The Church and the papal monarchy

The little village of Montaillou in the Diocese of Pamiers in southern France, high up in the Pyrenees, was made famous by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, who gave a uniquely vivid and intimate picture of a peasant community in the early fourteenth century.¹ What enabled him to do this was the fact that the bishop suspected the inhabitants of the village of being adherents of the Cathar heresy and had them arrested and interrogated by the Inquisition.

The geographical horizon of the villagers is expressed when one of them com­pares Paradise to an enormous house, stretching from the Hill ofMerens to the city of Toulouse.² The main authorities to whom they related were the Count of Foix, the lord of the area, and of course the Bishop of Pamiers. Despite the impressive state building under Philip IV, the king of France is far away, although occasionally mentioned as a threatening force.³

While the state was gradually extending its control of the limited areas ruled by kings, the Church was present in every village across Europe. The bishop could arrest and interrogate the whole population of a village in order to uncover a potential crime, in a period when public authorities rarely instigated a prosecution unless there was an accusation from an individual person.

People were supposed to attend mass once a week, go to confession and receive Holy Communion at least once a year and pay a certain percentage of their income to the Church. Moreover, they had to keep track of a large number of holidays when it was forbidden to work, as well as fast days, when it was forbidden to eat meat and have sexual intercourse. The former included on average every four days (Sundays and a number of feasts for God and the saints), the latter all Fridays, days before great feasts as well as four weeks before Christmas and seven weeks before Easter. Finally, the Church banned marrying relatives, first in seven, then, from 1215, in four degrees. Transgressing these rules not only constituted sins that demanded confession and absolution, but also crimes, subject to prosecution by ecclesiastical officers. It took a long time before the king was able to interfere in a similar way and when this did happen, it was largely by taking over the functions of the Church.

Religion is an important factor in all traditional civilizations but it may take very different forms. Christianity is one of several transcendental religions that originated in the period after around 500 bc: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and some others. These religions focused on the life after death rather than the present one; they had religious elites, different from the secular ones; they had a doctrine; and they distinguished clearly between adherents and non-adherents of the faith, all this in contrast to ethnic religions, like the religions of China and of ancient Greece and Rome.⁴ Nevertheless, Catholic Christianity differs significantly from the others, if not in kind, at least in degree.

Monotheistic religions generally make a sharp distinction between orthodoxy and heresy and often persecute the latter. Such persecutions took place both in Western and Eastern Christendom from late antiquity onwards and within Islam as well as to some extent Judaism. However, there are few examples of religious persecution in the West between late antiquity and the twelfth century. In the following period, new religious movements developed in opposition to the Church, the best-known of which are the Cathars or Albigensians and the Wal- densians. The former rejected most of the dogmas of the Church while the latter was originally an attempt at reforming the Church through poverty and simplicity. The Church reacted to the new movements by instituting the papal Inquisition, which was not bound by diocesan borders, but was entitled to trace and punish heresy everywhere. It was usually staffed by friars, notably Dominicans. Previously, however, it had been the responsibility of the local bishop to deal with heresy, a practice that still continued, for instance, in Montaillou. The development of the Inquisition has usually been explained as a reaction to new religious movements. An alternative explanation, most recently put forward by R.I. Moore, claims that it was mainly a result of stricter attitudes within the Church and that the doctrines attributed to the heretics were largely invented by the inquisitors. However, although changing attitudes within the Church should not be neglected, it is dif­ficult accept this as full explanation for the persecutions.⁵

What we know of the methods of the inquisitors — information also accepted by Moore — makes it difficult to explain that the inquisitors invented the opinions of their victims.

Finally, there is also other evidence of a new engagement by the laity in reli­gious issues from the late eleventh century onwards. There was a popular move­ment in favour of religious reform during the Investiture Contest and the crusading movement not only mobilized the aristocracy but also the common people. Although we know far more about the official Church and its doctrine than about popular religion, there is evidence that the Church at least to some extent had manage to transmit its message to the people, despite numerous examples of ideas and practices that did not conform to orthodoxy.⁶ A popular Crusade headed towards Jerusalem before the ‘official’ one but most of the participants were killed before they reached their goal.⁷ There is thus a significant difference between the period from the late eleventh century onwards and the previous one regarding popular religious movements, which at least indirectly forms a further argument in favour of the traditional interpretation of heresy.

