Pope Gregory VII

Pope Gregory VII (Gregorius VII; c. 1015 – 25 May 1085), born Hildebrand of Sovana (Ildebrando di Soana), was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 22 April 1073 to his death in 1085. He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church.

One of the great reforming popes, he is perhaps best known for the part he played in the Investiture Controversy, his dispute with Emperor Henry IV to establish the primacy of papal authority and the new canon law governing the election of the pope by the College of Cardinals. He was also at the forefront of developments in the relationship between the emperor and the papacy during the years before he became pope. He was the first pope to introduce a policy of obligatory celibacy for the clergy, which had until then commonly married,   and also attacked the practice of simony.

During the power struggles between the papacy and the Empire, Gregory excommunicated Henry IV three times, and Henry appointed Antipope Clement III to oppose him. Though Gregory was hailed as one of the greatest of the Roman pontiffs after his reforms proved successful, during his own reign he was denounced by some for his autocratic use of papal powers.

In later times, Gregory VII became an exemplar of papal supremacy, and his memory was invoked both positively and negatively, reflecting later writers' attitude to the Catholic Church and the papacy. Beno of Santi Martino e Silvestro, who opposed Gregory VII in the Investiture Controversy, accused him of necromancy, cruelty, tyranny, and blasphemy. This was eagerly repeated by later opponents of the Catholic Church, such as the English Protestant John Foxe. In contrast, the modern historian and Anglican priest H. E. J. Cowdrey writes, "[Gregory VII] was surprisingly flexible, feeling his way and therefore perplexing both rigorous collaborators ... and cautious and steady-minded ones ... His zeal, moral force, and religious conviction, however, ensured that he should retain to a remarkable degree the loyalty and service of a wide variety of men and women."

Early life
Gregory was born Hildebrand (Ildebrando) in the town of Sovana, in the County of Grosseto, now southern Tuscany, the son of a blacksmith. As a youth he was sent to study in Rome at the monastery of St. Mary on the Aventine, where his uncle was reportedly abbot of a monastery on the Aventine Hill. Among his masters were the erudite Lawrence, archbishop of Amalfi, and Johannes Gratianus, the future Pope Gregory VI. When the latter was deposed at the Council of Sutri in December of 1046, with approval of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry III and exiled to Germany, Hildebrand followed him to Cologne. According to some chroniclers, Hildebrand moved to Cluny after Gregory VI's death, which occurred in 1048; though his declaration to have become a monk at Cluny is disputed.

He then accompanied Cluny's Abbot Bruno of Toul to Rome; there, Bruno was elected pope, choosing the name Leo IX, and named Hildebrand as deacon and papal administrator. In 1054 Leo sent Hildebrand as his legate to Tours in France in the wake of the controversy created by Berengar of Tours. At Leo's death, the new pope, Victor II, confirmed him as legate, while Victor's successor Stephen IX sent him and Anselm of Lucca to Germany to obtain recognition from Empress Agnes. Stephen died before being able to return to Rome, but Hildebrand was successful; he was then instrumental in overcoming the crisis caused by the Roman aristocracy's election of an antipope, Benedict X, who, thanks also to Agnes's support, was replaced by the Bishop of Florence, Nicholas II. With the help of 300 Norman knights sent by Richard of Aversa, Hildebrand personally led the conquest of the castle of Galeria Antica where Benedict had taken refuge. Between 1058 and 1059, he was made archdeacon of the Roman church, becoming the most important figure in the papal administration.

He was again the most powerful figure behind the election of Anselm of Lucca the Elder as Pope Alexander II in the papal election of October 1061. The new pope put forward the reform program devised by Hildebrand and his followers. In his years as papal advisor, Hildebrand had an important role in the reconciliation with the Norman kingdom of southern Italy, in the anti-German alliance with the Pataria movement in northern Italy and, above all, in the introduction of an ecclesiastic law which gave the cardinals exclusive rights concerning the election of a new pope.

Election to the papacy
Pope Gregory VII was one of the few popes elected by acclamation. On the death of Alexander II on 21 April 1073, as the obsequies were being performed in the Lateran Basilica, there arose a loud outcry from the clergy and people: "Let Hildebrand be pope!", "Blessed Peter has chosen Hildebrand the Archdeacon!" Hildebrand immediately fled, and hid himself for some time, thereby making it clear that he had refused the uncanonical election in the Liberian Basilica. He was finally found at the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli, to which a famous monastery was attached, and elected pope by the assembled cardinals, with the due consent of the Roman clergy, amid the repeated acclamations of the people.

