GREGORY VII (HILDEBRAND), POPE, saint.
I. LIFE OF ILDEBRANDO BEFORE HIS PONTIFICATE
The tradition regarding the family, birthplace and year of birth of G. is not unanimous. G. Marchetti-Longhi sought to support the thesis that he was born into a family of high Roman nobility, perhaps the Ildebrandi-Stefaneschi, largely on the basis of the saint’s baptismal name, Ildebrando. But according to the primitive tradition, Ildebrando was born at Soana (Sorano) in the Tuscan Maremma around 1020, the son of Bonizone, a blacksmith, and of “Berta, maggiore suburbana.” For his instruction in the liberal arts and moral discipline, his parents entrusted him to his uncle, abbot of S. Maria in Aventino (of the priory of the Knights of Malta). From his early youth spent in Rome, Ildebrando himself provides four precise accounts in his papal letters, according to which he was received into the Lateran Palace and had two celebrated tutors, Lorenzo of Amalfi and the archpriest Giovanni Graziano, later Pope Gregory VI, with whom, after the deposition effected by King Henry III of Germany at the Synod of Sutri (1046), he reluctantly went into exile at Cologne as his chaplain. He probably took the Benedictine habit there. The controversy among historians as to whether Ildebrando was a monk or not has been decided positively (cf. G. B. Borino, Quando e dove si fece monaco Ildebrando, in Miscellanea G. Mercati, I, Città del Vaticano 1946, pp. 218-62).With Pope Leo IX he returned to Rome, still more reluctantly. By the same pontiff, Ildebrando the monk was ordained subdeacon and became prior and oeconomus at S. Paolo fuori le Mura. There he reformed monastic discipline and restored the Basilica.
By Popes Leo IX and his successors, Victor II and Stephen IX, Ildebrando was employed on various diplomatic missions in France (e.g., against Berengar of Tours) and in Germany. Pope Stephen IX ordained him deacon and appointed him archdeacon of the Holy Roman Church. After Stephen’s untimely death, Ildebrando skillfully engineered the downfall of Benedict X, elected uncanonically by the faction of the Tusculani, and the election of Pope Nicholas II (1059-61). By his successor, Pope Alexander II (1061-73), his friend in the reform, he was created cardinal and chancellor of the Holy Roman Church; after the death of Cardinal Umberto of Silva Candida (1061), he became, with St Peter Damian, the Pope’s right hand in the struggle for ecclesiastical reform.
II. THE ELECTION OF ILDEBRANDO (22 April 1073)
Immediately after the burial of Alexander II, Ildebrando was acclaimed pope by the people in the Lateran Basilica and shortly thereafter elected by the cardinals at S. Pietro in Vincoli; he took the name Gregory. Doubts about the canonical validity of the election arose much later, at the beginning of the struggle with King Henry IV of Germany. The young king seems to have confirmed Ildebrando’s election: it was the last time a German emperor performed that act.III. THE PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER OF ST GREGORY VII
Hildebrand-Gregory was over fifty when he attained the supreme pontificate. He was of extraordinarily small stature, with a pale face, but possessed an incomparable strength of will and spirit. What he conceived, he carried into effect. He preferred images and similitudes drawn from the language of war. St Peter Damian sometimes compared him to the north wind, at other times called him “holy Satan.” Ardent apologists and furious contemporary adversaries alike fail to render an equable judgment of his character and of that great soul which shines forth from the letters written in his own hand to faithful friends such as the Countess Matilda of Tuscany, Abbot Hugh of Cluny, and Bishop Hermann of Metz. The predominant trait of his spiritual attitude was a burning faith illumined by a mystical piety toward the person of Jesus. Justice was the leitmotiv of his thought and action.IV. HIS PROGRAMME OF REFORM
Hildebrand-Gregory, who for more than twenty years before his pontificate had worked for the reform of the Church, began from the very first year of his pontificate to carry out his programme of reform with all his might. Conscious of the plenitude of power of the successor of Peter, he set himself to uproot the most deeply rooted vices in the clergy: simony and clerical marriage. For this reforming work he desired the agreement between spiritual and temporal power, between the priesthood and the Empire. At the Lenten Synod of 1074 he issued decrees against simony and Nicolaitism, and at the same time encouraged the people not to attend the liturgical functions of married priests. The opposition of the bishops and clergy in Germany, Italy, France and England was great, but Gregory continued the work with growing fervour and energy. At the Synod of 1075, besides renewing the previous decrees, he issued another against lay investiture of bishops and abbots, and demanded freedom in their canonical election, without the intervention of the king or civil power. Against