Pope Alexander II (1061-1073)

The first pope of electoral freedom

For more than a century, the pope's election had been the prize of the great Roman families — Crescentii, counts of Tusculum — then the almost exclusive privilege of the German emperor, who had imposed on Rome a line of German popes after the synod of Sutri (1046).^[10] The decree In Nomine Domini, promulgated by Nicholas II in 1059, changed the rule: henceforth, the cardinal-bishops elect, the other cardinals consent, the clergy and people acclaim — the emperor retaining only a residual honour.^[11]

Alexander II is the first pope elected under this regime. His election is therefore a test: can the papacy give itself a head without the approval of the imperial court? The Cadalus crisis that follows shows that the break is real and costly. But Alexander II's final victory establishes in fact the principle that the Church henceforth intends to govern itself.

The pope of reform before Gregory VII

The "Gregorian reform" is often presented as the work of Gregory VII alone. That is an error of perspective. The programme — the fight against simony (the purchase of sacred offices), against Nicolaitism (marriage and concubinage of clerics) and against lay investiture of bishops — was already deployed under Alexander II, whose right arm was Hildebrand.^[12][13] Alexander II's pontificate is the laboratory in which the reforming team that would dominate the Church for half a century was forged.

An underestimated founding pontificate

Wedged between the German papacy of Leo IX and the thunderous figure of Gregory VII, Alexander II has remained in the shadows. Yet it is under him that the Roman Church begins to speak to the whole of Europe: it blesses a conquest in England^[14], arms a crusade before its time in Spain^[15], intervenes in Milan^[16][17], in Poland^[18], in Germany^[19], and sets down a doctrine of protection of the Jews that would become case law^[20][21].

To underestimate Alexander II is to miss the exact moment when the medieval papacy became a power of initiative, and no longer merely of reaction.

A Milanese capitaneal family

Anselm was born around 1010-1015 in the Milan region, into a family of the petty nobility — the capitanei, higher vassals tied to the archbishopric and to imperial service.^[22][23] The family took its name from the district of Baggio and held the capitaneate of the pieve of Cesano. This origin is decisive for understanding the man: Anselm belonged to the Milanese world, the richest and most turbulent in northern Italy, where the fight for the reform of the clergy would be the most violent.

The question of Lanfranc and Bec

A tenacious tradition, taken up by the Catholic Encyclopedia and the Encyclopaedia Britannica, makes Anselm a pupil of Lanfranc of Pavia at the Norman abbey of Bec, around 1045.^[24][25] Several modern historians dispute this detail, for lack of a reliable contemporary source, and see in it a retrospective projection connected with the later friendship between the pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury.^[26] Caution is required: the episode is possible but unproven. What is certain is that Alexander II and Lanfranc knew and trusted each other, as Lanfranc's promotion to Canterbury in 1070 would show.

The Pataria of Milan

Anselm was ordained priest by Archbishop Guido of Velate in Milan, around 1055.^[27] But it is as a reformer that he made his mark. He was one of the driving forces of the Pataria, the Milanese popular movement which, led by the deacon Ariald and the knight Erlembald, denounced married and simoniac priests and refused sacraments administered by unworthy clerics.^[28] The Pataria was not mere agitation: it was the first great movement of lay reformers in the history of the Church, and it would provide the Roman reform with its popular base and its energy. According to the historian Cinzio Violante, author of the foundational study of the movement, the cause of the Milanese Pataria joined at bottom that of the Roman reform itself: the purification of the clergy and the end of trafficking in holy things.^[29]

Anselm's commitment to the Pataria explains the lasting hostility of the Lombard episcopate towards him: it was partly to neutralise him that the emperor removed him from Milan by giving him a bishopric.

Bishop of Lucca (1057)

In 1056, at the court of Emperor Henry III — who died on 5 October of that same year — Anselm was appointed Bishop of Lucca, one of the great sees of Tuscany.^[30][31] His first documented mention as bishop dates from 24 March 1057. At Lucca, he continued his fight against simony and for clerical celibacy, and became a pillar of the Roman reform party gravitating around Hildebrand and Peter Damian.

Legate of reform

Even before his elevation, Anselm acted for Rome as legate. He accompanied Hildebrand to Milan in 1057, then Peter Damian in 1059, on the great missions tasked with imposing reform on the Ambrosian Church.^[32][33] When the Roman see fell vacant on the death of Nicholas II, Anselm was therefore already a known, tested man, supported by the most determined reform group in Christendom.

