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When Charlemagne in 800 built his Germanic kingdom into a restored Roman Empire in the West, the pendulum swung the other way.. (338:2) ..When he wasn't pacifying a realm that reached from the Pyrenees to the Elbe, or converting Saxons with the sword, he liked to have "the great deeds of men of old" read to him.. (338:3) He left little untouched in his reforming fervor. Laymen were not to work on Sunday. Landowners must pay tithes-- a tenth part of their produce-- to support churches. He forbade clergy to go to taverns, carry arms, hunt, keep concubines. They should open free schools. He defined the duties and authority of metropolitan bishops.. (339:1) But if the emperor delved into church affairs, the clergy also had a hand in his government. Royal chaplains formed his chancery. Bishops and abbots played important civil roles.. Throughout the Middle Ages, key personnel in church and state were often the same. (339:2) With the breakup of th Carolingian Empire into a patchwork of fiefs torn by war and Viking raids, grave abuses arose. Clergy treated church lands like hereditary domains; princes endowed relatives and favorites with ecclesiastical benefices. (339:3) "I cry, I cry, and I cry again," wrote Pope Gregory Vii. "The religion of Christ, the true faith, has fallen so low that it is an object of scorn not only to the Devil but to Jews and Saracens and pagans... These keep their law, as they believe it, but we, intoxicated with the love of the world, have deserted our law." With the aid of reformers from Cluny and other monasteries and the newly constituted college of cardinals, Gregory struggled to stamp out simony (buying and selling of church offices) and to establish clerical celibacy. To achieve these reforms, the church needed the power to select its bishops.
(339:4)
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