this decree arose the unanimous resistance of the feudal lords, especially on the part of the king of Germany. Hence the rupture between Papacy and Empire was inevitable. From the same period is the so-called Dictatus Papae, 27 brief sentences dictated by Gregory VII and inserted in his original register [between ep. 55 and 56 of bk. II]. Among the various hypotheses regarding its character, the most probable is that of G. Borino, according to whom the Dictatus Papae would be the index of a canonical collection. In its content the Dictatus Papae represents the expression of the primacy of the Roman Pontiff instituted by Jesus Christ and transferred to St Peter. From him derives the position of the primacy of the Church of Rome and of its bishop with titles of honour, privileges and royal rights. From this follows his supreme power in legislation, administration and jurisdiction over the universal Church and individual churches. To the Dictatus Papae is also annexed Gregory VII’s concept of the relations between Church and State: a much-debated conception that can chiefly be gathered from his letters to Hermann, bishop of Metz (1076–81). At the foundation of his concept lies the unlimited power to bind and loose given by Jesus Christ to St Peter, and the evident superiority of priestly power over royal power. The apostolic and royal powers are destined by God to govern the world, and the harmony of both powers was the goal that, for the salvation of Christendom, Gregory VII set himself to achieve in his actions. He regarded not the State in itself but the bad government of tyrants and enemies of the Church in the civitas terrena, in the sense of St Augustine, as the work of the devil.
V. THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE PRIESTHOOD AND THE EMPIRE UNDER GREGORY VII AND KING HENRY IV
This immense and tragic struggle between the two powers can be divided into three periods.1. The period of preparation (1073–75). From the first papal letters of Gregory VII, his benevolence toward King Henry IV is evident. But the young king, though of high intelligence, had a weak character and soon became odious to the papal legates whom Gregory sent to his court in 1074 to reconcile the rebellious Saxons with the king, settle ecclesiastical matters, and promulgate reform decrees. The reconciled king promised his support.
2. The period of transition (1075–80)
In reality, Henry IV, despite the decree against investitures, continued to appoint bishops in Germany and even in Italy, especially in Milan, and dismissed unsatisfied the papal legates whom Gregory sent to him at the end of 1075. Shortly after January 24, 1076, Henry IV, at the Synod of Worms, declared the Pope deposed. Gregory’s response to this deposition was the Roman Synod of 1076, in which he solemnly excommunicated the king and absolved his subjects from their oath of loyalty. The effects of the excommunication threatened to be disastrous for Henry IV. The Saxons rebelled again, many bishops who had been forced to sign Gregory’s deposition submitted anew to the Pope, and the princes of Germany threatened to depose Henry unless he obtained absolution within a year. To secure reconciliation, Henry IV traveled to Italy in the winter of 1076–77 and found Gregory on his way to Germany to attend the assembly at Augsburg, at the castle of Canossa with Countess Matilda of Tuscany. Henry IV, clad in penitential garb, implored absolution from the excommunication for three days. Gregory yielded to the entreaties and absolved him. The dramatic events of Canossa are judged variously by historians. Today, however, the majority agree in recognizing that Gregory VII in this instance sacrificed the statesman to the priest, and Henry IV regained his crown.3. The concluding period of the struggle (1080–85). At the Roman Synod of 1080, Gregory VII decided the dispute between Henry IV and his rival Rudolf of Swabia in Rudolf’s favor and declared Henry deposed and excommunicated for breaking his promises. After the Synod of Brixen (1080), in which Henry IV appointed the Archbishop of Ravenna, Guibert, as an antipope (who took the name Clement III), the king launched a military expedition against Gregory VII. Only in 1084 was Henry able to conquer the Leonine City with St. Peter’s, where he enthroned the antipope Clement III and had himself crowned emperor. Robert Guiscard, with the army of the Normans, freed Gregory VII from the Castel Sant’Angelo and led him to the Lateran Palace; but because of the sack of the city by the Normans, Gregory VII left with his allies. At Salerno, in a synod of November 1084, he again excommunicated Henry IV and all his accomplices and wrote an encyclical that served as his testament, in which he summarized his reforming work and expressed his confidence in the future of the reform. On May 25, 1085, he died at Salerno with the famous words on his lips: “I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile.” He was buried in the cathedral of Salerno, where he still rests.