It was debated, at the time and since, whether this extraordinary outburst in favour of Hildebrand by clergy and people was wholly spontaneous, or could have been pre-arranged. According to Benizo, Bishop of Sutri, a supporter of Hildebrand, the outcry was begun by Cardinal Ugo Candidus, Cardinal Priest of S. Clemente, who rushed into a pulpit and began to declaim to the people. Certainly, the mode of his election was highly criticized by his opponents. Many of the accusations against him may have been expressions of personal dislike, liable to suspicion from the very fact that they were not raised to attack his promotion until several years later. But it is clear from Gregory's own account of the circumstances of his election, in his Epistle 1 and Epistle 2, that it was conducted in a very irregular fashion, contrary to the Constitution of the Pope of 607. This ecclesiastical statute forbade a papal election to begin until the third day after a pope's burial. Cardinal Ugo's intervention was contrary to the Constitution of Nicholas II, which affirmed the exclusive right to name candidates to Cardinal Bishops; finally, it ignored the Constitution's requirement that the Holy Roman Emperor be consulted. However, Gregory was then confirmed by a second election at S. Pietro in Vincoli.

Gregory VII's earliest pontifical letters clearly acknowledged these events, and thus helped defuse doubts about his election and popularity. On 22 May 1073, the Feast of Pentecost, he received ordination as a priest, and he was consecrated a bishop and enthroned as pope on 29 June, the Feast of St. Peter's Chair.

In the decree of election, his electors proclaimed Gregory VII:"'a devout man, a man mighty in human and divine knowledge, a distinguished lover of equity and justice, a man firm in adversity and temperate in prosperity, a man, according to the saying of the Apostle, of good behavior, blameless, modest, sober, chaste, given to hospitality, and one that ruleth well his own house; a man from his childhood generously brought up in the bosom of this Mother Church, and for the merit of his life already raised to the archidiaconal dignity. [...] We choose then our Archdeacon Hildebrand to be pope and successor to the Apostle, and to bear henceforward and forever the name of Gregory' (22 April 1073)."Gregory VII's first attempts in foreign policy were towards a reconciliation with the Normans of Robert Guiscard; in the end the two parties did not meet. After a failed call for a crusade to the princes of northern Europe, and after obtaining the support of other Norman princes such as Landulf VI of Benevento and Richard I of Capua, Gregory VII was able to excommunicate Robert in 1074.

In the same year Gregory VII summoned a council in the Lateran palace, which condemned simony and confirmed celibacy for the Church's clergy. These decrees were further stressed, under menace of excommunication, the next year (24–28 February). In particular, Gregory decreed that only the Pope could appoint or depose bishops or move them from see to see, an act which was later to cause the Investiture Controversy.

Start of conflict with the Emperor
Gregory VII main political project was his relationship with the Holy Roman Empire. Since the death of Holy Roman Emperor Henry III, the strength of the German monarchy had been seriously weakened, and his untried son Henry IV had to contend with great internal difficulties, presenting an opportunity for Gregory to strengthen the Church.

In the two years following Gregory's election, the Saxon rebellion fully occupied Henry and forced him to come to terms with the pope at any cost. In May 1074 Henry did penance at Nuremberg—in the presence of the papal legates—to atone for his continued friendship with the members of his council who had been banned by Gregory; he took an oath of obedience, and promised his support in the work of reforming the Church. However, as soon as Henry defeated the Saxons at the First Battle of Langensalza on 9 June 1075 (Battle of Homburg or Hohenburg), he tried to reassert his sovereign rights in northern Italy. Henry sent Count Eberhard to Lombardy to combat the Patarenes; nominated the cleric Tedald to the archbishopric of Milan, settling a prolonged and contentious question; and made overtures to the Norman duke Robert Guiscard.

Gregory VII replied with a harsh letter dated 8 December 1075, in which he accused Henry of breaching his word and of continuing to support excommunicated councillors. At the same time, the pope sent a verbal message threatening not only the ban of the Church against the emperor, but the deprivation of his crown. At the same time, Gregory was menaced by Cencio I Frangipane, who on Christmas night surprised him in church and kidnapped him, though he was released the following day.

Pope and emperor depose each other
The high-handed demands and threats of the pope infuriated Henry and his court, and their answer was the hastily convened national synod of Worms on 24 January 1076. In the higher ranks of the German clergy, Gregory had many enemies, and the Roman cardinal Hugo Candidus, once on intimate terms with Gregory but now his opponent, hurried to Germany for the occasion. Candidus declaimed a list of accusations against the pope before the assembly, which resolved that Gregory had forfeited the papacy. In one document full of accusations, the bishops renounced their allegiance to Gregory. In another, Henry pronounced him deposed, and required the Romans to choose a new pope.