In principle, the religious monopoly of the Church was confined to the Chris­tians. It was a crime for them to reject the Christian faith or have another interpretation of it than the Church. After the general conversion of Europe to Christianity, alternative religions were forbidden in most places. However, there were exceptions. Large Muslim populations continued to be tolerated for a long time in countries conquered by Christians, such as Spain and Sicily, probably mainly for pragmatic reasons. In addition, there were Jewish communities in most European countries.⁸ The official doctrine of the Church was that the Jews should not be forced to convert. Adherence to the Christian faith should in principle be voluntary but once conversion had occurred, it was a crime to reject the faith. Regarding the Jews, both the Church and secular authorities introduced various restrictions. Most seriously, they were increasingly blamed for various disasters or were subject to popular persecution with outbreaks of religious fervour. In the late eleventh century, the Crusading movement led to massacres of Jews, as did also the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century, when the Jews were accused of having caused the disease by poisoning the wells. Easter time, when Christ’s passion was celebrated, was a particularly dangerous period for them, which often led to pogroms. Joinville tells that the pious St Louis of France approved of a knight who broke off a debate between the monks of Cluny and the Jews by chasing away the Jews with his sword.⁹

However, the latter story does indicate that there were also theological discus­sions between the two religions. Moreover, the Jews had some influence on Bib­lical studies at the time. Some Christian theologians learnt Hebrew from them and consulted them on difficult passages in the Old Testament.¹⁰ It is no coincidence that the discussion Joinville mentions took place at Cluny, which was an important centre for attempts to convert members of other religions by intellectual discussion and it was where the Quran was translated into Latin at the initiative of the Abbot, Peter the Venerable, in the twelfth century.¹¹ The Jews were also under the king’s special protection, which, however, did not come cheap.

The use of magic and belief in it are widespread in most cultures and of course also existed in Christian and pre-Christian Europe.¹² In the early Middle Ages, the Church in most places condemned magic but did not believe that it had any effect. This gradually changed during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Some trials of witches took place in the fourteenth century. They increased in the fifteenth century, when also a theory of witchcraft was developed, most famously in the Malleus maleficarum (the Hammer of Witches) by the German inquisitors Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, both Dominicans. The book was published in 1486, two years after the two inquisitors had obtained a bull from Pope Innocent VIII, authorizing them to proceed against the witches. The witch hunts reached their climax between 1550 and 1650. According to recent calculations, between 40,000 and 60,000 people, the great majority (around 80 per cent) women, were executed as witches, but many more were accused; apparently around half of the accused were acquitted. When women were overrepresented, it is probably because they were considered more emotional and more easily tempted than men. Elderly women were particularly likely to be accused. The typical witch has been depicted as a poor elderly woman accused of having sought revenge over people who had offended her, but another alleged motive may have been the loss of fertility and accompanying status. While the persecution of witches began in the Catholic Church, it was continued in Protestant countries as well. Eventually, the persecu­tion was largely taken over by secular courts in Catholic as well as Protestant countries.

The persecution of heretics and witches is the most drastic example of eccle­siastical jurisdiction. However, ecclesiastical courts dealt with many other matters, such as disputes among clerics, cases about ecclesiastical property, various minor offences against ecclesiastical law and accusations against clerics, which the Church demanded should be dealt with by ecclesiastical courts. Finally, ecclesiastical courts dealt with marriage. In the late 1460s, the Paston family, having recently emerged from obscure origins to become one of the most prominent families in East Anglia, was planning a marriage for their daughter Margery that would increase their status further. At last, an excellent offer came from the wealthy Strange family in Northern Norfolk, which was accepted. However, Margery refused, to the great surprise of her family. Eventually, in 1469, the reason became clear: she was already married to the domain inspector Richard Calle. The family appealed to the Bishop of Norwich to declare the marriage invalid, but he refused; despite his sympathy with the family interest, he would not risk the salvation of his soul for their sake. The bishop declared the marriage to be valid and the family had to resign. Richard and Margery were married until she died, apparently in the late 1470s, while Richard lived until 1520.¹³

