HISTORIC SKETCHES. 



Komana neglected by the emperor at Conntantinoplo, whose 

 power WM sensibly diminishing yoar by year found them- 

 Helves obliged to take measures for preventing their community 

 falling into a state of anarchy, and for putting it in a posture 

 <>f ill-fence against external enemies. They formed themselves, 

 therefore, into a sort of dependent republic, much in the same 

 way that Milan, Venice, and other Italian cities had done; 

 and as was perhaps natural, they solicited their bishop, as 

 the most influential man among them, to give them the 

 benefit of his advice in the conduct of affairs. At first it 

 was by request that ho took part in their councils ; then, seeing 

 the political advantage of such a position, the bishop began to 

 acquire a prescriptive right to be consulted in all the business 

 of tho city. Ho had spiritual authority over tho whole of the 

 Western Empire, and in places where tho decree of the emperor 

 would not have been recognised his order was obeyed without 

 question by those whom tho zealous missionaries hod taught to 

 look upon tho Bishop of Rome as their divinely-appointed head. 

 The half -barbarous kings and princes who ruled in Western 

 Europe acknowledged him as Patriarch, while all Western 

 bishops everywhere admitted that whoever was Bishop of 

 Borne was their Pope, or Father in God. The Romans thought 

 that such a man, in correspondence with many princes, and of 

 great influence throughout the West, would be able to save them 

 from tho evermore threatening invasions of the " barbarians." 

 They offered tho Pope tho temporal government of their city, 

 and ho, not answering them with any assertion that his kingdom 

 was not of this world, accepted it, and became autocrat of Rome. 

 The emperor allowed the arrangement, and so things went on, 

 and in 730 the people saw the effect of what they had done, 

 when Luitprand, King of the Lombards, flushed with victory 

 and spoil, waa stopped even at the gates of Rome by the re- 

 monstrances of Pope Gregory II. 



In 754i Astolphus, successor to Luitprand, seized on Ravenna, 

 the rival see of Rome, abolished the exarchate, or civil govern- 

 ment there, together with the spiritual, and annexed the city to 

 his dominions. He thought to do tho same by Rome, which 

 he summoned to surrender. Stephen II., who became Pope in 

 752, had foreseen what was coming, and had applied to King 

 Pepin, son of Charles Mortel, for assistance. That prince, 

 aa the son of a usurper, was only too glad to arrange an 

 alliance with so useful a person as the Pope of Rome. Ho 

 marched to his assistance, drove Astolphus back, and when, 

 Popin being gone, Astolphas returned, he once more came down 

 with an army, and utterly routed him. This was no small 

 matter ; but when in the reign of Desiderins, the next Lombard 

 king, the attacks on Rome were renewed, and Charlemagne 

 came down with a force which crushed resistance, destroyed the 

 kingdom of Lombardy, and annexed it to his own empire, the 

 benefit to the Romans exceeded all their hopes. In tho year 

 800 Charlemagne came in person to Rome, and was elected, 

 at the Pope's suggestion, emperor, by people who had not tho 

 faintest right to confer the title. But that made no difference. 

 The title was what was wanted, and the Emperor of the 

 West was crowned solemnly by the Pope, who in return was 

 confirmed in his office, and was given in fee and to hold, under 

 his temporal sway, the territory that was held by his old rival, 

 the Archbishop of Ravenna. 



Fifty years afterwards (A.D. 858) a monk of Mayence, named 

 Isidore, announced that he had discovered the decretals of tho 

 Popes of Rome from the time of St. Peter ; in other words, a 

 set of papal decrees, which pretended to have the assent of the 

 emperors and tho people, and which contained the most uncom- 

 promising assertions that if the papal kingdom was of the 

 other world, it was of this world also, for as Christ was above 

 all earthly things, so his vice-gerent must be above them too, 

 and by an easy process of reasoning the kingdoms of this 

 world were demonstrated to belong to the Pope. Adrian I. 

 many years before had written to Charlemagne after the 

 bestowal of his gifts to say that a deed of gift by Constantino 

 had been discovered, from which it appeared that Constantino, 

 having been cured by baptism of a leprosy, was so grateful 

 to St. Sylvester, Bishop of Rome, that he declared his intention 

 of going to live at Constantinople, in order that the Pope 

 might possess Rome, and all the Western Empire, spiritually 

 and temporally. 