The council sent two bishops to Italy, who then procured a similar act of deposition from the Lombard bishops at the synod of Piacenza. Roland of Parma faced the pope with these decisions before the synod which had just assembled in the Lateran Basilica. For the moment the members were frightened, but there soon arose such a storm of indignation that only the calming words of Gregory saved the envoy's life.

On the following day, 22 February 1076, Gregory solemnly pronounced a sentence of excommunication against Henry IV, divested him of his royal dignity, and absolved his subjects of their sworn allegiance. The effectiveness of this sentence depended entirely on Henry's subjects, above all on the German princes. Contemporary evidence suggests that the excommunication of Henry made a profound impression both in Germany and Italy.

Thirty years before, Henry III had deposed three unworthy claimants to the papacy, a service acknowledged by the Church and public opinion. When Henry IV again attempted this procedure he lacked support. In Germany there was a rapid and general feeling in favor of Gregory, strengthening the princes against their feudal lord Henry. When at Whitsun the emperor summoned a council of nobles to oppose the pope, only a few responded. Meanwhile, the Saxons snatched the opportunity to renew their rebellion, and the anti-royalist party grew in strength from month to month.

Walk to Canossa
Henry now faced ruin. As a result of the agitation, which was zealously fostered by the papal legate Bishop Altmann of Passau, the princes met in October at Trebur to elect a new German ruler. Henry, who was stationed at Oppenheim on the left bank of the Rhine, was only saved from the loss of his throne by the failure of the assembled princes to agree on his successor. Their dissension, however, merely postponed the verdict. Henry, they declared, must make reparation and obeisance to Gregory; and if he were still under the ban on the anniversary of his excommunication, his throne should be considered vacant. At the same time invited Gregory to Augsburg to decide the conflict.

Unable to oppose his princes and the pope together, Henry saw that he must secure absolution from Gregory before the period named. At first he attempted this through an embassy, but when Gregory rejected his overtures he went to Italy in person. The pope had already left Rome and had informed the German princes that he would expect their escort on 8 January 1077 to Mantua. This escort had not appeared when he received the news of Henry's arrival at Canossa, where Gregory had taken refuge under the protection of his close ally, Matilda of Tuscany. Henry had travelled through Burgundy, greeted with enthusiasm by the Lombards, but he resisted the temptation to employ force. In an astonishing turn, the emperor mortified his pride and abased himself in the snow to do penance before the pope. This immediately reversed the moral situation, forcing Gregory to grant Henry absolution. The Walk to Canossa soon became legendary.

The reconciliation was only effected after prolonged negotiations and definite pledges on the part of Henry, and it was with reluctance that Gregory VII at length gave way, considering the political implications. If Gregory VII granted absolution, the diet of princes in Augsburg, which had called on him as arbitrator, would be rendered impotent. It was impossible, however, to deny the penitent re-entrance into the Church, and Gregory VII's Christian duty overrode his political interests.

The removal of the ban did not imply a genuine settlement, as there was no mention of the main question between pope and emperor: that of investiture. A new conflict was inevitable.

Later excommunications of Henry IV
Obedience to the excommunication of Henry IV was only a pretext to legitimize the rebellion of the German nobles, which did not end with his absolution. To the contrary, at Forchheim in March 1077 they elected a rival ruler in the person of Duke Rudolf of Swabia, with the papal legates declaring their neutrality. Pope Gregory sought to maintain this attitude during the following years, balancing the two parties of fairly equal strength, each trying to gain the upper hand by getting the pope on their side. In the end, his non-commitment largely lost the confidence of both parties. Finally he decided for Rudolf of Swabia after his victory at the Battle of Flarchheim on 27 January 1080. Under pressure from the Saxons, and misinformed as to the significance of this battle, Gregory abandoned his waiting policy and again pronounced the excommunication and deposition of Henry on 7 March 1080.

