and reactionary attempts, and so many conflicting elections that in 1045 three popes were struggling for the tiara in the midst of scandal and anarchy. The streets and neighbourhood of Rome swarmed with thieves and assassins; pilgrims were plundered; citizens trembled for their lives; and a hundred petty barons threatened the rival popes, who were obliged to defend themselves by force. This state of things lasted until Henry III. came to re-establish order. He appointed a synod to depose the three popes, and then, with the consent of the wearied, and anarchy-stricken Romans, assuming the right of election, proposed a German, Clement II., who was consecrated at Christmas 1046. Henry III. was then crowned, and also took the title of patrician. Thus the emperor was lord over church and state. This, however, stirred both people and pope against him, and led to the terrible contest of the investitures, although for the moment the Romans, being exhausted by past calamities, seemed not only resigned and to emancipate the church from all dependence but contented.
In fact, the idea of reform and independence was already germinating in the church and was soon to become tenacious Hildebrand and the question of investiture. and irresistible. Hildebrand was the prompter and hero of this idea. He sought to abolish the simony and concubinage of the priesthood, to give the papal elections into the hands of the higher ecclesiastics, and to emancipate the church from all dependence on the empire. Henry III. procured the election of four German popes in succession, and Hildebrand was always at hand to inspire their actions and dominate them by his strength of intellect and still greater strength of will. But the fourth German pope, Victor II., died in 1057, and Henry III. had been succeeded in 1056 by the young Henry IV. under the regency of a weak woman, the empress Agnes. Hildebrand seized this favourable moment for trying his strength and procured the election of Stephen IX. (1057-58), a candidate he had long had in view. Stephen, however, died in 1058; the nobles instantly rose in rebellion; and Gregory of Tusculum, who had assumed the patriciate, caused an incapable cousin to be named pope (Benedict X.). Upon this Hildebrand postponed his design of maintaining the papacy by the help of Italian potentates and had recourse to the empress. In a synod held at Siena with her consent Benedict was deposed and Nicholas II. (1059-61) elected in his stead. This pope entered Rome escorted by the troops of Godfrey of Tuscany, and, when also assured of help from Naples, assembled a council of one hundred and thirteen bishops (1059), who condemned the deposed pontiff and renewed the prohibition of simony and concubinage among the priesthood. Finally Nicholas instituted the college of cardinals, entrusting it with the election of the pope, who was in future to be chosen from its ranks. The assent of the clergy and people was left purely formal. The decree also contained the proviso—“saving the honour and reverence due to the emperor”; but this too was an empty expression.
The new decree was a master-stroke of Hildebrand's genius, for by means of it he placed the papal election in the hands of a genuine ecclesiastical senate and gave a monarchical form to the church. Backed by the Normans who were in Rome, and whose commander, Richard of Capua, did not scruple to strike off the heads of many recalcitrant nobles, Hildebrand and the pope could now pursue their work of reform. Nevertheless the nobles again revolted on the death of Nicholas II. in 1061, and declared their purpose of restoring to Henry IV. the patriciate and right of election; but Hildebrand, by speedily convoking the cardinals, procured the election of Alexander II. (1061-73). This pope, although friendly to the empire, did not await the imperial sanction, but, protected by the Romans, at once entered the Lateran and put some other riotous nobles to death. The German bishops, however, elected Honorius II., who had the support of the barons. Thus the city was split into two camps and a deadly civil war ensued, terminating, despite the vigorous resistance of the nobility, in the defeat of Honorius II. But the nobles persevered in the contest and were the real masters of Rome. By conferring the patriciate on the emperor, as their feudal chief, they hoped to organize themselves under the prefect, who now, with greatly increased authority, presided over both the civil and criminal courts in the absence of the pope's representative. In a general assembly the Romans elected their prefect, whose investiture was granted by the emperor, while the pope elected another. Thus disorder was brought to a climax.
Alexander died on the 21st April 1073, and thereupon Hildebrand was at last raised to the chair as pope Gregory VII. Gregory VII. (1073-85). He reconfirmed his predecessors' decrees, dismissed all simoniacal and non-celibate priests, and then in a second council (1075) forbade the clergy to receive investiture at the hands of laymen. No bishop nor abbot was again to accept ring or crozier from king or emperor. Now, as ecclesiastical dignities included the possession of extensive benefices, privileges and feudal rights, this decree gave rise to tremendous dispute and to fierce contest between the empire and the church. The nobles took a very decided part in the struggle. With Cenci, their former prefect, at their head, they rose in revolt, assailed the pope on Christmas day 1075, and threw him into prison. But their fear of the popular wrath compelled his speedy release; and he then decreed the excommunication and deposition of the emperor who had declared him deposed. That monarch afterwards made submission to Gregory at Canossa (1077), but, again turning against him, was again excommunicated. And in 1081 he returned to Italy bringing the antipope Clement III., and besieged Rome for forty days. Assembling the nobles in his camp, he there arranged a new government of the city with prefect and senate, palatine judges and other magistrates, exactly similar to the existing government within the walls. He then took his departure, returned several times in vain, but at last forced his way into the city (March 1084) and compelled Gregory VII. to seek refuge in the castle of St Angelo. The emperor was then master of Rome, established the government he had previously arranged and, calling a parliament of nobles and bishops, procured the deposition of Gregory and the consecration of Clement III., by whom he was crowned in 1084. He then attacked and seized the Capitol, and assaulted the castle in order to capture the pope. But Robert Guiscard brought his army to the rescue. Emperor and antipope fled; the city was taken, the pope liberated and Rome reduced to ruin by fire and pillage. Upon this Gregory VII., broken with grief, went away with the Normans, and died at Salerno on the 25th May 1085. He had separated the church from the people and the empire by a struggle that, as Gregorovius says, disturbed the deep sleep of the middle ages.
Pope Paschal II. (1099-1118) found himself entirely at the mercy of the tyrannous nobles who were alike masters of Rome, Paschal II. and the nobles. of its government, and its spiritual lord. As they were divided among themselves, all the pope could do was to side with one party in order to overcome the other. With the help of his own nephew Gualfredo, the prefect Pietro Pierleone, and the Frangipani, he was able to keep down the Corsi, and hold the Colonna in check. Being compelled to repair to Benevento in 1108, he left Gualfredo to command the militia, Tolomeo of Tusculum to guard the Campagna, and the consuls Pierleone and Leone Frangipani, together with the prefect, in charge of the government. The consulship was no longer a mere title of honour. The consuls seem to have been elected, as at Ravenna, in imitation of those of the Lombard cities, and were at the head of the nobles and senate. The expressions “praefectus et consules,” “de senatoribus et consulibus,” are now of frequent occurrence. We have no precise knowledge of the political organization of the city at this moment; but it was an aristocratic government, similar to that originally formed in Florence, as Villani tells us, with a senate and consuls. The nobles were so completely the masters that the pope, in spite of having trusted them