The doctrine to which the Bishop of Norwich refers goes back to Pope Alexander III (1159—81). The main issue in the previous discussion was whether marriage was defined by the will of the partners or by their sexual intercourse. Pope Alexander decided in favour of the former. As we have seen, the Church considered marriage less meritorious than celibacy, although it tended to have a more positive evaluation of it from the twelfth century onwards. In any case, it was necessary for the survival of humankind and served as a protection against sin; leading people to a disciplined life with care for family and children rather than seeking lust by promiscuous intermingling. According to Biblical doctrine, marriage should be monogamous and permanent, but such a union could only be entered voluntarily. Consequently, the Church had to insist on consent from both partners.

A further argument in favour of this point of view was the wish of the Church to bring an end to or at least reduce concubinage by increasing a woman’s possi­bility to demand that a man with whom she had a sexual relationship marry her. A case from Bergen in Norway illustrates the point. On 16 March 1325, Bishop Audfinn gave sentence in the case between Domhild and Eirik.¹⁴ Domhild had claimed that Eirik had wanted to go to bed with her, but that she had not been willing to do so unless he promised her marriage. As the bishop renders the con­versation in solemn Latin: ‘You shall tie yourself to me with promise of marriage if you know me carnally tonight.’ There were several witnesses to this, as the sur­roundings were not the most respectable, an alehouse, perhaps combined with easy access to sexual services. Technically, however, Domhild’s case was not watertight. A promise of marriage did not constitute a marriage; if the man said: ‘I shall marry you’ it was a promise for the future and not binding (‘verbum de futuro’), but if he said ‘I marry you’ (‘verbum de presenti’) it was. However, if the promise was fol­lowed by intercourse, it constituted a marriage.¹⁵ Therefore, the bishop, after some doubt, declared the marriage valid. Generally, from the twelfth century onwards, the Church became less tolerant of concubinage than before, although it was unable to abolish it completely.

Although the Church was not particularly concerned with romantic love between young people, its doctrine might support rebellions against parental authority and thus create problems for established society. From a secular point of view, particularly for the elites, marriage was a way to increase or uphold the power and prestige of the family. The doctrine of the Church in several ways endangered this interest. A daughter might refuse to marry the man her parents had found for her, while the ban against divorce made it impossible to get rid of unwanted partners, either women who did not produce sons or alliances that turned out to be liabilities more than assets. Concerning the latter, the Church had some remedies; although divorce was impossible, a marriage could be declared invalid, notably if it turned out that the partners were too closely related. Clever experts could always be found who proved kinship with a partner — normally a wife — who was no longer wanted.¹⁶ As the Paston example shows, the insistence on voluntary marriage might complicate matters within the elite but most daugh­ters nevertheless accepted the husbands their parents had found for them. More­over, things changed after the Reformation. The Protestants accepted the secular idea of marriage and insisted on marriages being contracted in public and the par­ents’ right to decide for their daughters. Similar rules were introduced in Catholic countries as well, for instance, in France, where lettres de cachet might be used against recalcitrant sons and daughters.

Among ordinary people, however, voluntary marriages seem to have been more widespread, particularly during the early modern period, possibly also in the Middle Ages, when we have fewer sources. The reason for this is not necessarily ecclesiastical doctrine but what has been called the European marriage pattern, namely, that young people, notably women, marry late, usually in their mid or late twenties and that a relatively high percentage — 10—15 per cent — never marry at all.¹⁷ The normal pattern in other densely populated parts of the world is early and almost universal marriage, for women in the early teens or even earlier. Late mar­riages of course increase the possibility for a woman to decide for herself. The reason for this pattern is in turn the importance of the nuclear family. People marry when they have the possibility of taking over a farm or a profession, namely, when their parents die or retire. In some cases, they will also need to earn money by working as farm hands or servants before marrying.