In Nomine Domini, the great electoral reform

To understand Alexander II's election, one must start from the electoral decree of 1059. Convened at the Lateran on 13 April 1059, a synod presided over by Nicholas II promulgated the bull In Nomine Domini.^[34] The text laid down a revolutionary procedure: the initiative of the election belongs to the cardinal-bishops, joined by the other cardinals; the Roman clergy and people then give their assent; and the emperor keeps only a carefully limited right of honour.

The stakes were immense. During the saeculum obscurum, the See of Peter had been the spoils of the Roman factions; since Sutri (1046), it had become an imperial office. The 1059 decree intended to give the Church back to itself. Detlev Jasper has shown that two versions of the text exist — a "papal" version and a reworked "imperial" version — proof that the stakes were immediately perceived as a trial of strength between Rome and the Empire.^[35]

The election of 30 September 1061

On the death of Nicholas II (1061), the cardinals applied the new rule for the first time. On 30 September 1061, they elected Anselm of Lucca, who took the name Alexander II.^[36][37] The election was carried out with the military support of the Normans of southern Italy, now allies of the reforming papacy. The next day, 1 October 1061, Alexander II was consecrated at the basilica of Saint Peter in Chains — the Vatican basilica of Saint Peter being then inaccessible because of the hostility of part of the Roman aristocracy.^[38]

An election without the German court's approval

The choice of name was not neutral. Alexander evoked the early martyr popes and firm Roman authority. But above all, the election had been held without prior consultation of the imperial court, then governed by the Empress Agnes of Poitiers, regent in the name of the young Henry IV.^[39] For the reformers, this was the logical application of the 1059 decree. For the German court, it was a provocation: a pope had been elected behind its back. The reply was not long in coming.

Basel, 28 October 1061

Four weeks after the Roman election, the imperial court retaliated. On 28 October 1061, an assembly of bishops and magnates hostile to reform met at Basel, convened by the Empress Agnes and presided over by the imperial chancellor for Italy, Guibert of Parma — the future antipope Clement III who, twenty years later, would confront Gregory VII.^[40][41] The assembly elected Cadalus, Bishop of Parma, who took the name Honorius II. The schism was open.

The march on Rome (1062)

In spring 1062, Cadalus marched on Rome at the head of troops. On 14 April 1062, a brief but bloody battle took place outside the City: Alexander II's forces got the worst of it, and Cadalus seized the surroundings of Saint Peter's.^[42] The arrival of Godfrey the Bearded, Duke of Tuscany and Alexander's protector, forced the antipope to fall back towards Parma in May. The reforming papacy held on, but only just, and thanks to the armed force of an Italian prince.

The Kaiserswerth coup and the German reversal

The turning point came from Germany, not Italy. In 1062, a coup — the famous abduction of Kaiserswerth — tore the young Henry IV from his mother Agnes and placed the government in the hands of Archbishop Anno II of Cologne.^[43] Now Anno, more sensitive to the Church's interests, reversed the German position. The Council of Augsburg (October 1062) recognised Alexander II as the legitimate pope, and a Lateran synod excommunicated Cadalus in 1063.^[44]

"This rival claim was abandoned in 1062 by the German regents." — Encyclopaedia Britannica, article "Alexander II"^[45]

Peter Damian, Alexander's advocate

The crisis was not only military: it was doctrinal. Who was the true pope? The great reforming theologian Saint Peter Damian, Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia, took up his pen. In 1062, he composed the Disceptatio synodalis — a "synodal discussion" staged as a fictitious debate between a defender of the Roman Church and a defender of the Empire — to establish Alexander II's legitimacy and Cadalus's illegitimacy.^[46] Peter Damian also addressed stinging letters directly to Cadalus, summoning him to renounce.^[47] Alexander II's defence by one of the century's greatest spiritual doctors was decisive in rallying consciences.