The papal censure now got a very different reception from the one four years before. It was widely felt to be unjustly pronounced on frivolous grounds, and its authority came in question. The emperor, now more experienced, vigorously denounced the ban as illegal. He summoned a council at Brixen, and on 25 June 1080 thirty bishops present pronounced Gregory deposed, electing archbishop Guibert (Wibert) of Ravenna as his successor. Gregory counter on 15 October, ordering the clergy and laity to elect a new archbishop in place of the "mad" and "tyrannical" schismatic Wibert. In 1081, Henry opened the conflict against Gregory in Italy. The emperor was now in the stronger position, as thirteen cardinals had deserted the pope, and the rival emperor Rudolf of Swabia died on 16 October. A new imperial claimant, Hermann of Luxembourg, was put forward in August 1081, but he was unable to rally the papal party in Germany, and the power of Henry IV was at its peak.

The pope's chief military supporter, Matilda of Tuscany, blocked Henry's armies from the western passages over the Apennines, so he had to approach Rome from Ravenna. Rome surrendered to the German king in 1084, and Gregory thereupon retired into the exile of the Castel Sant'Angelo. Gregory refused to entertain Henry's overtures, although the latter promised to hand over Guibert as a prisoner, if the sovereign pontiff would only consent to crown him emperor. Gregory, however, insisted that Henry appear before a council and do penance. The emperor, while pretending to submit to these terms, tried hard to prevent the meeting of the council. A small number of bishops assembled nonetheless, and Gregory again excommunicated Henry.

Henry, upon receipt of this news, again entered Rome on 21 March to see that his supporter, Archbishop Guibert of Ravenna, was enthroned as Pope Clement III on 24 March 1084, who in turn crowned Henry as emperor. In the meantime Gregory had formed an alliance with Robert Guiscard, who marched on the city and compelled Henry to flee towards Civita Castellana.

Exile from Rome
The pope was liberated, but after the Roman people became incensed by the excesses of his Norman allies, again withdrew to Monte Cassino, and later to the castle of Salerno by the sea, where he died on 25 May 1085. Three days before his death, he withdrew all the censures of excommunication that he had pronounced, except those against the two chief offenders—Henry and Guibert.

England
In 1076, Gregory appointed Dol Euen, a monk of Saint-Melaine of Rennes, as bishop of Dol, rejecting both the incumbent, Iuthael, who had the support of William the Conqueror, who had recently been conducting military operations in north-eastern Brittany, and Gilduin, the candidate of the nobles in Dol opposing William. Gregory rejected Iuthael because he was notorious for simony and Guilden as too young. Gregory also bestowed on Dol Euen the pallium of a metropolitan archbishop, on the condition that he would submit to the judgment of the Holy See when the long-standing case of the right of Dol to be a metropolitan and use the pallium was finally decided.

King William felt himself so safe that he interfered autocratically with the management of the church, forbade the bishops to visit Rome, made appointments to bishoprics and abbeys, and showed little anxiety when the pope lectured him on the different principles which he had as to the relationship of spiritual and temporal powers, or when he prohibited him from commerce or commanded him to acknowledge himself a vassal of the apostolic chair. William was particularly annoyed at Gregory's insistence on dividing ecclesiastical England into two provinces, in opposition to William's need to emphasize the unity of his newly acquired kingdom. Gregory's increasing insistence on church independence from secular authority in the matter of clerical appointments became a more and more contentious issue. He sought as well to compel the episcopacy to look to Rome for validation and direction, demanding the regular attendance of prelates in Rome. Gregory had no power to compel the English king to an alteration in his ecclesiastical policy, so he was compelled to ignore what he could not approve, and even considered it advisable to assure King William of his particular affection. On the whole, William's policy was of great benefit to the Church.

Normans in the Kingdom of Sicily
The relationship of Gregory VII to other European states was strongly influenced by his German policy, since the Holy Roman Empire, by taking up most of his energies, often forced him to show to other rulers the very moderation which he withheld from the German king. The attitude of the Normans brought him a rude awakening. The great concessions made to them under Nicholas II were not only powerless to stem their advance into central Italy, but failed to secure even the expected protection for the papacy. When Gregory VII was hard pressed by Henry IV, Robert Guiscard left him to his fate, and only intervened when he himself was threatened with German arms. Then, on the capture of Rome, he abandoned the city to his troops, and the popular indignation evoked by his act brought about Gregory's exile.

Claims of Papal sovereignty
In the case of several countries, Gregory VII tried to establish a claim of sovereignty on the part of the Papacy, and to secure the recognition of its self-asserted rights of possession. On the ground of "immemorial usage", Corsica and Sardinia were assumed to belong to the Roman Church. Spain, Hungary and Croatia were also claimed as her property, and an attempt was made to induce the king of Denmark to hold his realm as a fief from the pope.

In his treatment of ecclesiastical policy and ecclesiastical reform, Gregory did not stand alone, but found powerful support: in England Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury stood closest to him; in France his champion was Bishop Hugh de Dié, who afterwards became Archbishop of Lyon.

