POPEDOM. Both the ecclesiastical and the temporal authority formerly exercised and still claimed by the popes of Rome profess to be of divine appointment, appealing in the first place to the language of the New Testament, and in the next to the tradition of the church, handed down, as it is asserted, in unbroken continuity from apostolic times to the present age. According to the theory thus put forth, Peter the apostle was indicated by Christ Himself as superior to the rest of the twelve in faith and spiritual discernment, and as the one of the number whom it was His design to invest with special pre-eminence. In like manner, the church itself which Peter was afterwards to found and to preside over was predestined to a at Rome, like superiority among other churches, while his personal superiority was to be vested in perpetuity in his successors. In conformity with this divine design Peter, accompanied by Paul, went to Rome after Christ's death, and founded there a church over which he presided as its bishop for twenty-five years,—from the first year of the reign of Claudius, 41 A.D., to 67 A.D.,—eventually suffering martyr-dom in the same year and on the same day as St Paul, in the persecution under Nero. And, if we accept the records preserved in the Roman Church, we shall believe that St Peter's successors, so long as Christianity was the object of state persecution, continued heroically to encounter the same glorious fate, the distinction of martyrdom being assigned in the Roman calendar to all but two of the bishops of Rome from Linus to Eusebius (see list at conclusion of article).

In dealing with a subject in which the evidence is frequently ambiguous and conflicting, and sometimes of more than doubtful genuineness, and with a period of much obscurity, no amount of research will often serve to point to more than a conjectural conclusion. But, inasmuch as it "is on the basis of the assumptions involved in the above theory that the claims of the Church of Rome mainly rest, it will be desirable to state, as concisely as possible, the main facts and arguments on which those who deny these assumptions ground their contrary opinion.

The question whether or no St Peter was designed for pre-eminence among the apostles resolves itself, it is his evident, into one of New Testament criticism; but from the time of Origen, who visited Rome early in the 3d century, when the theory first began to be put forward, there has always been a certain section in the church who have distinctly repudiated the affirmative assumption. "For if," says Origen, "you hold that the whole church was built by God on Peter alone, what will you say con-cerning John, the son of thunder, and each of the other apostles?" (Migne, Patrologia Grxca, xiii. 397). Next, as regards the evidence for St Peter's presence in Rome and lengthened labours there, as the head of a Christian con-gregation, it is maintained by the great majority of Protestant scholars that there is no proof that he was ever in Rome at all; that the " Babylon" referred to in his first epistle (ch. v. 13) is really the distant city of the East; and that, even if his presence in Rome be admitted, his arrival there must have been long subsequent to that of his brother apostle, and his labours altogether subordi-nate in importance,—conclusions supported by the com-plete silence observed in the Acts of the Apostles respecting both him and his work in the capital of the empire. On the other hand, it is urged that, as no known tradition assigns the martyrdom of Peter to any other place than Rome, every allusion to that event is implicitly an argu-ment for his visit to the capital; and, generally speaking, it may be said that the most recent and authoritative research seems to point to the conclusion that he both visited Rome and taught there, but that his labours were carried on in a spirit of rivalry, not to say antagonism, to those of Paul, being bestowed exclusively on a Judaizing church, while those of his fellow-apostle were devoted to the Gentile community. Of the important feature which harmonizes perfectly with these conclusions—namely, that the Church of Rome, attaching itself directly to the church at Jerusalem, became the depositary of a Jewish-Christian rather than of a Pauline tradition—there can be no doubt whatever.

