The Problem of the Proprietary Church

admit it south of the Alps. In fact, the very pope who crowned Charlemagne in Saint Peter’s Basilica had placed over the relics of the first of the apostles silver shields on which the Creed was inscribed, both in Greek and in Latin, without the filioque. As we have seen, John VIII had likewise condemned the addition in the aftermath of the ninth-century Nicolaitan Schism.

But by the beginning of the eleventh century Benedict, desiring military assistance in southern Italy against the Byzantines and lacking legitimacy against his rival to the papal title, submitted to the emperor. He revised the Creed to include the filioque and placed it within the Mass celebrated at the coronation of Emperor Henry II (r. 1014–1024).

The event marked a turning point. By severing Rome from the hallowed creedal uniformity of East and West, the pope’s action signaled a tendency toward division.

BUT THE GREATEST PROBLEM FACING Western Christendom at the millennium was not the demoralization and political captivity of the papacy. It was the disintegration of monasticism. The Vikings had plundered the wealth of the monasteries, but an even more baneful force descended on them afterward. Feudal rulers, only nominally Christian, gained possession of their properties and gradually subjected them to a totally profane and malignant system of management. It came to be known as the “proprietary church.”

This system assigned proprietary ownership of ecclesiastical properties to local clerics and in many cases laymen. As Norsemen retreated back to the sea, the crumbling remnants of monasteries and parish churches were expropriated by petty Christian magnates for nothing more than personal wealth. Feudal lords acquired legal ownership of church properties by rescuing them from collapse or by erecting new buildings, and thereafter began to manage them as family assets. Church valuables were sold off to pay for warhorses and castle decorations. Monastery refectories were converted into mead halls in which debauched laymen passed their evenings in revelry. Many an “abbot” was in fact none other than the local knight,

whose children received the monastery’s assets through inheritance when he died. And if the monastic proprietor happened to appoint an actual monk as abbot, he did so only after exacting from him an assurance that spiritual matters would not interfere with secular ones.

The proprietary system also corrupted parish churches. Priests were totally dependent on the landlord for their appointment and income. This could severely compromise their pastoral ministry. Those who preached at the Mass—and not all did at this time—had to walk a fine line lest in deviating from it to the master’s displeasure they find themselves begging in the street.

At the top of the clerical hierarchy, local bishops were sometimes compromised by the ruling magnate. But they themselves often enjoyed even greater access to church property than the feudal lords. These princes of the church vied with one another for the wealthiest dioceses and the treasuries they contained. It is no surprise that the practice arose of paying a fee for episcopal assignments, so lucrative were the highest levels of “ministry” within the proprietary church. Often it was financial gain and not pastoral calling that attracted a bishop to a benefice. “What a fine thing it would be to be archbishop of Rheims,” one contender for the office was said to muse, “if only one did not have to sing mass!” 7 Needless to say these were impossible conditions for any sincere Christian influenced by the transformative power of the gospel.

So it was that a spiritual reaction to the proprietary church began to take shape during the tenth century. The first and most celebrated expression of this was in the monastery at Cluny, founded in 910 within the province of Burgundy in France. Its charter explicitly protected it from the feudal net that surrounded it. Its only lord was the pope of Rome, a unique distinction for a monastery north of the Alps.

Initially, papal affiliation had little practical importance because the papacy itself was in the grips of corruption. As we have seen, this was a period when the pope was the puppet of local Italian interests and often, due to his dubious origins, preoccupied with personal ambitions and even

7 Quoted in Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, translated by L. A. Manyon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 347.

carnal desires. The protection of a John XII did not mean much to advocates for a renewal of asceticism.

However, Cluny’s autonomy could be useful even when the papacy was bankrupt. With it the monastery was free to establish additional chapters in other locations throughout the West. Cluny became an alternative center of church leadership. Within a century dozens of subordinate houses were in place. Within two centuries the figure grew to more than a thousand, stretching from England to Italy and from Spain to Germany. Some historians have described Cluny as a monastic empire.

It was in fact more of a network. Cluniac houses pledged adherence to the Rule of Saint Benedict and subordination to the mother house. The result was a level of uniformity and centralization not known in Christian monasticism before. Ironically, the original Rule had actually empowered each house to direct its own affairs. But the Cluniacs found a precedent for centralization in the religious policies of the Carolingian Empire. Charlemagne had been preoccupied, even obsessed, with the creation of a uniform political administration. It was the keynote of his policy of “correction,” an effort to regulate and improve church life throughout his realm. This policy was extended by his heir, Louis the Pious, who in 817 called a council at Aachen that established a centralized administration for all Frankish monasteries. At the head of this project Louis placed Benedict of Aniane (d. 821).

Known as the “second Benedict,” this most famous Frankish abbot had not always been Benedictine in his sympathies. Early in his life he had had a brief but passionate affair with the Rule of Basil the Great. However, concluding that the less regulated forms of Eastern monasticism were unsuitable for the Franks, he ultimately turned to the Rule of Saint Benedict of Nursia and dedicated his life to advancing it. As a complement to the centralizing policies of the Carolingian court, which included the demand for universal use of Latin and the political subordination of bishops, Benedict used the Rule to impose ascetical uniformity throughout the empire. No other rule was allowed, and monasteries were required to submit to periodic inspections to assure they were following it. Though this system collapsed with the Carolingian Empire at the end of the ninth century, its vision of