France
Philip I of France, by his practice of simony and the violence of his proceedings against the Church, provoked a threat of summary measures. Excommunication, deposition and the interdict appeared to be imminent in 1074. Gregory, however, refrained from translating his threats into actions, although the attitude of the king showed no change, for he wished to avoid a dispersion of his strength in the conflict soon to break out in Germany.

Pope Gregory attempted to organize a crusade into Al-Andalus, led by Count Ebles II of Roucy.

Distant Christian countries
Gregory, in fact, established some sort of relations with every country in Christendom; though these relations did not invariably realize the ecclesiastico-political hopes connected with them. His correspondence extended to Poland, Kievan Rus' and Bohemia. He unsuccessfully tried to bring Armenia into closer contact with Rome.

Byzantine Empire
Gregory was particularly concerned with the East. The schism between Rome and the Byzantine Empire was a severe blow to him, and he worked hard to restore the former amicable relationship. Gregory successfully tried to get in touch with the emperor Michael VII. When the news of the Muslim attacks on the Christians in the East filtered through to Rome, and the political embarrassments of the Byzantine emperor increased, he conceived the project of a great military expedition and exhorted the faithful to participate in recovering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre —foreshadowing the First Crusade. In his efforts to recruit for the expedition, he emphasized the suffering of eastern Christians, arguing western Christians had a moral obligation to go to their aid.

Internal policy and reforms
His lifework was based on his conviction that the Church was founded by God and entrusted with the task of embracing all mankind in a single society in which divine will is the only law; that, in its capacity as a divine institution, it is supreme over all human structures, especially the secular state; and that the pope, in his role as head of the Church, is the vice-regent of God on earth, so that disobedience to him implies disobedience to God: or, in other words, a defection from Christianity. But any attempt to interpret this in terms of action would have bound the Church to annihilate not merely a single state, but all states.

Thus Gregory VII, as a politician wanting to achieve some result, was driven in practice to adopt a different standpoint. He acknowledged the existence of the state as a dispensation of providence, described the coexistence of church and state as a divine ordinance, and emphasized the necessity of union between the sacerdotium and the imperium. But at no period would he have dreamed of putting the two powers on an equal footing; the superiority of church to state was to him a fact which admitted of no discussion and which he had never doubted.

He wished to see all important matters of dispute referred to Rome; appeals were to be addressed to himself; the centralization of ecclesiastical government in Rome naturally involved a curtailment of the powers of bishops. Since these refused to submit voluntarily and tried to assert their traditional independence, his papacy is full of struggles against the higher ranks of the clergy. Pope Gregory VII was critical in promoting and regulating the concept of modern university as his 1079 Papal Decree ordered the regulated establishment of cathedral schools that transformed themselves into the first European universities.

This battle for the foundation of papal supremacy is connected with his championship of compulsory celibacy among the clergy and his attack on simony. Gregory VII did not introduce the celibacy of the priesthood into the Church, but he took up the struggle with greater energy than his predecessors. In 1074, he published an encyclical, absolving the people from their obedience to bishops who allowed married priests. The next year he enjoined them to take action against married priests, and deprived these clerics of their revenues. Both the campaign against priestly marriage and that against simony provoked widespread resistance.

His writings treat mainly of the principles and practice of Church government. They may be found in Mansi's collection under the title "Gregorii VII registri sive epistolarum libri". Most of his surviving letters are preserved in his Register, which is now stored in the Vatican Archives.

Doctrine of the Eucharist
Gregory VII was seen by Pope Paul VI as instrumental in affirming the tenet that Christ is present in the Blessed Sacrament. Gregory's demand that Berengarius perform a confession of this belief was quoted in Pope Paul VI's historic 1965 encyclical Mysterium fidei:

"I believe in my heart and openly profess that the bread and wine that are placed on the altar are, through the mystery of the sacred prayer and the words of the Redeemer, substantially changed into the true and proper and lifegiving flesh and blood of Jesus Christ our Lord, and that after the consecration they are the true body of Christ."

This profession of faith began a "Eucharistic Renaissance" in the churches of Europe as of the 12th century.

Death
Pope Gregory VII died in exile in Salerno; the epitaph on his sarcophagus in the city's Cathedral says: "I have loved justice and hated iniquity; therefore, I die in exile."

Legacy
Gregory VII was beatified by Pope Gregory XIII in 1584 and canonized on 24 May 1728 by Pope Benedict XIII.