Pope Saint Gregory VII
by Donald Fantz
History points out to us the lesson that there are, in the course of ages, a few great men who inspire and lead the majority. One of the most remarkable men of all times, the great Hildebrand, was born in Tuscany, Central Italy, about 1020. He came from poor and humble parents and received his early education from the Santa Maria Monastery, where his mother's brother, Laurentius, was abbot. After taking vows as a Benedictine and receiving minor orders, he was employed as assistant to the arch-priest of the church of San Giovanni, in Rome, the Reverend John Gratian. In 1045 Gratian's godson, who was in his twenties, was placed on the throne of St. Peter by political maneuvering and was known as Benedict IX. He was unfit for this position and eventually abdicated in favor of a desire for marriage. He offered to "sell" the papacy to Gratian, who in good faith paid the sum of money his godson asked. Gratian's justification for this act was that this would rid the Holy See of an incompetent. Gratian then became pope, under the name of Gregory VI. He was received as a legitimate pope by the local population. He was a man of good character and simplicity of soul, but was unable to restore much needed peace to a Church besieged with internal corruption. He named young Hildebrand his chaplain, even though Hildebrand was still in minor orders. Later Gregory VI accepted the decision of the Council of Sutri in 1046 that, although he occupied the Chair of Peter, nevertheless this office was attained by simony and was therefore unworthily bestowed. He voluntarily resigned in favor of his replacement, Pope Clement II. Gratian and Hildbrand retired to Cologne, Germany, where the deposed pope died in 1047. Hildebrand then entered the famous monastery of Cluny, in France, where he lived for a year. While there, he developed a greater sense of contemplation and prayer and received many graces which proved of great value in his later life.
It was in France that Hildebrand met the next pope-elect, Leo IX who was impressed with the extraordinary ability the young man had for administration. Leo brought Hildebrand to Rome and made him a cardinal sub-deacon, and placed him in charge of the patrimony of St. Peter. Under his jurisdiction church properties and revenues, which had been under the control of Roman nobility, were recovered and the Holy See's treasury was again increased.
Leo IX also appointed Hildebrand assistant to the abbot of St. Paul's Monastery, in Rome. This religious house was typical of many throughout the Christian world which had fallen into great abuse because of roving bands of terrorists and the lack of monastic discipline. For example, monks were attended in their refectories by women, sacred buildings were fair game for wandering sheep and cattle, religion was gradually discarded and a great many of the clergy were living in adulterous circumstances. Hildebrand succeeded in reforming St. Paul's and he resolved that he would do all in his power to help reform the discipline of the Church to the apostolic ideal.
When Leo IX died, Hildebrand resisted the efforts of those who wished him to become the next pope. In 1055 Victor II assumed the papacy for two years. Then in 1057 Stephen X was elected pope, only to die a few months later. Political schemes were involved in the election of the succeeding pope, Nicholas II, who ruled the Church from 1059 to 1061. Hildebrand remained faithful to the Chair of St. Peter and gave his firm support and encouragement to nine men who occupied this See. It was he who assisted Nicholas II in promulgating the decree of election, by which the power of choosing the pope was vested in the College of Cardinals, thus freeing the papacy from political intervention. When Nicholas died in 1061, there was a period of dissension, as the imperial party wished to place their candidate into the papal office. An anti-pope was named through this process, however, Hildebrand was successful in helping in the selection of the true pope, Alexander II, in accordance with the rules of election outlined by Pope Nicholas II. Pope Alexander II ruled for twelve years and died April 21, 1073. Hildebrand, who had been behind the scenes, administering the Church for twenty years, was the most prominent figure in the Church. He it was who had been chiefly instrumental in the selection of her rulers, who had inspired and given purpose to her policy, and who had been steadily developing and realizing, by successive acts, her sovereignty and purity. At the funeral of Alexander II, the entire congregation of clergy and faithful sent up one cry: "Let Hildebrand be pope—Blessed Peter has chosen Hildebrand the Archdeacon!"
Contrary to his own wishes, Hildebrand was taken to the Church of St. Peter in Chains, where he accepted the election of the College of Cardinals. In the decree of election he was proclaimed, "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 behaviour, 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 archdiaconal 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." Hildebrand was ordained first to the priesthood and was subsequently consecrated in a solemn ceremony on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, June 29, 1073.