The Jews at Rome. The existence of a considerable poor Jewish element in Rome as early as the latter half of the 1st century is attested by numerous facts and allusions in the classical writers. The Jews were everywhere actively engaged in commercial pursuits, and formed an influential section in all great centres. Josephus tells us that, when on one occasion the Jews of Palestine presented a petition to the emperor Augustus, it was supported by no less than eight thousand of their countrymen resident in the capital. The chief quarters of this Jewish colony were in the Trastevere, about the base of the Janiculum; and its members were distinguished by the fidelity with which they cherished their national customs and beliefs. Both Rome and the Jewish community in its midst must accordingly have appeared a field of primary importance in the work of evangelization; and it is evident that the questions raised by the claims of Christianity would there be discussed with the greatest ardour, and the most strenuous endeavours be made to bring them to an ultimate issue.

Passage in Suetonius. That such was really the case is sufficiently proved by a well-known passage in Suetonius, who relates that about the middle of the 1st century there were _________riots among the Jewish population, their ringleader being one "Chrestus," and that Claudius in consequence expelled them from the city. There is no reason for supposing that this section of the community would be estranged to any great degree, by the pursuits and associations of their daily life, from those by whom they were surrounded. The influences that then pervaded alike the Roman literature, culture, and civilization were mainly Greek, and the Jewish element was no less affected by these influences than the Latin. Greek, again, was the ordinary medium of commercial intercourse throughout the Roman world, and the Jew was largely engaged in commerce. Greek therefore had, except in the Syrian provinces, become the language of his daily life, as it had long been that of his sacred books read aloud in the synagogues, and of the annals of his race as recorded by the national writers.

The importance of the passage above referred to in Suetonius, of which the very inaccuracy which it embodies is in itself highly significant, has perhaps hardly been sufficiently recognized, for it not only records an important fact but it sheds light on subsequent history. It enables us to understand that, when the Jewish population was permitted to return to Rome, its members, whether adherents of the national faith or converts to the new, would, in common with the whole Christian community, feel the necessity of extreme caution lest their religious observances or their religious differences should again attract the notice of the Roman magistrate and expose them to fresh persecution. Of this character would appear to be the sentiments indicated in the epistle of Clemens Romanus (supposed by some to have been the same with the Clemens whose name is inserted as that of the third bishop of Rome) when he refers to the sudden and repeated " calamities and adversities which are befalling us "_—a passage generally interpreted as having reference to the persecution under Nero and the impending persecution under Domitian (Lightfoot, Append., p. 267). In such considerations as these we may fairly consider that we have a reasonable explanation of the fact that during the first two centuries of its existence we hear so little of the Christian church in Rome.

With such considerations before us, it is scarcely necessary to point out that Greek was also the language of the early Christian church in Rome. In whatever propor-tions, therefore, that church was composed of Christianized Jews or of Christianized pagans, its records would naturally be, as we find them to have been, in the Greek language. Hegesippus, "the father of church history," makes a statement which is generally understood to imply that, being in Rome in the time of Anicetus (bishop 155 -168 A.D.), he made a list of the bishops of the see.

Earliest ____ This list is not extant; but in Irenseus, who wrote his Adversus lists of the Haereses a few years later, we have another Greek list of ROMAN twelve bishops, which shows the succession accepted at Rome in the time of Eleutherius, the contemporary of Irenams, and at the head of which stand the names of both Peter and Paul. To these lists are to be added two other Greek lists, the one in the Ghronieon of Eusebius, the other in the Ecclesiastical History of the same writer. Of these, the former extends from Peter to Gaius (the last bishop before the Diocletian persecution), and gives the periods of office. It is derived from the Armenian translation, but is not contained in the version by Jerome. The first Latin list, the Catalogus Liberianus,—supposed by Mommsen to have been derived from the Ghronieon of Hippolytus, bishop of Portus, and to have been in turn the original from which the Catalogus Felicianus (the oldest existing version of the Liber Pontificalis,—see infra) was taken,—is so called because it was compiled in the episcopate of Liberius, who succeeded 352 A.D. We have also two other Latin lists of some authority, in Augustine (Epist. 53 ; Migne, Patrol., xxxiii. 195) and in Optatus (De Schism. Don., ii. 3).

