Gregory VII. had clearly revealed to the world the broad lines of the religious and political programme of the mediaeval papacy, and had begun to put it into execution. To reform the Church in every grade and purge the priesthood in order to shield it from feudal influences and from the domination of lay sovereignties ; to convert the Church thus regenerated, spiritualized and detached from the world, into an organism which would be submissive to the absolute authority of the papal see, and to concentrate at Rome all its energies and jurisdictions; to establish the supremacy of the Roman see over all the Christian Churches, and win over to the Roman Church the Churches of the Byzantine Empire, Africa and Asia; to establish the temporal domain of St. Peter, not only by taking possession of Rome and Italy, but also by placing all the crowns of Europe under the supreme sovereignty of the popes, or even in direct vassalage to them ; and, finally, to maintain unity of faith in Christendom and defend it against the attacks of un believers, Mussulmans, heretics and pagans—these were the main features of his scheme. The task, however, was so gigantic that after 150 years of strenuous effort, at the period which may be considered as the apogee of its power, that is, in the first half of the 13th century, the papacy had attained only incomplete results. At several points the work remained unfinished, for de cadence followed close upon the moment of extreme greatness.
Gregory VII.'s successors accomplished the most pressing work by liberating the Church from feudal subjection, either by force or by diplomacy. This was, indeed, the indispensable condition of its internal and external progress. The great figure of this period is unquestionably the French Cluniac Urban II. (1088-99), who led the Hildebrandine reformation with more vehemence than Gregory himself and was the originator of the crusades. Never throughout the middle ages was pope more energetic, impetuous or uncompromising. His inflexible will informed the movement directed against the enemy within, against the simoniacal prelate and the princely usurper of the rights of the Church, and pre scribed the movement against the enemy without, against the infidel who held the Holy Sepulchre. Urban set his hand to reforms from which his predecessor Gregory had recoiled. He simultaneously excommunicated several sovereigns and mercilessly persecuted the archbishops and bishops who were hostile to reform. He took no pains to temper the zeal of his legates, but incited them to the struggle, and, not content with prohibiting lay investiture and simony, expressly forbade prelates and even priests to pay homage to the civil power. Distrusting the secular clergy, who were wholly sunk in the world, he looked to the reg ular clergy for support, and thus led the papacy into that course which it continued to pursue of ter his death. Henceforth the monk was to be the docile instrument of the wishes of Rome, to be opposed to the official priesthood according to Rome's needs. Urban was the first to proclaim with emphasis the necessity of a close association of the Curia with the religious orders, and this he made the essential basis of the theocratic government. As the originator of the first crusade, Urban is entitled to the honour of the idea and its execution. There is no doubt that he wished to satisfy the complaints that emanated from the Chris tians dwelling in Jerusalem and from the pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre, but it is no less certain that he was disturbed by the fears aroused throughout the Latin world by the recrudescence of Mussulman invasions, and particularly by the victory won by the Almoravides over the Christian army at Zalaca (1086). The
progress of these African Mussulmans into Spain and their inces sant piracies in Italy were perhaps the occasional cause that de termined Urban II. to work upon the imagination of the infidels by an expedition into Syria. The papacy of that time believed in the political unity of Islam, in a solidarity—which did not exist— among the Mussulmans of Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt and the Bar bary coasts; and if it waited until the year 1o95 to carry out this project, it was because the conflict with the Germanic empire pre vented the earlier realization of its dream. The essential reason of Urban II.'s action, and consequently the true cause of the crusade, was the ambition of the pope to unite with Rome and the Roman Church the Churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexan dria and even Constantinople, which the Greek schism had ren dered independent. Urban II. addressed himself with wonted deci sion to the execution of this enormous enterprise. With him, as with all his successors, the idea of a collective expedition of Europe for the recovery of the holy places was always associated with the sanguine hope of extinguishing the schism at Constantinople, its very centre, by the substitution of a Latin for a Byzantine domination. Of these two objects, he was only to realize the former ; but the crusade may well be said to have been his own work. He created it and preached it ; he organized it, dominated it, and constantly supervised it. He was ever ready to act, either personally or through his delegates, and never ceased to be the effective leader of all the feudal soldiers he enrolled under the ban ner of the Holy See.
The vast conflict aroused by the Hildebrandine reformation, and particularly the investiture quarrel, continued under the three successors of Urban II. ; but with them it assumed a different character, and a tendency arose to terminate it by other means. The violence and disorders provoked by the struggle brought about a reaction, which was organized by certain prelates who advocated a policy of conciliation, such as the Frenchman Ivo, bishop of Chartres (c. 1040-1116). These conciliatory prelates were sincere supporters of the reformation, and combated simony, the marriage or concubinage of priests, and the immorality of sovereigns with the same conviction as the most ardent followers of Gregory VII. and Urban II. ; but they held that the intimate union of Church and State was indispensable to the social order, and that the rights of kings should be respected as well as the rights of priests. The text they preached was harmony between the priesthood and the state. Dividing what the irreconcilables of the Hildebrandine party considered as an indissoluble whole, they made a sharp distinction between the property of the Church and the Church itself, between the political and territorial power of the bishops and their religious authority, and between the feudal investiture which confers lands and jurisdiction and the spiritual investiture which confers ecclesiastical rights. This doc trine gradually rallied all moderate minds, and finally inspired the directors of Christendom in Rome itself.