This was a period of history when, as the perceptive Baronius said, Christ seemed to be asleep in the vessel of the Church. Men such as St. Peter Damian describe this time as one of great moral decay. St. Bruno said: "The whole world lay in wickedness, holiness had disappeared, justice had perished and truth had been buried; Simon Magus lording it over the Church, whose bishops and priests were given to luxury and fornication." The new pope wrote to his friends after his election and asked for their prayers and moral support. To Desiderius, Abbot of Monte Cassino he penned the words of the Psalm: "I am come into deep waters, so that the floods run over me—fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and darkness hath covered me." Gregory had long been a friend of St. Hugh, the abbot of Cluny. In January of 1075 the pope wrote to him: "The Eastern Church has fallen away from the Faith and is now assailed on every side by infidels. Wherever I turn my eyes—to the west, to the north, or to the south—I find everywhere bishops who have obtained their office in an irregular way, whose lives and conversation are strangely at variance with their sacred calling; who go through their duties not for the love of Christ, but from motives of worldly gain. There are no longer princes who set God's honor before their own selfish ends, or who allow justice to stand in the way of their ambition..."
Saint Gregory, pray for us and for your new successor that he may guide the Church through this present crisis, to the honor of God and the salvation of souls.
Gregory's greatest problems with civil rulers were with Henry IV of Germany, whose intervention in church affairs, including the nomination of bishops, had been tolerated by previous popes. Gregory believed that this compromised the Church and he, therefore, made it known to Henry that only those who were deemed by the pope to be fit for such a sacred office should be so consecrated. This caused great tension between the pope and Henry and through the years there were alternately bitter battles and reconciliations. Who can forget the picture of the famous reconciliation which took place at Canossa, Henry standing barefoot in ice and snow, asking for absolution from the pope? After three days of prayer and recollection Gregory received Henry back into the Church.
In spite of his personal feelings of weakness, Gregory was unflinching in working hard to rid the Church of the two great evils which afflicted it, simony and clerical incontinency. With great energy he labored for the assertion of those lofty principles with which he firmly believed the welfare of Christ's Church and the regeneration of society were bound together. At his first Lenten Synod in March of 1074 he enacted the following decrees: 1) that clerics who had obtained any grade or office of sacred orders by payment should cease to minister for the Church. 2) That no one who had purchased any church should retain it, and that no one for the future should be permitted to buy or sell ecclesiastical rights. 3) That all who were guilty of incontinence should cease to exercise their sacred ministry. 4) That the people should reject the ministrations of clerics who failed to obey these injunctions.
These regulations were met almost everywhere with rebellion on the part of the clergy. Many of those who tried to enforce these decrees were threatened with death. Insults were hurled at the pope. His zeal for righteousness was not in the least influenced by human respect. For Gregory, compromise with evil was unthinkable. He sent legates into every land, fully empowered to depose immoral and simoniacal clerics.
Henry seized this opportunity to encourage the clerics in his kingdom to defy the pope, thereby gaining for himself their support and financial control of church property. In order to protect Christianity, Gregory excommunicated Henry and all his ecclesiastical supporters and released Henry's subjects from their oath of allegiance in accordance with the political procedure of that time.
Hatred for the pope grew among his enemies. On Christmas Eve in 1075, as the pope was distributing Holy Communion at Midnight Mass, a gang of hoodlums came into the Church, took Gregory captive and demanded surrender of church property. Gregory refused to bend to their rough treatment and as a result, he suffered cruelties at their hands. Later that morning the local Roman people forced their way into the castle where Gregory was prisoner and freed him. The pope returned to the Vatican, worn out from the ordeal and stained with blood, and celebrated his two other Christmas Masses.
By this time Henry had attempted to replace legitimately appointed bishops with those of dubious character, but was losing the support of his own people. Stung by his excommunication, he marched on Rome, set up an anti-pope, who proceeded to crown Henry emperor. Gregory's Norman ally, Robert Guiscard, came to defend the Eternal City with a large army. Henry was routed from the city, but the Norman soldiers plundered the city and the population, leaving Rome in shambles. Because of this the Roman citizens forced the pope to follow the soldiers when they finally retreated. He went to the Abbey of Monte Cassino for a brief time and from there traveled to Salerno. Here he spent his last days in prayer for the Church, for whom he had given so much. He felt abandoned by his friends and his health gave out. He died on May 25, 1085, with the words of Psalm 44:8 on his lips: "This is my only consolation: I have loved justice and hated iniquity; therefore I die in exile."
Gregory's strong character so influenced the Church that his successors found it relatively easy to continue his policy of reform. By the end of the eleventh century the evils of simony and lay investiture were almost completely wiped out. The world was now prepared to enter a most glorious age; that of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
The pope's body was interred in the Cathedral of Salerno and remains there until this day. He was beatified by Gregory XIII in 1584 and canonized by Benedict XIII in 1728. The Roman Breviary says of him: "Mighty in word and work, Gregory labored with such zeal in reforming ecclesiastical discipline, in propagating the Faith, in restoring the liberty of the Church, and in rooting out error and corruption, that it can be said that no Pontiff since the time of the Apostles bore greater labors and sufferings for the Church of God or fought more strenuously for its freedom."
DONALD R. FANTZ, a former seminarian with the Redemptorist fathers, is one of the founders of the Holy Innocents School in California. He is a member of the Society of Saint Pius X Parish in Concord, California.
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