It is undeniable that in all the foregoing lists there are considerable discrepancies. The Liberian catalogue gives us a certain " Cletus," as the immediate predecessor of Anacletus; scholars like Mommsen and Lipsius are divided in opinion as to whether Anicetus was the predecessor or the successor of Pius; while, as regards the duration of each episcopate, there are equally important discrepancies. But difficulties like these cannot justly pre-judice our acceptance of the general tradition with which they are associated; they are rather to be looked upon as supplying valuable incidental evidence with respect to the status of the Roman episcopate; and, while the lists themselves prove, on the one hand, that before the termina-tion of the 3d century the office was held to be of such importance that its succession was a matter of interest to ecclesiastics living in distant sees, the variations that the lists present indicate not less clearly that the Roman bishopric at this period could not have held that position in relation to the church—the parallel to that of the imperial office in the empire—claimed for it by writers like Bellarmine.

The comparative history of institutions would, in itself, incline us to look for a less precise and exalted conception of the office, as discharged by these early bishops, than when, after a lapse of centuries and a succession of varied experiences, its duties and responsibilities had become defined and developed ; but it is also a fact of considerable significance that those who were elected to the office from the time of Clement were for the most part men whose very names would probably not have survived but for their appearance in these lists, and that, even when, in one or two instances, their individual careers emerge from the general obscurity, they themselves appear as speaking and acting in a manner which seems hardly compatible with those exalted prerogatives which, as some maintain, were inherent in the office from its first commencement.

Epistle of Clemens Romanus. In the recently recovered portion of the epistle of Clemens Romanus above cited, it is, for example, highly significant that the letter purports to emanate, not from the "bishop of Rome," but from "the church at Rome," and to find again that, even so late as the 2d century, this letter is in like manner referred to as emanating from the community, and not from the individual. This feature, indeed, is not a little suggestive with respect to the de-velopment of the Roman supremacy. While the letter is wanting in anything that implies any special pre-eminence on the part of the Roman bishop, it is at the same time characterized by a certain admonitory tone, such as could hardly have been assumed if the community by whom it was sent had not been held to possess a recognized superiority over the community to whom it is written, but this superiority is not greater than would naturally belong (notwithstanding their common founder) to the church in imperial Rome as contrasted with the church at subject Corinth,—to the church of the august capital from whence emanated the laws which governed the empire and the church of the fallen city which, two centuries and a half before, the Roman arms had well nigh effaced from existence.

Letters of Ignatius. If again we accept as genuine the evidence afforded in those seven letters of Ignatius which most critics are disposed to accept as genuine, the relations of the Roman Church to the other churches of the empire appear to be of the same character. Ignatius, when on his way to Rome (probably early in the 2d century) to suffer martyrdom, addressed a letter to the Christian community in that city. In this letter there is again an equally direct reference to a certain primacy of the church in Rome, which is addressed as "she who hath the presid-ency in the place of the region of the Romans." But this expression is immediately followed by a definition of this primacy which is altogether incompatible with the theory that it is derived from the episcopal succession in the church; it is spoken of as founded upon sentiments of Christian fellowship, with the additional considerations attaching to the dignity and superior advantages belong-ing to the church of the capital.

Passage
Irenaeus.
Denial of the Roman supremacy.

