
were more noble. One was to depose the pope, and
the other to give battle to his competitor. Accord-
ingly, he assembled about twenty bishops at Brixen,
in the county of Tyrol, who, acting at the same time
for the prelates of Lombardy, proceeded to excom-
municate and depose Gregory VII. " for being a
supporter of tyrants, and an encourager of simony,
sacrilege, and magic." After this they proceeded
to the election of a new pope, and chose Guibert,
archbishop of Ravenna; and while this new pope
hastens into Lombardy, to stir up the people against
Gregory, Henry, at the head of an army, marches
against his rival, Rudolph. Was it excess of enthu-
siasm, or what we call a pious fraud, that induced
Gregory at that time to prophesy that Henry would
be defeated and slain in this war? " I am not pope,"
says he in his letter to the German bishops of his
party, " if this does not fall out before St. Peter's
day." Everyone in his right senses knows that
none but a fool or an impostor would pretend to
foretell what is to come: but let us consider the

errors which at that time had possession of the minds
Vol. 25 2



1 8 Ancient and Modern History.

of mankind. The learned in all ages have been
addicted to judicial astrology. Gregory was
reproached with having put faith in the predictions
of astrologers; and the act of deposition made
against him at Brixen says: "He dealt in divin-
ations, and interpreting dreams ;" and on this foun-
dation they accused him of magic: he has likewise
been called an impostor, on account of his false and
odd kind of prediction above-mentioned, while per-
haps he was at the worst but a credulous man.

This prediction of his, however, fell upon his
own creature, Rudolph, whom he was so proud of
having made an emperor, he being defeated, and
afterwards slain by Godfrey of Bouillon, nephew
of the countess Mathilda, and the same who made
the conquest of Jerusalem. Who would imagine
that the pope should then, instead of making
advances to Henry, write to the German bishops:
" They should proceed to the election of a new
emperor, on condition of his yielding homage to
the pope, and acknowledging himself his vassal."
These letters plainly show that there was still a
very powerful party against Henry in Germany.

At this very time it was, that the pope ordered
his legates in France to demand a yearly tribute of
a silver denier for every house, in like manner as
was done in England.

Spain was treated in a still more despotic manner
by him ; for he pretended to be lord paramount of
the whole kingdom, and says in his sixteenth epistle:



Henry IV. and Gregory VII. 19

" It is much better it should belong to the Saracens
than not do homage to the holy see."

He wrote thus to Solomon, king of Hungary, a
country which had at that time hardly embraced
Christianity : " You may learn from the elders of
your country that the kingdom of Hungary belongs
to the Church of Rome."

Enterprises of this nature, however rash they
may seem to us, are always the necessary conse-
quences of the reigning opinions of the times ; and
undoubtedly the ignorance which prevailed in these
ages made it the general belief that the Church was
the mistress of kingdoms, or the pope would never
have ventured to write always in this style.

His inflexibility toward Henry was not likewise
without foundation. He had gained such an ascend-
ancy over the countess Mathilda, that she made an
authentic donation of her territories to the holy see,
only reserving the enjoyment of them for her nat-
ural life. It is not known whether this concession
was made by a public act, or by a private deed
between the two parties. The custom at that time
was, when anyone made a donation of their goods
or territories to the Church, to place a lump of earth
upon the altar; and, instead of a deed, there were
witnesses present on both sides. It is said that
Mathilda made two several donations of her effects
to the see of Rome.

The validity of this donation, confirmed after-
ward by her will, was never disputed by her nephew



2O Ancient and Modern History.

Henry, and still remains the most authentic title of
any claimed by the popes ; but yet this very title
proved a fresh subject of dispute. The countess
possessed Tuscany, Mantua, Parma, Reggio, Pla-
centia, Ferrara, Modena, a part of Umbria, and
the duchy of Spoleto, Verona, almost the whole of
what is now called St. Peter's Patrimony, reaching
from Viterbo as far as Orvieto, together with a part
of the march of Ancona.

Henry III. had given this march of Ancona to the
popes; but this did not prevent the countess
Mathilda's mother from taking possession of the
towns which she thought belonged to her. It seems
as if Mathilda was desirous of making reparation
after her death for the injury she had done to the
holy see during her lifetime : but it was not in her
power to give away the inalienable fiefs; and the
emperors pretended that her whole patrimony was
a fief belonging to the empire. Therefore this was
in effect leaving territories to be conquered, and
making a legacy of continual wars. Henry IV.,
as heir, and lord paramount, looked upon this dona-
tion as an absolute violation of the rights of the
empire: however, in the end, he was obliged to
yield a part of those territories to the holy see.

1083 Henry, still continuing his vengeance,
came at length before Rome, and laid siege to it;
and made himself master of the part of the town
on this side the Tiber, called the Leonina ; but while
he was menacing the pope, he entered into negoti-