296 FOURTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
X
a marvel to his ignorant age, and suggested a connection with magic. He sent to St. Stephen of Hungary the royal crown, and, in a pastoral letter to Europe where Jerusalem is repre sented as crying for help, he gave the first impulse to the cru sades (1000), ninety years before they actually began.1
In the expectation of the approaching judgment, crowds of pilgrims flocked to Palestine to greet the advent of the Saviour. But the first millennium passed, and Christendom awoke with a sigh of relief on the first day of the year 1001.
Upon the whole the Saxon emperors were of great service to the papacy : they emancipated it from the tyranny of domestic political factions, they restored it to wealth, and substituted worthy occupants for monstrous criminals.
During the next reign the confusion broke out once more. The anti-imperial party regained the ascendency, and John Crescentius, the son of the beheaded consul, ruled under the title of Senator and Patricius. But the Counts of Tusculum held the balance of power pretty evenly, and gradually superseded the house of Crescentius. They elected Benedict VIII. (1012- 1024), a member of their family; while Crescentius and his friends appointed an anti-pope (Gregory).
Benedict proved a very energetic pope in the defence of Italy against the Saracens. He forms the connecting link between the Ottoman and the Hildebrandian popes. He crowned Henry II. (1014), as the faithful patron and protector simply, not as the liege-lord, of the pope.
This last emperor of the Saxon house was very devout, ascetic, and liberal in endowing bishoprics. He favored clerical celibacy. He aimed earnestly at a moral reformation of the church. He
1 See Gfrorer, III. P. III. 1550 sq. He regards Sylvester II. one of the greatest of popes and statesmen who developed all the germs of the system, and showed the way to his successors. Comp. on him Milman, Bk. V. ch. 13 ; Giesebrecht, I. 613 sqq. and 690 sqq.
2 65. THE SECOND DEGRADATION OF THE PAPACY. 297
declared at a diet, that lie had made Christ his heir, and would devote all he possessed to God and his church. He filled the vacant bishoprics and abbeys with learned and worthy men ; and hence his right of appointment was not resisted. He died after a reign of twenty-two years, and was buried at his favorite place, Bamberg in Bavaria, where he had founded a bishopric (1007). He and his chaste wife, Kunigunde, \vere canonized by the grateful church (114G).1
THE TUSCULAN POPES. BENEDICT IX.
With Benedict VIII. the papal dignity became hereditary in the Tusculan family. He had bought it by open bribery. He was followed by his brother John XIX., a layman, who bought it likewise, and passed in one day through all the clerical degrees.
After his death in 103.3, his nephew Theophylact, a boy of only ten or twelve years of age,2 ascended the papal throne under the name of Benedict IX. (1033—1045). His election was a
1 His historian, bishop Thitrnar or Ditmar of Merseburg, relates that Henry never held carnal intercourse with his wife, and submitted to rigid penances and frequent flagellations for the subjugation of animal passions. But Hase ($ 160, tenth ed.) remarks: "Die M<">nche, die er zu Gunsten der Bisth'dmer beraubt hat, dachten ihn nur eben van der IL '> lie gcretfet; auch den HeUigenschein der jungfrdulichen Kaiser in hat der Teuf>l zu verdunkeln gewusst" Comp. C. Schurzfleisch, De innocentia Cunig., Wit., 1700. A. Noel, Leben der heil. Kunigunde, Luxemb. 1856. For a high and just estimate of Henry's character see Giesebrecht II. 94-96. "The legend," he says, "describes Henry as a monk in purple, as a penitent with a crown, who can scarcely drag along his lame body; it places Kunigunde at his side not as wife but as a nun, who in prayer and mortification of the flesh seeks with him the path to heaven. History gives a very different picture of king Henry and his wife. It bears witness that he was one of the most active and energetic rulers that ever sat on the German throne, and possessed a sharp understanding and a power of organization very rare in those times. It was a misfortune for Germany that such a statesman had to spend most of his life in internal and external wars. Honorable as he was in arms, he would have acquired a higher fame in times of peace."
2 Rodulfus Glaber, Hit'or. Kid tcmporis, IV. 5 (in Migne, Tom. 142, p. 979) : "puerferme (fere] deccnnis;" but in V. 5: ''fuerat scdi ordinatns qnidam puer circlter annm*um duodecim, contra jits nefaxque.'" Hefele stated, in the first ed. (IV. 673), that Benedict was eighteen when elected. In the second ed. (p. 706), he corrects himself and makes him twelve vears at his election.