The conclusion to which the foregoing evidence points is again strongly confirmed by the general fact that, as each new pretension on the part of the Roman see was put forward, it was called in question and repudiated by some one or other section of the Christian community. An obscure and doubtful passage in Irenaus (Adv. ffeeres., bk. iii. c. 3) testifies, at most, to nothing more than a fuller recognition of the primacy of the Roman Church, while in the same writer, who, it will be remembered, was bishop of the church at Lyons, we have a notable instance of a distinct repudiation of the claims of the Roman bishop to dictate to the bishops of other dioceses. This was on the occasion of a sentence of excommunication which VICTOR I. (c. 190-202 A.D.) had pronounced upon certain bishops in the province of Asia Minor, on account of their refusal to celebrate Easter at the particular time enjoined by the church in Rome. Victor appears not to have had recourse to this extreme measure until after he had consulted with his episcopal brethren in Palestine, Pontus, Gaul, and Corinth; but Irenaius, notwithstand-ing, remonstrates boldly with him on the rigour of his proceeding, and on the impolicy of thus cutting himself off from an important section of the church on a mere matter of ceremonial observance. We find again Tertullian, who during his residence in Rome had acquired a certain practical knowledge of the administrative characteristics of its church, implicitly intimating his disapproval in his treatise De Pudicitia (sec. i.) of the assumption by the Roman bishop of the titles of " pontifex maximus" and "episcopus episcoporum"; in another of his treatises (De Virgin, veland.;' Migne, Patrol., pp. 767-8), he distinctly impugns the claim made by ZEPHYRINUS (202-218) of a certain superiority in the Roman see derived as a tradition from St Peter.

The evidence with which we are presented for the rest of the 3d century is of a similar character. CALLISTUS (218-223), the successor to Zephyrinus, was originally a Christian slave in Rome during the bishopric of Victor, who (if we accept the narrative of Hippolytus) had been sent on account of his turbulence and dishonest practices to the mines in Sardinia. Victor, who was acquainted with the circumstances of his career, deemed him, not-withstanding, so little deserving of commiseration that, when, through the influence of Marcia, the mistress of the emperor Commodus, he had succeeded in bringing about the liberation of a certain number of Callistus's Christian fellow-sufferers in Sardinia, he did not include in the list the name of Callistus himself. The latter, however, managed to regain his freedom, and ultimately himself became bishop of Rome. During his brief epis-copate his administration, as well as that of his predecessor Zephyrinus, was unsparingly criticized by Hip-polytus, the well-known bishop of Portus. Against Callistus Hippolytus alleges the greatest laxity in the admission of candidates to ecclesiastical orders, and also undue connivance at marriages dishonourable to those professing the Christian faith; while Zephyrinus is depicted as a man of but little intelligence and of ignoble aims. It is evident that when a suffragan bishop could venture thus to criticize his metropolitan the authority wielded by the latter, even in his own diocese, was very far from meeting with unquestioning obedience.

The foregoing evidence, together with many other similar facts which cannot here be enumerated, points clearly to two important conclusions : first, that in the course of the 2d and 3d centuries the Church of Rome began to put forth unprecedented claims to a certain superiority among other churches o and, secondly, that these claims not unfrequently encountered considerable opposition as novel and unjustifiable.

The circumstances which contributed to bring about their ultimate establishment were various. The Roman Church itself had, from the first, been associated with that severer type of Christian belief which had its chief seat at Jerusalem ; and, after the Holy City and its temple were alike razed to the ground by Titus (70 A.D.), much of the reverence which had belonged to Jerusalem was transferred to Home. In relation to the episcopal office itself, again, it is to be noted that the general conception of its func-tions underwent, at this period, considerable change. On this point a passage in Jerome (Ad Tit., i. 7) is of special significance. He here expressly attributes the institution of the episcopal order to the necessity which had arisen of repressing the numerous schisms in the church; and he j goes on to observe that bishops would consequently do [ well to bear in mind that their office, with its involved j authority over presbyters, was to be regarded rather as the j result of custom and tradition than of divine appointment, j As regards any special supremacy attaching to the Roman episcopate, the evidence afforded by another passage in Jerome is not less notable. In one of his most important letters (Ad Rusticum; Migne, Patrol., xxii. 932) he fully ! recognizes the expediency and value of a central supreme j authority, vested in a single individual. In support of | his position he adduces examples from the animal kingdom, j from the imperial power, from the judicial power, from the I military power, and then goes on to say, "so again each church has its one bishop, its one arch-presbyter, its | one archdeacon, every ecclesiastical grade relying on its leader," but to the clenching example, derivable from the supreme pontiff himself, no reference is made. It seems, accordingly, an inevitable inference that by one of the greatest of the Latin fathers, writing at the close of the 4th century, the Roman theory of the popedom was unrecognized.

