Millennium

new emperor, having obtained the coronation that he had come to Rome to secure, opted not to hang around. His escape, and the Anti-pope’s too, proved to have been just in the nick of time. A bare three days after their hurried exit from the capital, and Norman outriders were clattering up to the city walls. The Romans, gazing out in horror at the immense army descending upon them, one that included not only a great shock force of knights but even Saracens levied from Sicily, kept their gates firmly barred, and writhed in indecision. Abandoned by their emperor, and all too conscious of the Hautevilles’ fearsome reputation, they feared the worst – as well they might have done. For Guiscard was already growing impatient. After three days of waiting, he duly led a night-time assault, and smashed his way into the city. Gregory, sprung from the Castel Sant’Angelo, was led in triumph to the Lateran – but even as he celebrated his release with a sumptuous Mass of thanksgiving, his Norman liberators were already fleecing his flock down to the very bones. Finally, after three terrible days, the despairing Romans attempted a fight-back – only to end up being slaughtered as well as robbed. Gregory, gazing out from the Lateran, had to endure the sight of his entire beloved city up in flames. Never before had the capital of Christendom endured so brutal, so destructive, and so complete a sack. The most terrible atrocities of all, it was reported, were committed by Count Roger’s Saracens.

Such was the fate that Gregory, the heir of St Peter, had brought down upon the last resting place of the apostle: to be ransacked by infidels. As the smoke began to drift away at last, and the blood on the streets to dry, it was perfectly evident, even to the Pope himself, that his position in the ruined city had been rendered untenable: for the curses and clenched fists of the people who had once been his firmest supporters would make it impossible for him to continue in Rome without the protection of the Hautevilles. Accordingly, when Guiscard left at the end of July, he had little choice but to set out with him. No less than Pope Leo after Civitate, Gregory was now effectively a prisoner of the Normans. Indeed, if anything, his failure appeared even more total than Leo’s had been. Everything that he had ever fought for seemed in a state of ruin. His great adversary, crowned in triumph emperor, still sat on the throne of the Reich. Back in Rome, no sooner had Gregory left the city than the weasel Clement was slipping back into the Lateran. Gregory himself, set up by Guiscard in quarters just south of Amalfi, knew in his heart of hearts that he had been left much diminished and humiliated. Grimly, in a letter addressed simply To the faithful’, he sought to make sense of it all. ‘Ever since by God’s providence mother church set me upon the apostolic throne,’ he assured the Christian people, ‘deeply unworthy and, as God is my witness, unwilling though I was, my greatest concern has been that holy church, the bride of Christ, our lady and mother, should return to her true glory, and stand free, chaste and catholic. But because this entirely displeased the ancient enemy, he has armed his members against us, in order to turn everything upside down.’ Certainly, that same winter, falling suddenly and mortally sick, Gregory had no doubt that the world did indeed lie in the shadow of Antichrist. No other explanation for the calamities that had befallen him and his great cause appeared possible. ‘I have loved righteousness,’ he declared on 25 May, ‘and I have hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile.’ They were the last words that he would ever speak.

However, the shadow of Antichrist was not nearly so spreading as Gregory, lying on his deathbed, had darkly thought. Time would show that his pontificate, far from having led to the ruin of the Church’s libertas, its freedom, had served instead to entrench it, and much else, beyond all prospect of reversal. The great mass of the Christian people, despite—or perhaps because of — the unprecedented upheavals of the previous decade, remained no less committed to the cause of reform than they had ever been; as did many of the foremost leaders of the Church, whether cardinals, bishops or abbots; and still, in the courts of great princes across Christendom, Gregory’s inimitable blend of lecturing and encouragement continued to reverberate. Even in the Reich itself, where Henry’s triumph appeared complete, the reality was somewhat different. The cause of reform in Germany, as Cardinal Odo had discovered when he arrived there late in 1084 as Gregory’s legate, had put down deep roots indeed. ‘What else is talked about even in the women’s spinning-rooms and the artisans’ workshops?’ one monk, hostile to Gregory, had exclaimed back in 1075. A decade on, and the talk had grown even louder.

So the calamities which had marked the end of the most momentous pontificate for many centuries had not served to herald the coming of Antichrist. On the contrary, much that Gregory had laboured so titanically and tumultuously to secure would more than survive his passing. As a reassurance of this, had he only been brought the news of it by some supernatural vision or angelic messenger, the dying Pope could have pointed to a signal triumph: proof that the Almighty was indeed still smiling upon Christendom. For on 25 May 1085, the very day of Gregory’s death, Christian arms had secured a glorious and much yearned-for conquest. Gates closed to them for many centuries had been opened at last. A holy city had been restored to the universal Church. Once again, as it had done long before, a cross stood planted in triumph upon the rocky battlements of Toledo.

Deus Vult

On 18 October 1095, as dawn broke over the halls and towers of Cluny, a