Jerusalem is represented as crying for help, he gave the first impulse to the crusades (1000), ninety
years before they actually began.^293
In the expectation of the approaching judgment, crowds of pilgrims flocked to Palestine to
greet the advent of the Saviour. But the first millennium passed, and Christendom awoke with a
sigh of relief on the first day of the year 1001.
Benedict VIII., and Emperor Henry II.
Upon the whole the Saxon emperors were of great service to the papacy: they emancipated
it from the tyranny of domestic political factions, they restored it to wealth, and substituted worthy
occupants for monstrous criminals.
During the next reign the confusion broke out once more. The anti-imperial party regained
the ascendency, and John Crescentius, the son of the beheaded consul, ruled under the title of
Senator and Patricius. But the Counts of Tusculum held the balance of power pretty evenly, and
gradually superseded the house of Crescentius. They elected Benedict VIII. (1012–1024), a member
of their family; while Crescentius and his friends appointed an anti-pope (Gregory).
Benedict proved a very energetic pope in the defence of Italy against the Saracens. He forms
the connecting link between the Ottonian and the Hildebrandian popes. He crowned Henry II,
(1014), as the faithful patron and protector simply, not as the liege-lord, of the pope.
This last emperor of the Saxon house was very devout, ascetic, and liberal in endowing
bishoprics. He favored clerical celibacy. He aimed earnestly at a moral reformation of the church.
He declared at a diet, that he had made Christ his heir, and would devote all he possessed to God
and his church. He filled the vacant bishoprics and abbeys with learned and worthy men; and hence
his right of appointment was not resisted. He died after a reign of twenty-two years, and was buried
at his favorite place, Bamberg in Bavaria, where he had founded a bishopric (1007). He and his
chaste wife, Kunigunde, were canonized by the grateful church (1146).^294
The Tusculan Popes. Benedict IX.
With Benedict VIII. the papal dignity became hereditary in the Tusculan family. He had
bought it by open bribery. He was followed by his brother John XIX., a layman, who bought it
likewise, and passed in one day through all the clerical degrees.
After his death in 1033, his nephew Theophylact, a boy of only ten or twelve years of age,^295
ascended the papal throne under the name of Benedict IX. (1033–1045). His election was a mere
(^293) See Gfrörer, III. P. III. 1550 sq. He regards Sylvester II. one of the greatest of popes and statesmen who developed
all the germs of the system, and showed the way to his successors. Comp. on him Milman, Bk. V. ch. 13; Giesebrecht, I. 613
sqq. and 690 sqq.
(^294) His historian, bishop Thitmar or Ditmar of Merseburg, relates that Henry never held carnal intercourse with his wife,
and submitted to rigid penances and frequent flagellations for the subjugation of animal passions. But Hase (§ 160, tenth ed.)
remarks: "Die Mönche, die er zu Gunsten der Bisthümer beraubt hat, dachten ihn nur eben von der Hölle gerettet; auch den
Heiligenschein der jungfraeulichen Kaiserinhat der Teufel zu verdunkeln gewusst." Comp. C. Schurzfleisch, De innocentia
Cunig., Wit., 1700. A. Noel,Leben der heil. Kunigunde, Luxemb. 1856. For a high and just estimate of Henry’s character see
Giesebrecht II. 94-96. "The legend," he says, "describes Henry as a monk in purple, as a penitent with a crown, who can scarcely
drag along his lame body; it places Kunigunde at his side not as wife but as a nun, who in prayer and mortification of the flesh
seeks with him the path to heaven. History gives a very different picture of king Henry and his wife. It bears witness that he
was one of the most active and energetic rulers that ever sat on the German throne, and possessed a sharp understanding and a
power of organization very rare in those times. It was a misfortune for Germany that such a statesman had to spend most of his
life in internal and external wars. Honorable as he was in arms, he would have acquired a higher fame in times of peace."
(^295) Rodulfus Glaber, Histor. sui temporis, IV. 5 (in Migne, Tom. 142, p. 979): "puer ferme (fere) decennis;" but in V. 5:
"fuerat sedi ordinatus quidam puer circiter annorum duodecim, contra jus nefasque." Hefele stated, in the first ed. (IV. 673),