The Council of Mantua (1064)

The definitive settlement came at the Council of Mantua, convened at Pentecost 1064 (31 May-1 June).^[48][49] Before the bishops of Italy and Germany, Alexander II defended his cause "with eloquence and firmness", purged himself by oath of the accusation of simony, and obtained solemn recognition of his legitimacy. Cadalus was anathematised. The schism was legally closed, although the antipope obstinately bore the title until his death, at Parma, in 1072.^[50]

The Lateran synods against simony and Nicolaitism

The heart of the pontificate was not the schism, but the reform of the clergy. From the Lateran synod of April 1063, Alexander II renewed the fundamental prohibitions: the prohibition of simony (the sale and purchase of offices and sacraments), the prohibition of marriage and concubinage of priests (Nicolaitism), the prohibition of lay investiture of bishops.^[51][52] The pope did not hesitate to depose bishops convicted of simony, such as the Bishop of Constance.

These measures were not absolute novelties: they resumed the programme of Leo IX and Nicholas II. But Alexander II applied them consistently, supported by a network of legates carrying the Roman decrees to the ends of Christendom — Spain, France, Germany, England, Poland.

Lay investiture

The most explosive point was lay investiture: the practice by which a king or lord "invested" a bishop with his office by handing him the crosier and ring, spiritual symbols. For the reformers, this was an intrusion of temporal power into the sacred order. Under Alexander II, the condemnation remained measured for the time being; but it planted the time bomb that would explode under Gregory VII and trigger the Investiture Controversy.

Hildebrand, the archdeacon

No figure dominates the pontificate as much as Archdeacon Hildebrand, the future Saint Gregory VII. Administrator of the Roman Church's patrimony, diplomat, strategist, he was the soul of the reform party. Hostile chroniclers already saw in him the true master of Rome under Alexander II's reign.^[53][54] This continuity explains why the passage from Alexander II to Gregory VII took place in almost perfect fidelity of programme: it was not a change of course, but the acceleration of a single movement.

The banner of Saint Peter to William the Conqueror (1066)

This is the most famous — and most debated — act of the pontificate. In 1066, William, Duke of Normandy, claimed the throne of England against Harold Godwinson. He sought Rome's support. Alexander II — on Hildebrand's advice, it is believed — granted his blessing; and, according to William of Poitiers alone, the Norman chronicler (Gesta Guillelmi), he is said to have added a ring containing, so it is said, a relic of Saint Peter, and above all a papal banner, the vexillum sancti Petri.^[55][56] Historians debate: Catherine Morton holds the banner to be an invention of William of Poitiers and the Roman support to be retrospective, while others point to a later letter of Gregory VII to William explicitly mentioning his support for the invasion.^[57][58] The conquest thus became, in Rome's eyes, an enterprise placed under the patronage of the prince of the apostles and destined to reform an English Church judged corrupt. The historian Carl Erdmann, in his classic study of the birth of the crusade idea, locates precisely at this moment the emergence of this usage: the pope grants the banner of Saint Peter to princes who in return acknowledge themselves his vassals — as William the Conqueror did before the invasion of England.^[59]

The implications, if William of Poitiers' account is accurate, are considerable: for the first time, the papacy would have sacralised a war of conquest between Christians by attaching its flag to it. It is one of the founding acts of what Carl Erdmann called the "birth of the crusade idea".^[60]

The deposition of Stigand

Once the conquest was secured, Alexander II sent legates to England — including Bishop Ermenfried of Sion — to reform the island Church. In 1070, they deposed and excommunicated Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, guilty of simony and pluralism (he combined Canterbury and Winchester).^[61] Stigand's deposition was a signal: the Roman reform did not stop at Italy's borders.

Lanfranc at Canterbury

To replace Stigand, Alexander II supported the promotion of Lanfranc, Abbot of Bec and then of Saint-Etienne at Caen, his supposed former master.^[62][63] Lanfranc was elected Archbishop of Canterbury on 15 August 1070 and consecrated on 29 August. In 1071, Lanfranc and Thomas of York travelled to Rome to receive their pallium from the pope's own hands. Norman England thus became a model terrain of the Gregorian reform, under the leadership of a primate faithful to Rome.

Barbastro, a crusade before the crusades

In 1063, Alexander II preached the Reconquista as a Christian emergency and supported an international expedition against the Muslim town of Barbastro, in Aragon, taken in 1064.^[64] The army gathered fighters from all over Western Europe. The exact nature of the enterprise is debated, but the Spanish historian Ramón Menéndez Pidal saw in it a crusade before the crusades — a characterisation that has remained famous.^[65]

The vexillum sancti Petri

As with the Norman conquest, Alexander II attached to the Spanish expedition the banner of Saint Peter and an indulgence for the fighters.^[66][67] Barbastro is thus one of the first cases in which the papacy spiritually armed a war against Islam, more than thirty years before Urban II's appeal at Clermont. Alexander II's gesture belongs to the prehistory of the crusades: it shows that the idea of a holy war placed under the pope's authority was already germinating in the mid-11th century.