In addition to heresy and marriage, the ecclesiastical courts dealt with a number of different cases, varying from country to country. It demanded that clerics be judged by ecclesiastical courts, a claim that led to conflict in many countries. As ecclesiastical courts were not allowed to pass the sentence of death, stubborn heretics and others whom the Church found deserved the death penalty were delivered to secular courts, which had to pass the death sentence or risk excommunication.

Moreover, the Church largely controlled two important sectors which in modern society usually belong to the state, namely, health and welfare and teach­ing and learning. Hospitals were mostly run by monasteries, which, together with the parish organizations, provided some relief for the poor. The importance of doctrine in Christianity made learning an important task for the Church and gave it a dominant position in intellectual and cultural life. With the general decline of learning in the Latin West after the fall of the Roman Empire, the Church became the main intellectual centre, not only in the field of theology, but also regarding secular learning. Schools were run by monasteries and other ecclesiastical institu­tions, and institutions for higher education, the universities, developed from the late twelfth century onwards.¹⁸ The universities north of the Alps were originally founded by the Church and were for some time and in various degree under the control of the bishops. Even when they became largely independent, much of what they taught was derived from ecclesiastical doctrine. The universities south of the Alps formed some exception to this, as they were often founded by the towns and to a greater extent catered for the interests of the laity. The learning developed in the ecclesiastical schools and universities contributed to the formation of an intellectual elite, cultivating basically the same religious and secular learning all over Europe, expressed in a common language, Latin, in which its members could easily communicate in writing or conversation.

In this way, the Church not only controlled most of the learning and education at the time but also most of the intellectual framework. The French historian Lucien Febvre wrote a famous and much-discussed book on whether it was pos­sible to be an atheist in the sixteenth century — and by implication of course also in the Middle Ages — and gave a negative answer.¹⁹ Not all his arguments for this are convincing but he points to an important difference from today, when even many Christians will admit that God’s existence is a matter of faith rather than reason and that Christianity only to a limited extent is able to explain the world. In the Middle Ages and largely also the early modern period, Christianity not only had an institutional but also an intellectual hegemony; it was not possible to develop a satisfactory interpretation of the world without assuming the existence of God, and the Christian religion was regarded not only as morally but also intellectually superior. It was possible to oppose the pope or individual prelates but not faith in itself. On the contrary, such opposition largely had to be based on interpretations of the faith.

Finally, in addition to the many particular sectors controlled by the Church, it held the key to the eternal fate of all Christians. Life on Earth is only a short period during which humans are put to the test regarding their fate in the next and real life, eternity, whether they will live forever in bliss together with God and his angels or in pain in hell with the devil. The road to salvation is obedience to the Church and its dogmas, living according to its moral demands or, if not, atoning for one’s sins through confession and penance. Although we should not imagine that this doctrine determined the life of the whole population, few rejected it and most people sought reconciliation with the Church when death was approaching.

The Church created a largely similar administrative system all over Western Europe. The basic organization was the diocese, a term derived from the Late Roman administration. This unit was later, from the Carolingian period onwards, divided into parishes, each headed by a parish priest. In principle, this meant that every member of the Latin Church, which included the whole population of Western Christendom except the Jews, had a fixed place within the ecclesiastical organization. This organization also formed a clear hierarchy. Parish priests were subordinated to the bishop, who were in turn subordinated to the archbishop and ultimately to the pope. Apart from the parish priests, the bishops had a number of other subordinates, who might form separate hierarchies within the diocese: there was the cathedral chapter, the official (the bishop’s substitute in various capacities) and judicial and administrative functionaries like archdeacons and provosts who often had their separate districts within the diocese. In addition to the secular clergy, there were the monasteries and the religious orders, originally consisting of men and women who worshipped God in isolation from the rest of society, later also organizations for pastoral or social work or learning, such as the Franciscans and Dominicans, both founded in the early thirteenth century. The leader of the whole organization, the pope, was originally one of many bishops, which is still expressed in the fact that the pope addresses other bishops as ‘brother’, whereas all others, including kings and queens, are addressed as ‘son’ or ‘daughter’.

