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Introduction to the chapter of the Social History of the Church by Msgr. Benigni dedicated to the great pontiff Saint Gregory VII.
Henry IV and Gregory VII (1073-85) up to Canossa (1077).
Hildebrand's election took place on the same day that Alexander II went underground. It was an acclamation of the clergy and the people who wanted him to be the successor of the five popes that Hildebrand had encouraged to reform the Church.. This reform was now irresistibly mature, and as always happens with a profound religious movement, political tendencies penetrated it and led the harsh political and social struggle with them.
Those sectarians of the Errician struggle who brought out the accusation of simony for the election of Gregory VII, they were miserable slanderers. Today there is no wise historian who doubts it. The force of things imposed the choice of those who had powerfully improvised the dominating movement.
What was Hildebrand's true character?; such as his concrete program with which he became Gregory VII? Who made him impetuous, a stubborn fanatic, a stubborn politician, has shown great ignorance or bad faith.
Hildebrand was a tenacious advocate of an ideal that absorbed him; religious reform. But not
blind nor violent apriorist: on the contrary, sometimes he had more disastrous shortcomings than his most deeds
power.
He was the man who wrote: «no one suddenly becomes great; and tall buildings are built little by little". During his influence over his predecessors, he patiently adapted to the present to patiently prepare the future triumph of his ideal.
One who most accused him of politicianism, il LUCHAIRE' (Pr. Cap., p. 215 ss) he recognizes that he curbed the zeal of legates who were more ardent than clairvoyant in the reformist struggle. What pushed him to react against William the Conqueror was not wrong, Really; but Gregory of 1080, that is, in full Errician struggle, he made the zealous man observe: this man does not behave as religiously in certain things as we would like; but since he does not destroy or sell churches, he did not want to join the party of the enemies of the Holy See, and took an oath to force concubinary priests to leave their women, and lay tithe holders, to abandon them, he deserves more praise and honor than other kings (LUCHAIRE p. 216-7).
In this excuse of the Norman falcon there is such a serene objectivity, such a measure of things necessary more than others, which really make you think about this: if he hadn't come across an evil degenerate worthily surrounded by evildoers of every kind, Gregory VII would go down in history as a Pope no more "hard" and no more "political" than his immediate predecessors.
Who accused him like the aforementioned French author; of having gone beyond the religious field of reform into the political one through the investiture struggle, shows that he does not understand at all either the intrinsic issue or the environment of the struggle, as we will see better now.
From the moment of his election Gregory gave conspicuous proof of his moderation and his calm gradual provision, when, elected by general acclamation, he sent Henry IV to ask for his approval, according to the pact (so questionable in itself, and so fell with his successor) of Henry III, and not concealing his plan of reform from the young king.
If Henry IV and his court yielded to that appointment, it was evidently not for the sake of reform, but because they understood that it was not possible to resist a push that came from the hermitages as it came from the crowd. And so it was that the imperial chancellor no less than the pious widow intervened at the enthronement of Gregory VII., Empress Agnes.
The choice of the name which certainly alluded to the unfortunate Gregory VI with whom Hildebrand appeared in the breach for the reform demonstrates in him a delicate feeling and at the same time an eloquent sign of the man who does not fear misfortune. In Giovanni Graziano, who died in exile in Germany, Hildebrand perhaps sensed a pope who «for having loved justice and hated iniquity died in exile»?
Throughout Hildebrand's life there is a striking detachment from life, since it is not an asceticism that segregates, but instead he pushes into the fray with perfect self-denial. Hildebrand goes to Germany with the prisoner Gregory VI; and he doesn't know if he too will end up there darkly, in the midst of that hostile environment. Providential circumstances lead him to France alongside a benevolent bishop and to the country where the reform flames from the candelabrum of Cluny; this is enough for him. Nothing more natural that remained there, dark monk, to do good. And so he returned to Rome stronger than ever. After many struggles he returned to exile where he was to die, and at the end of his tragic life he was very serene and well detached from everything, to make a kind of epigram by quoting the beginning of a biblical verse to close it with an antithesis with the final text of the verse itself. “You loved justice and hated iniquity (says the psalmist) therefore the Lord anointed you with the oil of joy on your peers" (salmo 44,9); and the dying exile noticed: «I loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile".
This personal detachment from life makes the "political" Hildebrand the spiritual brother of Pier Damiani and all the other ascetics. But the Lombard from Sovana was a fighter, tenacious and unfortunate as a Lombard of the fall and relapse of the kingdom, but the taller his figure was, the taller he was, his struggle, his ideal.
This Pope, Hildebrand continued his work. If Alexander had survived, he would go as his legate to the Normans; he went there as pontiff without waiting otherwise. He wanted to secure the South, closer and always restless because of the Normans.
Gregorovius saw Hildebrand «busying to make southern Italy a vassal province of Rome» (II, 301). As if Hildebrand didn't know his relatives enough to know what kind of "vassals" the Lombards had been, and how the Normans were... Lombard. Asking them to swear an oath of feudal loyalty to the papacy, Hildebrand wanted to have the necessary peace of mind at the border, and could make him count on that amount of honor that was felt even by unscrupulous feudal lords, when Rome called them to help.
This is appropriate to the time and environment, and it won't change anytime soon. In full mortal struggle with the last Swabians, the Municipality of Perugia, who was Guelph above all to be independent, he sent the Pope a cavalry reinforcement against Manfredi, because this was the most basic duty of a subject towards the sovereign; and the papacy asked for no more.
Received the oath of Landulf VI of Benevento and Richard of Capua, Gregory VII found resistance in Robert Guiscard, the most dangerous and therefore the one whose "subjection" i.e. tranquility and possible help had to be obtained at all costs. The non-compliant was excommunicated; and the pontiff prepared an expedition, reviewing fifty thousand Cisalpine and Transalpine men, the following year (March 1074) at Monte Cimino in the Viterbo area. Gisulfo of Salerno was with him. But it had no consequences, not so much because the astute Guiscardo managed to immobilize his "vassal" colleagues in Rome, but because Gregorio had only had the intention of imposing with threats, only with the threat, submission to Roberto. The Pope said it openly in the letter with which he asked for support, to confession of GREGOROVIUS himself (II,238).
Ma in queste lettere si parla di ben altro che dei normanni. The Crusader army had to subjugate southern Italy with the Pope in person, liberate Constantinople and Jerusalem from the pressing threat, that; from the harsh tyranny of Islam, this. Speaking of this grandiose project that Urban III will resume with greater success twenty years later, Gregory recommends Henry IV to protect the Church of Rome during his absence.
Hildebrand counted a lot on the German king? he saw Roman things, Italian, transalpine such that his iron hand could leave the reins for a certain time to move away towards the unknown East? the Reformation would not have been crushed or at least compromised?
It remains dark, and we doubt it will always remain so, that psychological moment of Hildebrand. Let's also say that he considered himself calm for Italy with the South possibly settled, and with the powerful marquises of Tuscany north of Rome. But all together it advised the new pontiff against leaving Italy and Europe. Perhaps he thought that by returning victorious and almost emperor of the East he would better impose his plan on the West; but such a calculation is so unlimited, so random not to mention fantastic, it was difficult to understand how it could enter Hildebrand's mind.
Anyway, all this shows that the new Pope had no intention of fighting against the empire and the future emperor.
Mons. Umberto Benigni, SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE CHURCH, Vol. IV. L’APOGEO, second volume, Vallardi Publishing House, Milano 1930, pages. 436 – 439.
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