Popes, Cardinals and War: The Military Church in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe by D.S. Chambers (Author)
‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’ But blessed, too, have been
the warmongers throughout the Christian centuries. Among the many aspects of
this paradox a particular problem arises: how far could papal authority and the
clerical hierarchy go in supporting or even committing acts of war in defence
of the Church? The question has never been resolved with precision. St Ambrose
(ca.340–97) proclaimed that – unlike Old Testament leaders, such as Joshua or
David – Christian clerics should refrain from force: ‘I cannot surrender the
church, but I must not fight’ ‘pugnare non debeo’; ‘Against weapons, soldiers,
the Goths, tears are my arms, these are the defences of a priest.’ These
precepts set the canonical line, but a fine distinction in culpability came to
be admitted between inflicting violence directly and inciting others to acts of
violence and bloodshed. It remained a matter of serious concern throughout the
Middle Ages and beyond: how was the necessary defence of the Church to be
defined and limited? Could the clergy, the officers of the Church, in
conscience wholly avoid being involved in homicidal physical conflict, at least
in self-defence?
In practice, when acute physical dangers threatened the
Church, and its Roman power base in particular, active response must have
seemed a matter of duty. The site of Rome, halfway down the ‘leg’ of Italy, was
extremely vulnerable once the huge resources, military and naval strength, and
well-maintained road system of the empire had gone. Successive hordes of
invaders attacked or threatened the Roman bishopric’s sanctuaries and scattered
estates, as well as overrunning other provinces of Italy. In the summer of 452
Pope Leo I reputedly stopped the Huns in their tracks only thanks to a
miraculous if terrifying overflight of St Peter and St Paul, but Pope Gregory
the Great (590–604) confronted the Lombards with military leadership. He
exhorted his military captains to strive for glory, and provisioned and
directed troops in defence of Rome. Two centuries later the recurrent invaders
were Muslim Arabs or Moors from North Africa. Leo IV (pope 847–55) accompanied
the Roman army that fought victoriously against Muslim pirates at the mouth of
the Tiber, and was responsible for building fortified walls to protect the
Borgo Leonino, the district near St Peter’s. John VIII (pope 872–82) in 877
commanded a galley in a joint naval campaign with Amalfitan and Greek forces
against the Muslims. Maybe the scale of the victory was exaggerated, but the
nineteenth-century historian Ferdinand Gregorovius felt justified in writing
‘this is the first time in history that a Pope made war as an admiral’. He
quoted a letter allegedly from the Pope himself, claiming that ‘eighteen ships
were captured, many Saracens were slain and almost 600 slaves liberated’. In
915 John X (pope 914–28) was present at another victory against Muslims on the
river Garigliano in 915, and wrote to the Archbishop of Cologne boasting that
he had bared his own chest to the enemy (‘se ipsum corpusque suum opponendo’)
and twice joined battle. It is arguable that the papal resistance was largely
responsible for saving the mainland of Italy from the Muslim domination that
befell Sicily and much of Spain.
A very different challenge was presented by the northern
ascendancy of the Frankish monarchy in the eight and ninth centuries. Its
professed role was to protect the papacy, and this included large-scale
‘donations’ of territory in Italy, by Pepin (754), Charlemagne (774) and Louis
the Pious (817). These confirmed at least some of the items in the forged
‘donation’ of Constantine, according to which the recently converted Emperor
Constantine I, who moved his capital to Byzantium (henceforth Constantinople)
in 330, transferred to the Pope extensive rights and possessions in the west. Not
until the ninth century, however, did the boundaries of these claims begin to
become at all geographically precise, including much of Umbria and extending
north of the Appenines to parts of Emilia.
The Frankish kings’ protective, military role was graphically
expressed by Charlemagne in a famous letter congratulating Leo III (pope
795–816) on his accession. In this he declared that, while his own task was to
defend the Church by arms, the Pope would simply need to raise his arms to God,
like Moses did to ensure victory over the Amalikites (Exodus XVII, 8–13). The
other side of the bargain was that the Pope should perform coronation of his
protector as emperor, the revived title duly conferred on Charlemagne in Rome
on Christmas Day 800. As the imperial office also carried an aura of divinity,
this protective role would eventually lead to trouble, a challenge over primacy
of jurisdiction, but meanwhile it helped to preserve the papacy’s dignity.
Another Germanic dynasty subsequently rescued it from the scandalous if obscure
confusion that prevailed in Rome during the first half of the tenth century.