Creation of the _____ But the circumstance which perhaps most conduced to the acceptance of the papal pretensions was the creation of a new office in the ecclesiastical organization, that of the metropolitan. So long as Christianity dignity of the religion only of an obscure sect, or of a persecuted minority in the Roman state, lying also under the suspi-cion of political disaffection, it probably sought to avoid attracting further attention to itself by any elaborate attempt at organization. At the same time the political organization of the empire, from its long established and universally recognized territorial divisions, its system of intercommunication, and its arrangement of the executive power, must have obviously seemed to furnish the most practicable outlines for the administration of a great and growing ecclesiastical community. The chief cities or vietropoleis of the several Roman provinces were accord-ingly from the first selected as the seats of the principal Christian churches-—Antioch, Corinth, Ephesus, and Thessalonica respectively representing the chief ecclesias-tical centres of Syria, Achaia, Asia, and Macedonia. And when, again, under Constantine and his successors, the distribution of civil authority was further modified by the creation of four patriarchates, subdivided into twelve " dioceses" or major provinces, these changes were soon followed by corresponding modifications on the part of the church organization. In this manner we are able to understand how it is that we find the bishop of Eome successively assuming, as in the pontificates of Fabianus and Cornelius, the more extended authority of a metro-politan, and, as in the days of Julius I. and Siricius, the authority of a patriarch.

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metropolitan is distinctly recognized, and in those of the council of Antioch (341) it is defined with greater precision.

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Removal of the ___to Constantinople. But no external event exercised a more potent influence on the early history of the Roman Church than the removal of the seat of imperial power to Constantinople (330). For more than a century from that event it was not a little doubtful whether the patriarch of "Nova Koma" might not succeed in asserting an authority which even the Western pontiff might be compelled to defer. It became accordingly an object of primary importance with the latter to dissociate as far as possible in the mind of Christendom the notion of an ecclesiastical supremacy derived, like that at Constantinople, mainly from the political importance of the capital from the conception of that supremacy which he himself claimed as the representative of the inalienable authority and privileges conferred on St Peter and his successors. For such a policy an additional motive was created by the predilection shown by Constantine for his new capital, and the convic-tion which he is said to have entertained that the days of ancient Rome were numbered. From henceforth it was the key-note to the utterances of the Roman primate that his supremacy, as a tradition from apostolic times, could never depart from him and his successors, and that, as representing the authority of the two chief apostles, it had claims upon the obedience and reverence of the whole Christian church such as no other apostolica sedes could produce.

Rome ______ To the ultimate assertion of these pretensions the long and fierce struggle carried on between the followers of Arius and the supporters of orthodoxy materially contributed. The appeal to the arbitration of Rome, preferred both by Athanasius and by the Arian party, placed JULIUS I. (337-352) in the proud position of the recognized protector of the orthodox faith. In the year 339 Athanasius himself visited the Western capital and resided there for three years. His presence and exhortation confirmed the Roman pontiff still further in his policy; and from this time we perceive the see of Rome assuming, more distinctly than before, the right to define doctrine and the function of maintaining the true standard of faith amid the numerous heresies that were then troubling the whole church. While Constantinople was conspicuous by its attachment to Arianism, Rome appeared as the champion of the orthodox belief. In another direction the Western see would appear to have been also advancing important and exclusive claims. If we accept as genuine the letter of Julius to the Eusebians, written after the acquittal of Athanasius, the pontiff already maintained that, in all proceedings whereby the i conduct or orthodoxy of any of the higher ecclesiastical authorities was called in question, the canonical method of procedure required that the Roman see should be consulted before any initiative was taken. In other words, I the council which had been convened at Tyre to try Athanasius had usurped the functions which belonged to the pontiff of Rome alone.

