The Making of the Middle Ages by Richard William Southern

Author:Richard William Southern [Southern, Richard William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, History, Electronic Books, Medieval, Europe, Civilization; Medieval, Civilization, Middle Ages
ISBN: 9780300002300
Google: 1yAuAPxIOL0C
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2015-05-30T16:00:00+00:00

and in 1073 he stood at the height of his power and influence with a long record of devoted service in the papal cause. In many ways he was the antithesis of Gregory. His field of activity, like his origin, lay outside Rome.

He was one of the Rhinelanders who had been brought to Italy by Leo IX twenty years earlier, and he had done more than any man of his day to carry papal authority to new lands--to Aragon and Catalonia especially, where he had been outstandingly successful as papal legate. When Alexander II died, he had just returned from a legatine mission in Southern France, and it was he who took the leading part in Gregory's election. While the great concourse of priests and people was still busied with the burial of the late Pope, he rose in the pulpit and directed the energies of the turbulent gathering with the words: "Brethren, you know that from the days of Pope Leo (IX) it is Hildebrand who has exalted the Holy Roman Church and freed this city. Wherefore, since we cannot have anyone better fitted to be elected as Roman pontiff, we elect him now--a man ordained in our church, a man known to you all, and approved by all." One of the first acts of the new Pope, still exhausted by the tumultuous events of his election day, was to send Hugh on a new legatine mission--yet within a year Pope and cardinal were divided by a bitter hostility.

Hugh, the most active of papal legates, was the first cardinal to desert Gregory. Ten years later, one of the last of the cardinals to desert him was a man whose importance was of a quite different kind. This was the papal chancellor, Peter, Cardinal priest of S. Crisogono. His position was analogous to that of the head of the Civil Service. He was the most important of the officials whose place was constantly at the Pope's side. The Pope was ahead of most rulers of his day in the means at his disposal for making his will known by the written word. He not only had a small, expert staff engaged in the preparation and expediting of his correspondence, but he also kept (which no other ruler in the West did) a copy of the more important letters which he wrote. The chancellor Peter was in charge of this activity. We may think of him as a kind of secretary to the Pope, preparing drafts of his letters, correcting them before they were sent off, organizing the work of transcribing them, and filing copies for future reference. His personality remains quite obscure; he does not appear to have been a man of independent views

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