During that period the local nobility, and even two unscrupulous matriarchs,
Theodora and her daughter Marozia, determined the appointment and even perhaps
the deposition of several popes. After 960, however, three Saxon emperors, all
named Otto, began to repair the situation. Early in 962 Otto I was crowned by
Marozia’s son, John XII (pope since 957), who had appealed for his protection,
but in December 962 John was deposed by Otto. According to Liudprand, Bishop of
Cremona, who acted as Otto’s interpreter and is therefore fairly credible as a
source, this was in response to collective denunciations by senior Roman
clergy. Among the alleged offences of John XII were fornication, drunkenness,
arson and playing at dice, but a special emphasis seems to have been placed on
publicly bearing arms. Ultimately he had turned against his imperial protector
and advanced with troops against Otto’s army ‘equipped with shield, sword,
helmet and cuirass’. Otto allegedly declared, ‘There are as many witnesses to
that as there are fighting men in our army.’
Most successful in sharing or dominating the papacy’s
authority was Otto I’s grandson Otto III. He resided in Rome once he had come
of age in 996 and oversaw the appointments of his cousin Bruno of Carinthia
(Gregory V, pope 996–99), who crowned him emperor, and the learned Gerbert of
Aurillac (Silvester II, pope 999–1003). Both Otto I and Otto III also issued
new ‘donations’, confirming the Frankish concessions of papal title to
territories formerly occupied by Byzantine Greeks and Lombards. Much of central
Italy, including Umbria, southern Tuscany and lands bordering the Adriatic
roughly from the region of Ravenna down to Ascoli, were redefined as potential
lands of St Peter. Only ‘potential’, of course, because these claims under
‘donation’ would be hard to realise and enforce; centuries of effort, with many
setbacks, lay ahead. After a relapse under local political forces in the early
eleventh century, the papacy again came to be protected by a German royal
dynasty. From 1046 to 1055, under the Salian Henry III, a succession of
reputable popes were appointed, and to one of these, Victor II, Henry conceded
rule over the March of Ancona, but seemingly as an imperial vassal. For popes
to have to admit the superiority or semi-parity of the emperor’s office was a
hard price to pay for security.
In the course of the eleventh century lofty ideas were
advanced concerning both the nature of papal authority and – as an inevitable
aspect of this – ecclesiastical sanctions of warfare. There were of course
earlier pronouncements on the superior nature of papal power. Gelasius I (pope
492–96) is credited with introducing the idea of the Church as a principality
set above all earthly princes and the pope as the vicar not only of St Peter
but of Christ himself. Nicholas I (pope 858–67) pronounced that the papacy was
the greater of the two lights set over the earth, that popes were princes over the
whole world, and only with their sanction could the emperor use the sword; he
even quoted St Peter’s use of the physical sword against Malchus. But it was
not until the eleventh and twelfth centuries that scholars concerned with
establishing the ‘canon law’ of the Church – pronouncements, rulings and
precedents governing Church affairs laid down by successive popes and jurists –
built up systematically, with the support of theologians, the ‘hierocratic’
theory of superior and universal papal power, including the power to depose
unworthy rulers.
These ideas, however strong in their implications for future
wars, need not concern us at this point so much as two practical measures
designed to ensure more effective papal authority, both of them the achievements
of Nicholas II (pope 1059–61). One was the decree that laid down regular
procedure in papal elections: that popes could only be elected by the
‘cardinal’ bishops, priests and deacons of Rome. As well as this constitutional
provision aimed at stabilising the papal monarchy – though it failed for
centuries to avert counter-elections of ‘antipopes’ – in the same year 1059 a
momentous step was taken to bring the southern half of Italy and Sicily under
the legal lordship of the papacy. This was the grant of conditional rulership
made to the Normans Robert Guiscard and Robert of Capua, who had previously
been regarded as the most troublesome and threatening of intruders in that
region. The Treaty of Melfi created them dukes ‘by the grace of God and St
Peter’, with a promise of the lordship of Sicily, conditional on its recapture
from the Muslims. It decisively overruled or disregarded any surviving claims
of Greeks, Lombards, Muslims or other de facto occupiers, and the inclusion of
Sicily seems to have depended on the donation of Constantine rather than any
later, more valid concessions. This turning of southern Italy into a papal
fief, with obligations upon its ruler to owe the Pope military support, would
have enormous consequences in the future.
Specifically on the issue of war, first, there was also a
legalistic dimension that developed in the eleventh century. One of the
earliest specialists in canon law, Burchard of Worms (ca.965–1025), insisted
‘the clergy cannot fight for both God and the World’, but later canonists
accepted that the problem was more complicated than this. Second, there was
also a spiritual dimension, investing war – in certain circumstances – with a
positive value. This was an aspect of the monastically inspired reform movement
in the Church. Leo IX (pope 1049–54), Bruno, the former Archbishop of Toul, was
one of a group of serious reformers in Lorraine who combined austere religious
standards with a warrior mentality, as did his colleague Wazo, Bishop of Liège,
who was acclaimed by his biographer as a ‘Judas Maccabeus’ in his military
exploits, praised for defending Liège and destroying the castles of his
opponents. As archbishop Bruno had led a force in support of Emperor Henry III.