The letters of 1063

The same year he preached war against Islam, Alexander II wrote to protect the Jews. Fighters on their way to Spain — the expedition that would end at Barbastro (1064) — had committed violence against Jews on their route, confusing all "unbelievers". The pope reacted with a series of letters — to the bishops of Spain, to Archbishop Gaufrid of Narbonne, and to the viscount of the same city — praising those who had prevented massacres and condemning those who shed Jewish blood.^[68][69]

Dispar nimirum est

The pope's argument was strikingly clear: the cause of the Jews and that of the Saracens is radically different. The latter, who persecute and expel Christians, may justly be fought; but the Jews live peacefully and threaten no one.

"The case of the Jews and that of the Saracens is altogether different. For against those who persecute Christians and expel them from their cities and homes, war is justly waged; the latter, on the contrary, are ready to live in servitude." — Alexander II, letter to the bishops of Spain, c. 1063 (translation)^[70]

The Latin sentence opening the decision — "Dispar nimirum est Iudeorum et Sarracenorum causa" — would be taken up in the following century in Gratian's Decree, becoming one of the foundations of canon law on coexistence with the Jews.^[71]

In the line of Gregory the Great

Alexander II did nothing new: he returned to Saint Gregory the Great, who had already forbidden coercing Jews or attempting their lives. The pope took up this principle in substance: it would be impious to seek to annihilate those whom God's mercy has spared (paraphrase).^[72][73]

These letters rank among the first great pontifical texts explicitly protecting Jews against violence by fighters on their way to Spain. They prefigure the bull Sicut Iudaeis, which would become the permanent charter of protection for Jews in medieval Christendom, reissued by popes from the 12th century onwards.^[74] On this point, Catholic apologetics has every interest in citing its exact sources: the Roman position, in the midst of warlike fervour, was a voice of moderation distinguishing military combat from the persecution of innocents.

The Bertha of Savoy divorce affair (1069)

As Henry IV grew up and resumed power in Germany, tensions resurfaced. In 1069, the king wanted to repudiate his wife Bertha of Savoy. Alexander II sent his best theologian, Peter Damian, on legation; at the synod of Frankfurt he warned Henry IV: if he persisted in this divorce, he would never be crowned emperor.^[75][76] Henry IV yielded. The episode shows a papacy capable of dictating its moral law to the most powerful prince in Christendom — unthinkable half a century earlier.

The see of Milan and the excommunication of the advisers (1072)

The real breaking point was Milan, hearth of the Pataria. On the archbishop's death, Henry IV imposed a candidate, Godfrey of Castiglione, against the reform candidate Atto supported by Rome.^[77][78] Alexander II declared the royal appointment null, anathematised Godfrey (February 1072) and excommunicated the advisers of Henry IV who had counselled this intrusion. King and pope were now in open conflict over the decisive question: who appoints bishops?

On the threshold of the Investiture Controversy

At Alexander II's death, the trial of strength with Henry IV was not settled — it was bequeathed intact to Gregory VII, who would make it the great affair of his pontificate.^[79] The excommunication of the royal advisers in 1072-1073 was, in many respects, the first act of the Investiture Controversy, which would culminate in Henry IV's humiliation at Canossa (1077). Alexander II was the pope who lit the fuse that Gregory VII would detonate.

21 April 1073

Alexander II died at the Lateran Palace on 21 April 1073. According to the most widespread account, he is said to have been buried in the Lateran basilica; his tomb being lost, this traditional site cannot be asserted with certainty.^[80][81][82] His pontificate of nearly twelve years left a transformed Church: freed from imperial tutelage by the 1059 decree, endowed with a coherent reform programme, present in England, Spain and Poland — where, according to hagiographical tradition, in 1072 he is said to have ordered Canon Stanislas of Szczepanów to accept the see of Cracow^[83] — and engaged in a decisive conflict with the Empire.