First schism. During the bishopric of LIBERIUS (352-366) we meet with the first instance of a schism in the Roman Church, and, in the person of Felix, with the first representative of that maintenance of a rival claim to the see which in later history assumed such importance in connexion with the antipopes. The contested succession of DAMASUS (366-384), although attended by scenes of brutal violence and outrage, affords further illustration of the main question then at issue. Damasus, who had been the personal | friend of Liberius, represented the cause of orthodoxy, and his triumph over his rival, Ursinus, was hailed with exultation by the chief contemporary teachers of the church. During his tenure of the see Arianism in the West almost ceased to exist.

At the council of Nicaea (325), one of the canons enacted (the sixth) had already assigned to the three sees, or patriarchates, of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, their honorary rank in the order of their enumeration. In the year 381 the council ot Constantinople was convened; it was an assembly in which the Western Church took no share, and its notable third canon was accordingly enacted Counter without opposition. By this it was declared that the preten- bishop of Constantinople, or Nova Koma, was entitled, Constan though the representative of a non-apostolic see, to the tiuople. next place after Home, and consequently to precedence of the older and apostolic sees of Alexandria and Antioch. This distinguished position was assigned to him as the supreme ecclesiastical authority in the new centre of political power, and a theory of the basis of ecclesiastical dignity was thus put forward by the church which was in direct conflict with that maintained by Rome.

The Deeretals. The pontificate of SIRICIUS (384-398) is chiefly remarkable as that with which commences the series known as the Decretals—a collection of pastoral letters and of replies to questions submitted for their consideration sent by the popes to the churches of the West. These subsequently formed the basis of a vast and elaborate series of forgeries known as the decretals of the pseudo-Isidorus, of which we shall have occasion again to speak; but the genuineness of the letter of Siricius to Himerius, bishop of Tarragona, does not appear to have ever been called in question, and it takes its stand therefore as the earliest existing decretal. In the influence which they exercised upon Western Christianity neither Siricius nor his successor ANASTASIUS I. (398-401) could compare with their illustrious contem-porary, Ambrose, bishop of Milan, whom the emperor Theodosius pronounced to be the only true bishop whom he had known. But Ambrose, although acting in perfect independence of the Roman see, always professed to take it as his model in matters of discipline, and by the respect which his example inspired in others for the episcopal office in general he indirectly augmented the conception of the papal prerogatives. Division With the division of the empire in the year 395 the of the question of the Roman precedence of Constantinople was empire. for a i[me jn abeyance; but in the West the authority of the bishop of Rome became more and more firmly established. In the following century the general condi-tions under which he was called upon to act became so materially modified as to constitute a new period in the history of our subject.

Popes of _____ The characters of the men who filled the papal chair the 5th during this century, most of them of exemplary life, some century. 0£ commandjng genius, would alone suffice to constitute it a memorable era. " Upon the mind of Innocent I., " says Milman, "seems first distinctly to have dawned the vast conception of Rome's universal ecclesiastical supremacy."