As pope he waged war against his deposed predecessor Benedict IX and his
partisans in 1049–50 and personally commanded an army of Swabians against the
Normans in June 1053, suffering defeat at the Battle of Civitate, the disaster
that made clear that the only way forward was to adopt the Normans as allies rather
than enemies. Among Leo IX’s recorded declarations was the precept ‘Those who
do not fear spiritual sanction should be smitten by the sword’, though it was
intended mainly against bandits and pagans.
Penetrated by both monastic reforming zeal and by canon law
experts who insisted on a universal, ultimate pontifical authority over the
emperor and all other secular powers, the later eleventh-century papacy was
almost bound to accept that force could be sanctioned, that war and bloodshed
in the right cause could even be sacred. Matters reached a head in the 1070s,
with recurrent conflict between the Franconian Henry IV, king, and the
emperor-elect since 1056 and the former monk Hildebrand as Gregory VII (pope
1073–85). Even before he became pope, Hildebrand had been involved in the use
of force. He may have served with Leo IX; certainly he was associated with
Alexander II (Anselm I of Lucca) in 1061–63. He had been largely responsible
for bringing the Normans into papal service, and for employing independent
military figures such as Godfrey of Lorraine. They enabled Alexander to
overcome the anti-pope Cadalus, Bishop of Parma (‘Honorius II’), who for a
while had controlled Rome. Hildebrand, unlike so many of the medieval popes,
was not born into the nobility or warrior caste, but scientific tests of his
bones have shown at least that he was sturdily built and used to riding a
horse.
Soon after becoming pope, Gregory VII issued direct orders
to the papacy’s mercenary forces, notably the Normans under Robert Guiscard. On
7 December 1074 he wrote to Henry IV, claiming that thousands of volunteers
were calling upon him to combine the roles of ‘military commander and pontiff’
(‘si me possunt pro duce ac pontifice habere’) and lead in person an army to
aid eastern Christians against the Seljuk Turks.
Gregory’s conflict with Henry IV was at first a war of words
rather than of arms. It was partly legalistic, over investiture to higher
Church appointments and the need for clerical reforms, but even more over incompatible
temperaments and claims of superior authority. The conflict blew hot and cold;
in 1075, until the autumn, Gregory seemed on the point of agreeing to crown
Henry emperor, but the following year he was excommunicated. Nevertheless in
January 1077 he presented himself at Canossa as a penitent. In 1080 Gregory
excommunicated Henry IV for the second time, whereupon the pro-imperial bishops
at the Synod of Brixen elected Guibert, Archbishop of Ravenna, as anti-pope.
Then Gregory announced that ‘with the cooler weather in September’ he would
mount a military expedition against Ravenna to evict Guibert. He also had in
mind a campaign to punish Alfonso II of Castile for his misdeeds, threatening
him not just metaphorically: ‘We shall be forced to unsheathe over you the
sword of St Peter.’ While it would be hard to prove that Gregory VII ever
wielded a material sword, and his frequent pronouncements invoking ‘soldiers of
Christ’ or ‘the war of Christ’ may sometimes have been metaphorical rather than
literal, it is easy to see how his enemies – those serving Henry IV or Guibert
of Ravenna – could present his combative character as bellicose on an almost
satanic scale. ‘What Christian ever caused so many wars or killed so many men?’
wrote Guy of Ferrara, who insisted that Hildebrand had had a passion for arms
since boyhood, and later on led a private army. Guibert, who wrote a
biographical tract denouncing Hildebrand, made similar allegations. Such
criticism carried on where the militant reformer and preacher Peter Damiani
(1007–72) had left off; although in many respects Damiani’s views on what was
wrong with the Church were compatible with Hildebrand’s, he had insisted that
ecclesiastical warfare was unacceptable: Christ had ordered St Peter to put up
his sword; ‘Holy men should not kill heretics and heathen…never should one take
up the sword for the faith.’