The acclamation of Hildebrand

The scene of his succession is one of the most famous in the history of the papacy. During the funeral, the people and clergy of Rome interrupted the ceremony with a spontaneous acclamation in favour of Archdeacon Hildebrand. The accounts of the 1073 election report in substance that the assembled crowd acclaimed him as pope in the name of Saint Peter (paraphrase).^[84][85]

Hildebrand thus became Gregory VII on 22 April 1073. The continuity was total: the man who had inspired Alexander II's pontificate became his direct successor. The "Gregorian" reform was in reality born under Alexander II; with Gregory VII it simply took the name of its most famous standard-bearer.

A Church emancipating itself

The Alexander II case illustrates a shift: the Church ceased to be an object in the hands of temporal powers and became a subject of European history. The 1059 decree gave it a mode of self-government; the victory over Cadalus proved it could stand up to the Empire; the interventions in England, Spain and Milan show it henceforth intended to act beyond Rome. This is the matrix of the "pontifical monarchy" that would dominate the Middle Ages.

Legitimacy through reception, not force

As with Clement II or Leo VIII, Alexander II's case recalls an important doctrinal truth: an election may be contested, violent, disputed by an antipope, and yet be fully legitimate because it is received by the Church. The Council of Mantua did not create Alexander II's legitimacy; it recognised it. No successor ever doubted that Alexander II was the true pope and Cadalus the usurper. Against schismatic readings that would invalidate this or that pope over a procedural irregularity, Alexander II's story shows that lasting ecclesial reception stabilises pontifical memory.

A balanced reformer

Alexander II was neither lukewarm nor fanatical. He applied reform consistently but knew how to compromise: he temporised with the Empire as long as he could, protected the Jews at the very moment he preached war against Islam, and left to his successor the task of pushing the break to its conclusion. This balance was his own mark — and it is precisely what makes his pontificate so decisive: he made the Gregorian revolution possible without making it suicidal.

Medieval primary sources

The main contemporary or near-contemporary sources of the pontificate are:

• Bonizo of Sutri, Liber ad amicum, book VI, c. 1085-1086 — a partisan Gregorian account, to be used with caution but indispensable for the 1061 election and the 1073 succession; ed. in the MGH Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum I.^[86]
• Peter Damian, Disceptatio synodalis (1062) and Letters — defence of Alexander II's legitimacy against Cadalus; Disceptatio in the MGH Libelli de lite I, Briefe ed. Kurt Reindel, MGH Die Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit IV.^[87][88]
• Benzo of Alba, Ad Heinricum IV imperatorem — a pro-imperial pamphlet violently hostile to Alexander II and favourable to Cadalus; valuable for hearing the other side; ed. MGH Scriptores XI.^[89]
• Electoral decree of 1059 (In Nomine Domini) — critical ed. Detlev Jasper, Das Papstwahldekret von 1059, Sigmaringen, 1986.^[90]
• Alexander II's letters on the Jews — collected and edited by Shlomo Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews, Toronto, 1988.^[91]
• Philipp Jaffé, Regesta Pontificum Romanorum — inventory of Alexander II's surviving pontifical acts.^[92]

Modern scholarly sources

Encyclopaedic and reference sources

The cross-checked encyclopaedic notices — Catholic Encyclopedia (1907), Enciclopedia dei Papi (Treccani), Encyclopaedia Britannica — provide the basic factual and chronological framework, to be systematically compared with primary sources and monographs.^[93][94][95]

Alexander II's chronology follows a simple arc: an electoral reform, a schism, then the gradual consolidation of a papacy capable of acting on a European scale.

Mantua marks the turning point: after 1064, the question is no longer who the true pope is, but how far Rome can push reform.

• Saint Gregory VII (1073-1085) — Archdeacon Hildebrand, Alexander II's adviser then successor.
• Saint Peter Damian — cardinal-hermit, defender of Alexander II against the antipope Cadalus.
• Saint Leo IX (1049-1054) — inaugurator of the reforming papacy that Alexander II continued.
• Pope Nicholas II — author of the 1059 electoral decree.
• Pope Clement II (1046-1047) — first German pope of the reform, another case of legitimacy received a posteriori.
• Antipope Honorius II (Cadalus of Parma) — Alexander II's rival.
• The Gregorian reform — the great movement of which Alexander II was one of the founders.
• The Investiture Controversy — the conflict prepared by the Milan affair under Alexander II.
• The Milanese Pataria — the reform movement of which Anselm of Baggio was one of the leaders.
• William the Conqueror — recipient of the pontifical banner in 1066.