The development of papal supremacy is largely parallel to the development of secular monarchy.²⁰ In the same way as his secular counterpart, one of the main expressions of the pope’s power was in the field of justice and legislation. The pope became the supreme judge of the Church, not only in complicated issues between high-ranking prelates but also in relatively trivial matters. His court attracted a large number of litigants once it became possible to appeal to it from lower ones.²¹ An increasing number of cases from all parts of Europe reached the papal court from the twelfth century onwards, to the extent that the popes complained that they were hardly able to do other things than settle disputes, although of course only a minority of the cases were decided by the pope in person. Also like the king, there was a short step from judgment to legislation. Most popes from the twelfth century onwards were educated lawyers and formulated their decisions in individual cases in the awareness that they might later become general law. In 1234, Pope Gregory IX issued the Liber Extra (= additional, i.e. to Gratian), consisting of legislation based on his own and his predecessors’ decisions, which was followed by the Liber Sextus by Boniface VIII (1298) and the Clementinae by Clement V (1311—12, revised and promulgated by John XXII in 1317), which together were recognized as canon law until they were replaced by a new law in 1917.

The supreme power of the pope, his plenitudo potestatis, was a central tenet in papal doctrine from Gregory VII onwards and reached a climax under Innocent IV (1243— 54) and Boniface VIII (1294—1302). However, some canonists also developed a doc­trine of collegiality in the Church, where the power of the pope was limited by that of the council, a meeting of the leading representatives of the whole Church, mostly bishops.²² There had been altogether seven such councils, common to the eastern and western Church, from that of Nicaea in 325 to Constantinople in 869, all taking place in the East. In 1054, connections between the two parts of the Church were broken at the central level through mutual excommunications, after which the pope developed his supremacy in the Western Church. Seven new councils then took place in the West between 1123 and 1311—12, four in Rome and three in France. In the same way as in the kingdoms, these assemblies were summoned at the initiative of the leader in order to gain assent for his proposals. However, like their secular counterparts, the councils might also develop into bodies of opposition, as was the case in Lyon in 1274 and Vienne in 1311—12, where increasing opposition to papal centralization and demands for reform were voiced.²³ The opposition reached a climax in the first half of the fifteenth century, at the councils of Konstanz (1414—18) and Basel (1431—38/47). Before the Council of Konstanz, the papacy had been weakened by the previous schism which the council managed to end. The council was therefore in a strong position and carried out a number of provisions that increased its power and limited that of the pope. The Council of Basel was summoned to deal with the Hussite pro­blem and the relationship to Byzantium and the Ottomans. It came to represent the climax as well as the defeat of the Conciliar movement. There was increasing dis­agreement between moderate and radical delegates. In 1438, Pope Eugenius IV sum­moned an alternative council in Ferrara that was later moved to Florence. The Lateran Council of 1512—17 achieved little, while the Council of Trent (1545—63) led to increased power of the pope. Then there was no council until the Vatican Council of 1869—70, which proclaimed the infallibility of the pope.

The defeat of Conciliarism forms some parallel to the defeat of constitutionalism in most kingdoms in the early modern period. However, the period of strength of the movement was shorter than that of similar ones in most kingdoms. The reason for this is probably the size of the territory of the Church. Generally, the pope as well as secular rulers had the advantage of a well-developed administration, of being in the centre and of running the daily government. The larger the unit, the greater this advantage. As the Church covered the whole of Europe and thus had a far larger ter­ritory than any kingdom, the victory of the centre comes as no surprise.

‘Our predecessors have not understood how to be popes’, declared Clement VI (1342—52). His own understanding is expressed in the magnificent papal palace in Avignon, where he invited prelates, princes, poets and musicians to lavish banquets and cultured entertainment. After a decline during the schism and a period after­wards, Clement’s understanding of his office was once more applied in Rome by his successors from the mid-fifteenth century onwards. The best architects of Europe, including Michelangelo and Bernini, worked on the new St Peter’s Church in Rome, finished in its main outline in 1626 and by far the largest in Europe. The numerous tourists who today crowd the enormous Vatican Museum, mostly aiming at the Sistine Chapel, hardly notice that they are actually in the old papal palace which was steadily extended over the centuries, to which the Sistine Chapel was attached to serve as the church for the pope and his entourage. The popes restored and rebuilt the old Roman aqueducts which gave the population of Rome clean water, streaming out of a number of fountains decorated by great artists. Numerous squares, arranged and decorated by great architects and sculptors, churches and palaces for the pope and his cardinals and higher officials fill the old centre of the city. Despite the loss of around half of Western Christendom at the Reformation, the pope increased his power as an Italian prince as well as his con­trol of the ecclesiastical organization.