Innocent INNOCENT I. (402-417) seems indeed to have been the first of the popes who ventured to repudiate those political conceptions which threatened to circumscribe the extending influence of his office. Writing in the year 415 to Alexander, bishop of Antioch, he implies that the church in that city, as an "apostolica sedes," is entitled to rank second only to Rome; "but not," he adds, "so much on . account of the grandeur of the city itself as because it is shown to be the first apostolic see " (Mansi, Concilia, vol. iii. p. 1055). In the same letter he distinctly repudiates the notion that the church is bound by political divisions; the emperor may create two capitals (metropoleis), but it by no means follows that a second metropolitan is to be appointed by the church. In the year 412 he gave practical proof of his determination to assert his own theory of his prerogatives, by appointing the archbishop of Thessalonica his vicar over the extensive province of Illyricum, of which but a small portion lay in the Western . empire; and, when the bishops of the province showed themselves less amenable than he had anticipated to his directions in matters of discipline, he insisted with unpre-cedented explicitness on the jurisdiction of his see as "head of all the churches." Innocent was succeeded by ZOSIMUS (417-418) and BONIFACE (418-422). The former, whose pontificate lasted only twenty-one months, exhibits a noteworthy exception to the traditions of his see, in the disposition he at one time showed to temporize with Pelagianism, and even to set aside in its favour the decrees of his predecessor. The pontificate of Boniface is notable as having been preceded by a contested election which afforded the emperor Honorius an opportunity for the' exercise of his intervention, thereby establishing a precedent for imperial interference on like occasions. At the instance of Boniface himself, Honorius enacted an ordinance designed to avert the scandals incident to such contests. By the new provisions, all canvassing for the vacant chair was strictly prohibited; in the event of a disputed election both candidates were to be deemed ineligible; finally, it was essential to any election that the candidate should have been chosen by the unsolicited suffrages of the qualified clergy, and that their choice should have been ratified by the approval of the entire church community. The successor of Boniface was COELESTINUS I. (422-432). The evidence afforded by the events of his pontificate is some-what conflicting in character. On the one hand, we find the churches of Africa putting forward their latest recorded protest against the Roman pretensions, adducing the sixth canon of the council of Nicsea in support of their protest; on the other hand, the success with which Coelestinus intervened in Illyricum, and again in connexion with the sees of Narbonne and Vienne, proves that the papal jurisdiction was being accepted with increasing deference in other parts of the empire. The effect with which his solicited decision was given in the controversy raised by Nestorius, the patriarch of Constantinople, and the synod held under his auspices in Rome (430) for the further consideration of the same question, likewise added to the reputation of his office.

Effects of barbaric invasion. Barbaric invasion, although resulting in the overthrow of many of the institutions of civilization, and in widespread suffering and social deterioration, served but to enhance the influence and importance of the Roman see. The apparent fulfilment of prophecy, pagan as well as Christian, when the city was taken and sacked by Alaric (410), seemed to complete the eflacement of the tem-poral power in Rome. Neither the Western emperors nor the Gothic conquerors held their court in the ancient capital, where the pope was now at once the most import-ant and conspicuous authority. In the African provinces, the demoralization occasioned by the fierce controversies and dissensions concerning Pelagianism and Donatism compelled the Catholic communities to exchange their former attitude of haughty independence for one of sup-pliant appeal, and to solicit the intervention and counsel which they had before rejected.