Further justifications of military force initiated and
directed by popes had to be devised. Gregory’s adviser and vicar in Lombardy
from 1081 to 1085, Anselm II, Bishop of Lucca, made a collection of canon law
precedents at his request. In this compilation Anselm proposed that the Church
could lawfully exert punitive justice or physical coercion; indeed, that such a
proper use of force was even a form of charity. ‘The wounds of a friend are
better than the kisses of an enemy,’ he declared, and – echoing St Augustine –
‘It is better to love with severity than to beguile with mildness.’ He invoked
the Old Testament parallel, arguing that Moses did nothing cruel when at the
Lord’s command he slew certain men, perhaps alluding to the punitive slaughter
authorised after the worship of the Golden Calf (Exodus XXXIII, 27–8) or to the
earlier battle of Israel against the Amalekites, when the fortunes of war
depended on the effort of Moses’s keeping his arms in the air (the episode
Charlemagne had quoted to Leo III). Anselm does not go so far as to recommend
that popes and other clergy should personally inflict violence on erring
Christians, but he allows that they could mastermind it; the rules might be
even more relaxed in wars against non-Christians, including lapsed and
excommunicated former members of the Catholic Church.
Few of Gregory VII’s successors could equal that
extraordinary pope’s remorseless energy, but on their part there was no
renouncing of coercion by force. Even Paschal II (pope 1099–1118), a sick and
elderly monk, who submitted to the humiliation of imprisonment by the Emperor
Henry V in 1111, spent much of his pontificate going from siege to siege in the
region of Rome. In the year of his death he supervised the mounting of ‘war
machines’ at Castel Sant’Angelo to overcome rebels occupying St Peter’s.
Innocent II (1130–43) was engaged in war with a rival elected soon after
himself – possibly by a larger number of the cardinals – who took the name
Anacletus and for a while even controlled Rome itself. Both of them found
strong backers. Anacletus persuaded the German king Lothar to bring military
force against his rival; Innocent obtained the support of Roger II, the Norman
ruler of Sicily. In July 1139 Innocent definitely had the worst of it when an
army led by himself was ambushed at Galluccio, near the river Garigliano
between Rome and Naples. He was taken prisoner and had to concede to Roger
investiture as king of Sicily, which Anacletus had previously bestowed on him.
This was a considerable upgrading of the title ‘Apostolic Legate’, which had
been conferred on Roger’s father and namesake in 1098 in recognition of the
successful reconquest of Sicily from the Muslims. The grant of kingship was the
culmination or reaffirmation of the policy intended to ensure a strong and
loyal military defence for the papacy in the south. As a favoured relationship
it had not worked altogether smoothly. One of its lowest points was Robert
Guiscard’s delay in coming to the help of Gregory VII in 1084, when he
delivered Rome from its long siege by Henry IV, but caused a bloodbath; another
low point was the war in the 1130s mentioned above. Yet another papal defeat by
Norman forces, in spite of the concession of kingship to Roger II, befell
Adrian IV at Benevento in 1156. In all these military conflicts it cannot be
proved that Paschal II, Innocent II, Anacletus or Adrian IV engaged physically
in fighting, but in each case they accompanied armies and appear to have
directed – or misdirected – field operations.
A formidable challenge arose in the middle of the twelfth
century on the part of the empire, the very authority that was supposedly
‘protecting’ the papacy. In the hands of Frederick I ‘Barbarossa’, of the
Swabian Staufer or Staufen family – generally but incorrectly called
Hohenstaufen – the empire or its lawyers advanced its own claims to government
of cities and lands in northern Italy, including the city of Rome, despite
local civic aspirations. The English cardinal Breakspear, elected as Adrian IV
(pope 1154–59), duly crowned Frederick in 1155, but his safe arrival at St
Peter’s had depended on his relative, Cardinal Octavian, securing it with armed
force. The imperial decrees issued at Roncaglia, near Piacenza, in 1158 made
clear that Frederick had no greater respect for the judicial, fiscal and
territorial claims of the papacy than he had for civic autonomy. Adrian IV,
under whose rule there had been a certain advance in papal control of central
Italian castles and towns, protested vehemently to the emperor. In practice,
however, in his three invasions of Italy Frederick was more concerned with
Lombardy and its rapidly growing and de facto independent mercantile cities,
above all Milan, which as punishment for its defiance he devastated in 1162.
Without seeking direct military confrontation, the astute Sienese jurist
Cardinal Rolando Bandinelli, elected as Alexander III (pope 1159–81), gave
financial and moral support to the Lombard cities. He had meanwhile to contend
with a series of anti-popes elected by proimperial cardinals. After the Lombard
League’s famous victory against Frederick at Legnano in 1174 Alexander was able
to play the role of mediator and peacemaker. Much of central Italy nevertheless
was subjected in his time to imperial, not papal, jurisdiction and taxation,
under the direction of men such as Christian of Mainz, whose administrative
capital was Viterbo, and Conrad of Urslingen, who in 1177 became imperial Duke
of Spoleto. In 1164 Frederick Barbarossa had even ordered Christian to move with
an army to help install his antipope in Rome. The reversal of this imperial
heyday had to wait until after the deaths of Barbarossa (drowned on crusade in
1190) and his son Henry VI in 1197.
