The Chronicle of Hugh of Flavigny

Reform and the Investiture Contest in the Late Eleventh Century

Patrick Healy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780754655268
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317038467
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historiography
• Index: History

This book is a detailed study of Hugh of Flavigny and his chronicle, which is widely recognised as one of the most important narratives of a crucial period of European history, that is, the Investiture Contest. Hugh's Chronicon is significant in a number of ways: as a unique source-book for some of the most important primary documents (especially papal letters) generated by the Investiture Contest; as a rare autograph manuscript which gives an important insight into contemporary modes of composition and compilation; as an important history of the 'local' effects of the Investiture Contest in the dioceses of Verdun and Autun; and as a striking autobiography of the author, Hugh of Flavigny. All these aspects are covered in this study by Patrick Healy. Other chapters investigate the context of the work in terms of ecclesiastical politics and use an analysis of the political and theological sources to illustrate the intellectual make-up of a contemporary monk, publicist - and polemicist.

Chapter 1
Introduction

According to Hugh of Flavigny, Pope Gregory VII (1073–85) ‘advanced unshaken along the royal way with the arms of righteousness, without deviation to the right or to the left’.¹ This was an allusion to the wanderings of the people of Israel in the desert of Pharan, as described in Numbers 21:22. The Israelites asked Sehon, king of the Amorrhites, for passage through his land, promising not to stray into the fields and vineyards, nor to drink from the wells. They undertook to follow the ‘royal road’ (via regia) until they had passed beyond the borders of that kingdom. When Sehon refused he was defeated by the Israelites – ‘slain by them with the edge of the sword’ – who then ruled the kingdom in his stead. Hugh’s metaphor of the ‘royal road’ to describe the pontificate of Gregory VII was well chosen, conveying as it did a current of biblical interpretation that considered this story to represent allegorically the contemporary struggle for Church liberty. For example, in one of his exegetical works Peter Damian (†1072) had interpreted the oppression of Israel by Sehon as a type of secular persecution of the Church. He wrote: ‘who are the people whom Sehon gathered against Israel unless those reprobates by whom the church is persecuted? From the ranks of these reprobates are tyrants, generals (duces) and princes of the world …’.² When Hugh of Flavigny composed his Chronicon in the decade or so after the pope’s death in 1085, the tribulations and eventual triumph of Israel must have been of consolation to the supporters of the reform papacy, who lived to endure the oppression of another Sehon in the person of Henry IV of Germany (1056–1106). Henry’s bitter struggle with Gregory VII, which resulted in widespread schism and civil war in Germany and Italy, was considered by many to be a time of tribulation for the faithful unparalleled since the sufferings of Israel described in the Old Testament. However, just as Sehon had been defeated by Israel, so – it was believed – Henry IV’s tyranny would also come to an end. Like Hugh of Flavigny, Bonizo of Sutri (c. 1045–c. 1089) sought to consider the contemporary persecution of the Church in its biblical perspective and was able to locate Gregory VII’s pontificate in the world-historical scheme of punishment and redemption that was written in the history of the Israelites.³ This kind of reforming and ‘Gregorian’ exegesis was prompted by the demands of circumstance. Henry IV’s conquest of Rome in 1084 and his imperial coronation at the hands of the antipope Clement III (Wibert of Ravenna), together with Gregory’s death in exile at Salerno in the following year – these events forced reforming intellectuals such as Hugh of Flavigny to take refuge in the allegorical interpretation of Scripture and the typological identification of the reform papacy with the people of Israel.

Hugh witnessed the deleterious consequences of the conflict of Church and State at first hand. As a young monk at the monastery of St-Vanne in Verdun, he and the other pro-papal brothers of that house were forced to flee their abbey in 1085 because of intimidation suffered at the hands of their pro-Henrician diocesan, Bishop Theoderic of Verdun.⁴ Theoderic was particularly aggrieved at Abbot Rudolf of St-Vanne, who was at that time the foremost representative of Pope Gregory VII in the German duchy of Upper Lotharingia. After the pope’s death in exile at Salerno in 1085 the bishop of Verdun took the opportunity to rid his diocese of this agent of Roman primacy and Roman intervention. Rudolf and his monks took refuge with Jarento, abbot of the equally fervent house of St-Bénigne in Dijon and another trusted emissary of Gregory VII. These eminent reformers doubtless stimulated Hugh to record the tribulations incurred by the pope and his party in the name of reform. They also exposed him to a Gregorian ‘friendship network’ in Lotharingia and Burgundy that must have furnished Hugh with many of the documents and instrumenta which he copied into his Chronicon and which constitute its enduring historical significance. It was in this friendship network that Hugh met and came to serve Archbishop Hugh of Lyons (formerly bishop of Die), who had been the most zealous and uncompromising legate in Gregory VII’s service. Archbishop Hugh’s conception of reform must have heavily influenced the young monk he had come to regard as his own special protégé and it was on the archbishop’s recommendation that Hugh was appointed abbot of Flavigny in the Diocese of Autun in 1096. The careers of Rudolf of St-Vanne, Jarento of St-Bénigne and Hugh of Lyons are accorded special attention in the Chronicon, which, in many ways, is a local history of reform and its consequences in Lotharingia and Burgundy. Pride of place, however, goes to Pope Gregory VII. Hugh considered the pope’s childhood and adolescence in some detail and gave particular attention to Gregory’s election in 1073, an event of crucial polemical significance as opponents of the pope claimed that it did not accord with the provisions of the Papal Election Decree of 1059. The chronicler was especially keen to inscribe the letters of Gregory VII into his Chronicon: not only did they constitute the sole narrative for long passages of the work, Hugh seems to have considered them to be sources of doctrinal and theological instruction that were scarcely inferior to the Scriptures themselves. In the Chronicon, Gregory’s epistolary oeuvre, but also his life and death, were the embodiment, physical and literary, of reform. His tribulations were considered by Hugh to be representative of the calamities endured by the whole Church, and were stretched back by the chronicler to encompass a tradition of suffering recorded in the Old Testament. The great pope’s influence dominates the second half of the Chronicon; after the description of Gregory VII’s death in 1085, the affairs of the reform papacy are hardly considered in Hugh’s narrative. It was because of the preoccupation with Pope Gregory VII in works such as the Chronicon of Hugh of Flavigny that Augustin Fliche could characterise a whole movement under the rubric of ‘Gregorian’ reform.⁵

