CHAPTER ONE
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.
The Problem of the Proprietary Church 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, BUT THE GR EATEST PROBLEM FACING
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