Rome. Lucius II., when called upon to renounce all his regalian
rights, fell mortally wounded in an attempt to drive the autonomists
by force from the Capitol (1145). Under Eugenius III.
the Romans sacked and destroyed the houses of the clerks and
cardinals, besieged St Peter’s and the Lateran, and massacred
the pilgrims. The pope was forced to fly with the Sacred
College, to escape the necessity of recognizing the commune,
and thus left the field free to Arnold of Brescia (1145). On his
return to Rome, Eugenius had to treat with his rebel subjects
and to acknowledge the senate they had elected, but he was
unable to procure the expulsion of the agitator. The more
energetic Adrian IV. refused to truckle to the municipality,
placed it under an interdict (1155), and allied himself with
Frederick Barbarossa to quell an insurrection which respected
the rights of emperors no more than the rights of popes. From
the moment that Arnold of Brescia, absorbed in his chimerical
project of reviving the ancient Roman republic, disregarded
the imperial power and neglected to shelter himself behind the
German in his conflict with the priesthood, his failure was
certain and his fate foredoomed. He was hanged and burned,
probably in pursuance of the secret agreement between the pope
and the emperor; and Adrian IV. was reconciled with the
Romans (1156). The commune, however, subsisted, and was
on several occasions strong enough to eject the masters who were
distasteful to it. Unfortunately for Alexander III. the Roman
question was complicated during his pontificate with the desperate
struggle with the Empire. The populace of the Tiber
welcomed and expelled him with equal enthusiasm, and when his
body was brought back from exile, the mob went before the
cortege and threw mud and stones upon the funeral litter. All
obeyed the pontiff of Rome—save Rome itself. Lucius III.,
who was pope for four years (1181–1185), remained in Rome
four months, while Urban III. and Gregory VIII. never entered
the city. At length the two parties grew weary of this state
of revolution, and a regime of conciliation, the fruit of mutual
concessions, was established under Clement III. By the act of
1188, the fundamental charter of the Roman commune, the
people recognized the supremacy of the pope over the senate
and the town, while the pope on his part sanctioned the legal
existence of the commune and of its government and assemblies.
Inasmuch as Clement was compelled to make terms with this
new power which had established itself against him in the very
centre of his dominion, the victory may fairly be said to have
rested with the commune.
Although, among other obstacles, the popes of the 12th century had experienced some difficulty in subduing the inhabitants of the city, which was the seat and centre of the Christian world, their monarchy did not cease to gain in authority, solidity and prestige, and the work of centralization, which was gradually making them Development of the Centralised Organization. masters of the whole ecclesiastical organism, was accomplished steadily and without serious interruption. If Rome expelled them, they always found a sure refuge in France, where Alexander III. carried on his government for several years; and the whole of Europe acknowledged their immense power. Under Honorius II. the custom prevailed of substituting legates a latere, simple priests or deacons of the Curia, for the regionary delegates, who had grown too independent; and that excellent instrument of rule, the Roman legate, carried the papal will into the remotest courts of Europe. The episcopate and the great monastic prelacies continued to lose their independence, as was shown by Honorius II. deputing a cardinal to Monte Cassino to elect an abbot of his choosing. The progress of the Roman power was especially manifested under Innocent II., who had triumphed over the schism, and was supported by the Empire and by Bernard of Clairvaux, the first moral authority of his time. He suspended an archbishop of Sens (1136) who had neglected to take into consideration the appeal to Rome, summoned an archbishop of Milan to Rome to receive the pallium from the pope’s hands, lavished exemptions, and extended the right of appeal to such abnormal lengths that a Byzantine ambassador is reported to have exclaimed to Lothair III., “Your Pope Innocent is not a bishop, but an emperor.” When the universal Church assembled at the second Lateran Council (1139), this leader of religion declared to the bishops that he was the absolute master of Christendom. “Ye know,” he said, “that Rome is the capital of the world, that ye hold your dignities of the Roman pontiff as a vassal holds his fiefs of his sovereign, and that ye cannot retain them without his assent.” Under Eugenius III., a Cistercian monk who was scarcely equal to his task, the papal absolutism grew sensibly weaker, and if we may credit the testimony of the usually well-informed German chronicler. Otto of Freising, there arose in the college of cardinals a kind of fermentation which was exceedingly disquieting for the personal power of the leader of the Church. In the case of a difference of opinion between Eugenius and the Sacred College, Otto relates that the cardinals addressed to the pope this astounding protest: “Thou must know that it is by us thou hast been raised to the supreme dignity. We are the hinges (cardines) upon which the universal Church rests and moves. It is through us that from a private person thou hast become the father of all Christians. It is, then, no longer to thyself but rather to us that thou belongest henceforth. Thou must not sacrifice to private and recent friendships the traditional affections of the papacy. Perforce thou must consult before everything the general interest of Christendom, and must consider it an obligation of thine office to respect the opinions of the highest dignitaries of the court of Rome.” If we admit that the cardinals of Eugenius III. succeeded in restricting the omnipotence of their master for their own ends, it must invariably have been the Curia that dictated its wishes to the Church and to Europe. The papacy, however, recovered its ascendancy during the pontificate of Alexander III., and seemed more powerful than ever. The recently created royalties sought from the papacy the conservation of their titles and the benediction of their crowns, and placed themselves voluntarily in its vassalage. The practice of the nomination of bishops by the Curia and of papal recommendation to prebends and benefices of every kind grew daily more general, and the number of appeals to Rome and exemptions granted to abbeys and even to simple churches increased continually. The third Lateran Council (1179) was a triumph for the leader of the Church. At that council wise and urgent measures were taken against the abuses that discredited the priesthood, but the principle of appeals and exemptions and the question of the increasing abuse of the power wielded by the Roman legates remained untouched. The treatise on canon law known as the Decretum Gratiani, which was compiled towards the middle of the 12th century and had an enduring and far-reaching effect (see Canon Law), merely gave theoretical sanction to the existing situation in the Church. It propagated doctrines in favour of the power of the Holy See, established the superiority of the popes over the councils, and gave legal force to their decretals. According to its author, “they (the popes) are above all the laws of the Church, and can use them according to their wish; they alone judge and cannot be judged.”
It was by its constant reliance on monachism that the papacy of the 12th century had attained this result, and the popes of that period were especially fortunate in having for their champion the monk St Bernard, whose admirable qualities enabled him to dominate public opinion. St Bernard completed the reformation, Influence of Bernard of Clairvaux. combated heresy, and by his immense moral ascendancy gained victories by which Rome benefited. As instances of his more direct services, he put an end to the schism of 1130 and attached Italy and the world to the side of Innocent III. Although he had saved the papal institution from one of the gravest perils it had ever encountered, the cardinals, the court of Rome and Innocent himself could not easily pardon him for being what he had become—a private person more powerful in the Church than the pope and the bishops, and holding that power by his personal prestige. He incurred their special reproaches by his condemnation of the irresistible evolution which impelled Rome to desire exclusive dominion over Catholic Europe and to devote
