We cannot take leave of the 10th centuiy, without lamenting the gross ignorance into which Europe was plunged. Possessions were regulated by custom, and transactions pursued by remembrance alone. In the midst of these people, these nobles, these kings, who knew neither how to read nor write, the rudest instruction was, in the clergy suffered to put them in possession of the civil administration.¹³²
¹³¹ Concilior. vol. 9, p. 744. A discourse which Arnoul bishop of Orleans, pronounced in the Council of Rheims in 991, has been occasionally cited under the name of Gerbert, which discourse may be read in the history of this council revised by Gerbert. This very remarkable document is too long to be inserted here.
“The ecclesiastics, says Pasquier, di− “vide among themselves the keys as well of reli− “gion as of letters, altho’ so to speak, they derived “from these only sufficient provision for their “cubs.”
They alone could spell ancient writings, and trace some letters. They assumed the dictating of wills, the regulation of marriages, contracts, and public acts; they extorted legacies and donations, they freed themselves from the secular jurisdiction, and endeavoured to subject all things to a jurisprudence of their own.¹³³
¹³³ Velly’s Hist, of France, vol. 2, p. 293.
CHAPTER IV. ENTERPRISES OF THE POPES OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY
A SHORT time after the death of Sylvester II. a patrician, consuls, twelve senators, a prefect, and popular assemblies, were seen to re-appear at Rome. A second Crescentius, the son perhaps of the first, filled the prefectorial office. As to the patrician, who was named John, and who was the principal author of the reestablishment of this civil magistracy, he is expressly designated to us as son of the first Crescentius. But in 1013, Henry II. came to Rome: he received from Pope Benedict VIII. the imperial crown: and the Romans, in spite of their menaces, lost once more their independence. Baronius¹³⁴ relates a diploma in which Henry confirms the donations of his predecessors: it is added that Benedict, before receiving this emperor, made him swear that he would be faithful to the pope, and regard himself only as the defender and advocate of the Roman Church. Glaber,¹³⁵ a contemporary historian, after having related this coronation, says, that it appears very reasonable, and a thing well established, that no prince could take the title of emperor, ‘save he whom the pope shall have chosen and clothed with the insignia of this dignity:’ words which seem much less to express in this place the sentiment of an individual than an opinion generally established in his time.