The election of Archdeacon Hildebrand as Pope Gregory VII on 22 April 1073 was a controversial and divisive event and required some explanation by pro-papal supporters such as Hugh of Flavigny. Hugh therefore copied into his Chronicon Gregory’s letter to Abbot Desiderius of Montecassino of 23 April 1073, where the pope expressed his version of events most clearly. While Pope Alexander II was being buried in the Lateran, there arose ‘a great tumult and uproar of the people’. In a deliberate allusion to the election of Gregory the Great, the new pope compared himself with the prophet David: ‘I came into the depth of the sea and the tempest overwhelmed me’ (Psalm 68:3–4).⁶ Gregory VII’s epistolary account of popular compulsion was an imprecise but clearly discernible allusion to the election of Gregory the Great, which was also effected through popular acclaim and which was believed to be the result of divine inspiration. By establishing contact with the legacy of his great predecessor, the new pope sought to pre-empt any accusations of irregularity that could be made about his election.⁷ Nonetheless, and despite this tendentious account of events, Gregory VII probably devoutly believed that his election took place at divine instigation: per inspirationem. That is to say, he thought that the Holy Spirit acted through the Roman crowd, which spontaneously and forcibly elevated him on to the papal throne. The direct intervention of the Holy Spirit also corresponded to the medieval ideal that the will of God expressed itself through the unanimitas of the electors.⁸

The pope’s version of events was open to dispute for a number of reasons. First, Gregory VII’s account of a tumultuous election is contradicted by the official protocol of the election, inserted at the beginning of the Register of his letters. According to this Commentarius, Archdeacon Hildebrand was elected by the cardinal-clergy of the Roman Church at the basilica of St Peter in vincoli, with the acclamation ‘of many crowds of both sexes and different orders’.⁹ Second, there was the accusation that Gregory had been elected pope in contravention of the 1059 papal election decree: on the one hand he had undoubtedly been elected inconsulto rege – that is, without reference to the ‘due honour and reverence’ that was owed to the German court; on the other hand, as Cardinal Beno later pointed out, no cardinal had ratified the election of 1073, which was thus void according to the terms of the 1059 decree.¹⁰ Perhaps the most serious accusation against Gregory VII – and the one Hugh of Flavigny was most concerned to refute – was that the friends of Archdeacon Hildebrand had deliberately contrived the whole affair by bribing the mob, and that the pope was therefore a simonist.¹¹ Hugh of Flavigny showed that he was aware of these calumnies when he commented that Gregory VII’s ‘entry’ (introitus) into the Holy See was smeared with the allegation of simony by Henry IV, who himself was guilty of this heresy.¹² Elsewhere, Hugh alluded to the allegations that the pope was a ‘sorcerer, impostor, heretic, homicide and fornicator’, perhaps paraphrasing the accusations made at the synod of Brixen in June 1080: ‘against this same most brazen Hildebrand, who preaches sacrilege and arson, who defends perjury and homicide, who questions the catholic and apostolic faith concerning the body and blood of our Lord, who is an ancient disciple of the heretic Berengar, a manifest believer in dreams and divinations, a necromancer, dealing in the spirit of prophecy …’.¹³ Thus, Hugh of Flavigny was concerned to emphasise Hildebrand’s humility and reluctance for advancement: in his eyes, Gregory had been forced to accept the ‘burden’ (iugum) of office although he abhorred it; his acceptance of the papal throne was the act of a ‘gentle soul bowing his neck to God’.¹⁴ Hugh’s partisan account of Gregory’s election – based on and supported by the pope’s letter to Abbot Desiderius of Montecassino – was framed as an answer to the accusations of irregularity of which Hugh was clearly aware. It also introduces a recurring leitmotif: the close bond between Hugh’s narrative and the documentary evidence that was adduced in support of it.

The via regia was not simply a metaphor for persecution and deliverance: it was also a metaphor for a programme of reform. In his Historia Mediolanensis, Landulf Senior included a series of debates on Church reform that took place at Milan some time before...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Abbey of St-Vanne, Verdun, from its Foundation until 1085
• 3 The Life and Career of Hugh of Flavigny
• 4 The Manuscript of the Chronicon and its Transmission
• 5 Sources of the Chronicon
• 6 Kingship and Tyranny in the Chronicon
• 7 Lay Investiture and Simony: Auctoritas and Consuetudo
• 8 Reforming Attitudes to Ecclesiastical Promotion
• 9 The Chronicon as Polemic
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Bibliography
• Index