So far, the comparison between the Church under the leadership of the pope and the secular states ruled by kings has shown the similarity between the two as well as the superiority of the Church in several respects: a more professional bureaucracy, the greater power of the head of the organization and the greater size of its territory, in addition to the direct claim of the pope to be the national kings’ superior. However, the papal monarchy also had weaknesses.

As we have seen, one of the first problems European kings had to solve was that of succession. This was an even greater problem for the pope, for whom the usual solution, hereditary succession, was of course impossible. Popes therefore had to be elected, and at the election there was no candidate with an obvious claim. The traditional rule about elections of popes as well as other bishops was by ‘the clergy and people’. Although the clergy insisted on having the decisive vote, powerful laymen often dominated the election. With the development of a local aristocracy in Rome, the control of the papacy became an important aim in the numerous factional struggles. The restoration of imperial power through Otto I’s coronation in 962 led to a number of popes elected through imperial influence. Many of these came from north of the Alps and were influenced by the reform movements there, particularly the one originating in Cluny in Burgundy. This resulted in the decree about papal elections issued by the Lateran Synod in Rome at the initiative of Pope Nicholas II in 1059, a reform-minded pope from Burgundy. The election was now left to a purely ecclesiastical body, namely, the College of Cardinals, consisting of the clerics in churches in Rome and its surroundings who acted as the pope’s council. The people were only supposed to acclaim the election. After some conflicts over the exact procedure and the degree of outside influence, the College of Cardinals was eventually recognized as the elective body.

However, this did not eliminate pressure from outside, either the local popula­tion of Rome or powerful kings and princes, while the small number of electors increased the risk of bribery. Until the mid-fifteenth century, there were therefore a series of schisms, when two popes competed for loyalty, and a number of occa­sions where the election was delayed for up to two or three years. The origins of the most severe crisis, the great schism of 1378—1417, illustrate some of the pro­blems.²⁴ Since the election of Pope Clement V in 1305, the popes had resided in France, most of the time in Avignon. However, there was increasing pressure for the popes to return to Rome. Finally, Gregory XI decided to do so and arrived there on 17 January 1377. He died only a year later and was succeeded by an Ita­lian, Urban VI, with whom the majority of cardinals soon became dissatisfied. They claimed that his election had been the result of pressure from the Roman population and they elected a new pope, Clement VII, who returned to Avignon. The schism lasted until 1417, when it was brought to an end by the Council of Konstanz (1414—18), where two of the three popes at the time — one had been elected in the hope that he would replace the two others — were deposed and the third agreed to resign. The last schism took place shortly afterwards, in 1439, in connection with the conflict between Pope Eugenius IV and the Council of Basel. The anti-pope, Felix V, resigned in 1449 in return for being appointed cardinal.

Since the decline of the Roman Empire, the pope had in practice been the ruler of Rome and since the eight century also of the former Lombard kingdom in central Italy, conquered by the Carolingians. In practice, however, he had little control of this territory until the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century, approximately the period when the papal schisms came to an end. It may thus seem that a consolidated territory was a necessary condition for avoiding inter­ference in the elections from outsiders, including secular rulers. On the other hand, the existence of such a territory and the popes’ interest in consolidating and extending it created new problems. The territory never became strong enough to make the pope really independent of secular rulers. The main limits to the power of the papacy lay in the fields of war and finance. Despite the numerous complaints about the pope’s financial greed, his revenues in the middle ages, only 1/15 of those of the king of France, were inadequate, considering the territory he ruled as a religious leader. With the exception of the Peter’s penny, a small tax paid by the inhabitants of some countries, he had no regular taxes. Most of his incomes came from payments from litigants and petitioners to the curia, which mostly went to the people who dealt with them, and from incomes in connection with papal appointment to ecclesiastical offices. From the second half of the thirteenth cen­tury, he also at regular intervals demanded extra taxes from the clergy, allegedly to finance new crusades but actually to cover his normal expenses, including wars against his Italian rivals.