Belief was given to the decretals, and to the gift of Constan- 

 tino, though they have long since been disavowed by the Roman 



Church. Both documents were shameful forgeries. Upon them, 

 and upon the actual gift* to the Papacy, WM reared the fabric 

 of the temporal power, which not only pretended to have 

 authority within what wore called the State* of the Church 

 but to be, by divine right, freeholder and lord paramount of all 

 the kingdoms of the earth, churning even the right to dispOMMM 

 ni the event of their proving disobedient. Thi sort of 

 pretension waa bound sooner or later to produce a dutorbanor. 

 since tho emperor claimed the right which Charlemagne exer- 

 cised, of confirming or rejecting the election of Pope by th 

 Roman people. Gradually the patient diplomacy of the Court 

 of Rome prepared for the contest which came with might about 

 tho year 1060. In 1058 Nicholas II. took away from the Bo- 

 mans tho right to elect their Pope, and gave it to the cardinal n 

 or hinges of tho Church, whose voices alone were to decide the 

 matter, and who generally selected a Pope from among their 

 own body. This was a preparatory step. 



Tho Emperors of Germany descendants or representatives of 

 that Charlemagne who had been elected and crowned Emperor 

 of the West at Rome in the year 800, and who had ever insisted 

 on his power to approve or displace the Pope of Borne himself 

 were informed that they must not only renounce their right 

 in the case of the Pope, but in the case of all the 

 other clergy in their dominions, and that they must re- 

 gard themselves as the vassals of the See of Rome. Broadly 

 stated, this was the issue on which commenced in the year 

 10G1 the wasteful and cruel faction wars of the Gnelphx 

 (Welf) and Ghibelines (Waiblingen) which set all western 

 Christendom by the ears for over two centuries. The Gnelphfi 

 represented the papal party, which was made up of some 

 powerful and many minor princes of Europe ; the Ghibelinea 

 represented the empire and its adherents. Sometimes one side 

 had tho advantage, sometimes the other ; the emperor waa 

 more than once utterly defeated, and in peril of his life; at 

 another time the emperor had the satisfaction of seeing Rome 

 at his feet. All the quarrels of Europe for a while worked into 

 this quasi-religious war ; tho malcontents with the emperor 

 siding with the Guelphs temporarily, till they had attained 

 their object, and then being quite ready to assist the emperor 

 against his permanent foes. But, on the whole, the Papacy 

 sucked out no small advantage from the contest, and in the long 

 run may be said to have been the winner. In 1076, when Gre- 

 gory VII., tho famous Hildebrand, waa Pope, the Countess 

 Matilda gave the whole of her possessions, including the greater 

 part of Italy between Piedmont and Rome, to the Pope ; and 

 this gift, with the gifts already in possession, made the spiritual 

 head of the Church, the " servant of the servants of God," a 

 formidable temporal power. 



The whole of the vast authority wielded by the Roman priest- 

 hood was made to subserve the purpose of exalting the sove- 

 reign pontiff over all other rulers, and, as might have been ex- 

 pected, Christ's work remained undone; "the hungry sheep 

 looked up and were not fed ;" abuses and corruptions of all sorts 

 abounded, and the supply of salt was low wherewith to savour 

 the earth. From time to time men stood forth and denounced 

 spiritual wickedness in high places, but for the most part dark- 

 ness covered the hind, and gross darkness the people ; the blind 

 led the blind, with the inevitable result ; and men became so 

 accustomed to the dark, that they were confused and annoyed 

 when the light came. But the very excess of corruption in tho 

 Papacy brought about the cure of the disease, at least over 

 great part of Christendom. When Leo X., in 1517, tried to 

 replenish his coffers by selling, through travelling agents, in- 

 dulgences for sins not yet committed, the spirit of the German 

 people rebelled, and Luther fired the train which led to the 

 explosion of the Reformation. Tho Reformation was a fatal 

 How to the universal spiritual ascendancy of the Roman bishop ; 

 but his temporal power remained as before, till Napoleon 

 Bonaparte overthrew the papal power with that of all the other 

 princes in the peninsula. The papal administration of the civil 

 government was oppressive and life-killing in the extreme. The 

 government had been a scandal to Europe, but so great was the 

 revulsion of feeling after the fall of Napoleon, the destroyer of 

 kingdoms, that it was restored, and the Italians were handed 

 over, bound tighter than before, to the guardianship they hated 

 and despised. It was reserved for our day, and foe our eyes 

 to witness, the destruction of the temporal power of the Pope, 

 and the establishment of a united Italy. 



