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| Wax Burial Effigy of Gregory VII (Hildebrand) |
High
position tends to favor the well-positioned in this world and this has often
been true of the papacy. But even as
Christ Jesus taught us, greatness in the kingdom of God is found in being the
servant of all (Mk.10:43). Such is the
story of Pope Gregory VII (1015-1085) a man of very humble beginnings who
became a monk in Rome but through his gifts, both spiritual and natural, rose
to become the leader of Christendom, and arguably a man with few peers among
those who have ever sat on the throne of St. Peter.
His
birth name was Hildebrand (“a bright flame”) which was quite appropriate for
the son of the town blacksmith and his wife.
Growing up in southern Tuscany, Hildebrand Bonizi lived as neither a
peasant or a prince, but as an ordinary commoner of his day. As a teenager, Hildebrand was able to go to
Rome and study under the tutelage of his maternal uncle who was both a scholar
and abbot of a Benedictine monastery. In
the Middle-Ages, monastic life was often considered a special opportunity for
young men as in some places it was the only means to getting higher education and
it provided a structure that was conducive to learning and innovation. It is also not an exaggeration to say that
those who were well-educated in the Medieval era were very often put in the
service of the church.
Eventually
Hildebrand’s uncle was elevated to the papacy and took the name Gregory
VI. His was a short papacy that was
troubled with many false accusations and eventually ended with his abdication
and replacement at a church council.
Hildebrand followed his uncle into exile but eventually returned to Rome
and in 1053 was made a cardinal bishop. Cardinal bishops were seen in this time as the
new senate of Rome. For the next 20
years Hildebrand served 5 popes in various capacities. In many regards this is a very tumultuous
period for the papacy with some popes engaging in or being taken down by great
scandals. One of the great sins of this
period was the buying and selling of church offices. This practice, called Simony after the sin of
Simon Magus (Acts 8) who sought to buy spiritual power from the Apostles and
was very publicly cursed by St. Peter, was growing more and more common. In some regards there was a sociological
context for this that makes this somewhat less evil than it sounds today, but
that aside, it truly had the effect of the rich and powerful, especially in
Rome, turning this spiritual office into a means of leveraging power. This problem was met head on when Hildebrand
became Pope Gregory VII in 1073.
In
taking the name Gregory VII, Hildebrand was signaling the legitimacy of his
uncle’s reign that had ended poorly but also that he was going to follow in his
footsteps as a reformer. One of the
biggest reforms that Hildebrand put into place was papal elections by the
cardinals. Although all the elaborate
election procedures that we see today such as being locked in the Sistine
Chapel and burning ballots to signal the people are later accretions, they are built
upon Hildebrand’s reform which removed the politically powerful and well-placed
from interfering, and made the election of the highest bishop the
responsibility of the church’s highest leadership. While not solving the problem of power
grabbing or simony completely, this step at least set the stage for its
eventual correction. This is not without
a bit of irony though. While Hildebrand
is the father of papal elections, he himself was never officially elected but
rather simply acclaimed. He had so much
a part the papal court, when the position became vacant everyone was agreed:
“Let Hildebrand be pope!”
Though
the tradition of priestly celibacy has ancient roots, it was a tradition that
was not uniformly practiced or enforced.
Gregory VII, himself a monastic, changed that and enforced celibacy as
the norm for the Roman Catholic priesthood.
This has always been one of the questionable practices of the Catholic Church
not because celibacy (singleness without sexual partners) is without any
biblical warrant, but that Jesus taught that only some have that gift and one
of the most notable figures in the church that didn’t have that gift was St.
Peter himself believed by Catholics to be the first pope! To uniformly enforce a practice that is
contrary to the natural makeup of most humans is to invite sin and scandal in
the first place, but also unneeded disgrace when a church could be well-served
by a priest with a lawfully wedded wife and family. Ill-advised as this policy is (from my
perspective at least) it did have a context in Gregory’s day where bishops had
secret wives and families and would often seek to hand down a diocese as an
inheritance. In eliminating heirs
through the enforcement of celibacy throughout the church, Gregory VII was also
consolidating the role of the papacy in appointing and approving bishops
worldwide.
The
most important reform of Gregory VII was standing against what is called “lay
investiture”. Even if these terms seem
foreign to you, you’ll easily see their significance even in the modern world
of today. If the church is God’s
communion and instrument on earth, should clergy and particularly church
leadership be appointed by the secular government or the church itself? Many kings in Europe held the idea that they
were appointed by God to rule and therefore the churches in their realms were
under their jurisdiction and that included their bishops. Gregory VII took the opposite view and
asserted that the pope alone is the Lord’s vice-ruler here on earth and as such
not only has the right to bestow the offices of the church, but also has
authority over secular kings with the right to depose them or absolve their
subjects of their obligation to obey them.
In
taking this stand it would be inaccurate to say Gregory VII won a certain and
final victory. He most famously engaged
King Henry IV of Germany in this controversy and even excommunicated him for a
time until he repented from appointing his own bishops. But after three years, King Henry repented of
his repenting and led a successful effort to depose Gregory VII as pope,
electing his own pope in the person of Clement III.
While Gregory VII and a later successor
Innocent III brought papal power to supremacy in Europe as they exerted their
will over other secular rulers, their viewpoint was a continual source of
controversy. Sovereign rulers had a
difficult time with the idea that they derived their authority to rule as a
gracious grant from the papacy and popes likewise only with difficulty could
accept they were co-equal to temporal rulers, ruling over the souls rather than
bodies of men. Indeed the role of the
church and government in God’s economy is still an issue for which the lines
can be quickly blurred even today. But
for Gregory VII this was something for which he had absolute clarity. It was he who declared rulers shall kiss his
feet but he will kiss no layman's feet and that the church has never erred or
will err in the future in its judgments.
While some of this may seem like a man
on a quest for the absolute power that corrupts absolutely, we should
understand Gregory VII in the context of his own time. His exertions of power were in great part a
correction of structural sins within the church. On balance, he also lived in a Europe where
everyone from the smallest to the greatest, owed allegiance to someone higher
up the ladder. It was the time of
knights, kings, lords, landed commoners and un-landed peasants. He put this together theologically and aimed
at a union where kings and subjects would be in submission to the church and
truly live as part of Christendom.
Gregory VII lead the way at the high tide of the church’s influence in
Europe, this would later be taken to absurd heights by others and eventually
falter, but in the 11th century, the bright flame Hildebrand saw his
path through the darkness around him and sought to take the church with him.
Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII was beatified
in 1584 during another period of great Catholic reform following the Council of
Trent. In 1728 he was officially
elevated to sainthood.
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