Although the pope recruited an army in the early sixteenth century (the Swiss Guard), he never commanded a strong military power; he depended on secular rulers as allies. This in many cases made it difficult for him to maintain his claim to be a spiritual authority, independent of secular rulers, the more so as he often used his spiritual power against his secular enemies by excommunicating them, which of course weakened the respect for his spiritual sanctions. The many conflicts with the German Emperor between the late eleventh and the mid-thirteenth century can largely be understood in this way. In the sixteenth century, the pope’s obvious ally against the Protestants was the Emperor Charles V and his son, Philip II of Spain, but as they also controlled most of Italy, the popes often intrigued against them and joined their enemies. The strengthening of the pope’s secular power must therefore be regarded as a mixed blessing. In hindsight, the popes would seem to have had every reason to be grateful to Victor Emmanuel II and Garibaldi for conquering the Papal States in 1860 and 1870 — the papacy enjoys greater international prestige today than in the eighteenth century.

Was the Church, headed by the pope, ever a realistic alternative to the state as the dominant power in Europe? The answer to this question is clearly no. Despite the remarkable increase in papal power from the late eleventh century onwards, the pope never came close to realizing this aim — if it actually was his aim. There are papal proclamations that can be interpreted in this direction, notably the ones that the pope had highest moral authority and the right to define the border between the two organizations. However, despite the fact that the Church was the richest institution in medieval Europe, only a fraction of this wealth was at the disposal of the pope. Nor had he any proper army; his military successes, notably his victory over the emperor in the thirteenth century, were the result of aid from other princes.

Here, however, it is necessary to distinguish between the pope and the Church as such. When kings during the later Middle Ages were able to gain considerable control of the church in their countries and in some cases even to defeat the pope in a conflict, it was not because of increasingly secular attitudes in the population but rather because the kings could gain the loyalty of the clergy in their countries by acting as defenders of the faith. By the early fourteenth century, the Cathars had been suppressed in most of France; Montaillou was one of their last strongholds. However, Philip IV managed to emerge as the champion of orthodoxy by finding another heresy, that of the Templars.²⁵ The Order of the Templars had been founded as a crusading order in the Holy Land but by the early fourteenth century had as its main purpose to raise money for Crusades, which led to the accumula­tion of great wealth. Philip’s motive was most probably to appropriate this wealth, as he was in a difficult financial situation when he launched the attack on the order in 1307. Philip had all the members of the order arrested and under torture extracted evidence of various kinds of misbehaviour: lack of chastity and homo­sexual acts, blasphemy, including spitting on the Cross and renouncing Christ, and various kinds of heresy. Philip achieved his aim; the Grand Master of the Order and several others were burnt at the stake and the order was suppressed by the pope, despite some misgivings by Pope Clement V. Philip got his money as well as a reputation for orthodoxy and defence of the faith.

In this respect, Philip continued the tradition from his grandfather St Louis, whose piety was nevertheless more genuine and whose motives were more purely

religious. Mostly, the Church had the support of the kings in its defence of orthodoxy in this as well as the following periods. Several crusades were launched against the Hussites in the fifteenth century and Henry IV of England and his successors persecuted the Lollards, Wycliffe’s followers. The Catholic kings of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, took a further step in this direction when they introduced the Inquisition in the country and received papal permission to control it themselves (1478). It thus became an important instrument, not only for religious but also for political control. When competing with the pope, the king’s policy was not to separate politics from religion but, on the contrary, to gain the loyalty of his lay as well as clerical subjects by emphasizing his orthodoxy and suppressing heresy. This largely continued to be royal policy in the following period, although eventually, more than one variety of religious orthodoxy was introduced.