Leo the Great. Such was the aspect of affairs in the West when LEO THE GREAT (440-461)—by some regarded as the true founder of the medieval popedom-—succeeded to the primacy. A citizen of Rome by birth, he exemplified in his own character many of the antique Roman virtues—a tenacious adherence to tradition in matters of religious belief, an indomitable resolution in the assertion of the prerogatives of his office, and the austere practice of the recognized duties of social life. This rigid maintenance of orthodoxy had been instilled into him (or at least confirmed) by the exhortations of Augustine, with whom he had become personally acquainted when on a mission to the African province; and before his election to the papal office the celebrated Cassian had conceived so high an opinion of his virtues and abilities as to dedicate to him his treatise on the Incarnation. Regarded, indeed, simply as the able antagonist of the Manichaean and Eutychian heresies, and as the first author of the Collect, Leo would fill no unimportant place in the annals of Latin Christendom ; but his influence on church history in other respects is of a far deeper and more potent kind. In none was it followed by more important results than by the success with which he established the theory that all bishops who, in questions of importance, demurred to the decision of their metropolitan should be entitled to appeal to Rome. He obtained the recognition of this principle not only in Illyricum, as his predecessor Inno-cent had done, but also in Gaul; and the circumstances under which he did so in the latter province constitute the whole proceedings a memorable episode in church history. Celidonius, bishop of Besanijon, had been removed from his bishopric by his metropolitan, the eminent Hilary of Aries, and determined to proceed to Rome to appeal against his sentence in person. He was followed thither by Hilary, who courageously protested against any exercise of the pontifical authority which should trench upon his own as metropolitan, and for which, in the present instance, it seems to be generally admitted that the canons of the church down to the time of Dionysius Exiguus (fl. 525) afforded no sanction. Leo, however, not only annulled the sentence of deprivation, but condemned Hilary's entire conduct. The latter could only remonstrate in terms of energetic but ineffectual protest, and then took his departure from the city to die soon after at Aries. His name, along with that of Irenseus, stands at the head of that long succession of able churchmen who, sometimes in conjunction with the temporal power and sometimes in-dependently of it, have gained for the Gallican Church a character for systematic opposition to the encroachments of the Roman see which (if we except the Church of Utrecht) is unique among the communities of Western Catholicism. In a circular letter to the churches of Gaul, Leo subsequently passed a formal and deliberate censure upon Hilary's conduct; and this measure was followed up by an imperial edict, in which, again, we have a remark-able illustration of that compact between the state and the church which assumed such importance at a later period. In this decree of Valentinian III. (445) the primacy of Rome Rome is placed upon a triple basis—the merits of St consti- Peter, the majesty of the city of Rome, and the authority court of °^ a counc^ (sae>"& synodi wuctoritas). To which of the appeal councils reference is intended is by no means clear; but all bishops are required by this imperial edict to present themselves when summoned at the tribunal of the Roman pontiff (Novelise, ed. Hanel, pp. 172-5). As, prior to this time, the emperors themselves had always claimed, though they had not invariably exercised, the right of representing a supreme court of appeal, this transfer of such a preroga-tive to Rome may fairly be regarded as marking the commencement of a new era in the conception of the papal office.

Arianism. The chief obstacle to the recognition of the supremacy Influence of the Roman pontiff was now to be found in the revival of Arianism, which, professed alike by the Goth and the Vandal, represented the dominant faith in the chief cities of northern Italy, as well as in Africa, Spain, and southern Gaul. But the rivalry thus generated only increased the disposition of the Catholic party to exalt the prerogatives of their head, and the attitude of Rome towards other churches continued to be more and more one of unquestionable superiority. In the year 483 Pope FELIX II. (or III.) ventured upon an unprecedented measure in citing Acacius, the patriarch of Constantinople, to Rome, to answer certain allegations preferred against him by John, patriarch of Alexandria, whom he designates as "frater et coepiscopus noster" (Thiel, Epistolae, p. 239). On Acacius refusing to recognize the legality of the letter of citation, he was excommunicated by Felix. The suc-cessor of Felix, GELASIUS I. (492-496), refused to notify, as was customary, his election to the patriarch of Con-stantinople, and by his refusal implicitly put forward a fresh assumption, viz., that communion with Rome implied subjection to Rome. Throughout the pontificate of Gela-sius the primacy of the Roman see was the burden of his numerous letters to other churches, and he appears also to have been the first of the pontiffs to enunciate the view that the authority which he represented was not con-trollable by the canons of synods, whether past or present. In Italy these assumptions were unhesitatingly accepted. The Palmary Synod, as it was termed, convened in Rome during the pontificate of SYMMACHUS (498-514) formally disavowed its own right to sit in judgment on his admin-istrative acts. Ennodius, bishop of Pa via (circ. 510), declared that the Roman pontiff was to be judged by God alone, and was not amenable to any earthly potentate or tribunal. It is thus evident that the doctrine of papal infallibility, though not yet formulated, was already virtu-ally recognized.

The Gothic monarchs. During the Gothic rule in Italy (493-553), its representatives manifested the utmost tolerance in relation to religious questions, and showed little disposition to impose any restraints on the policy of the popes, although each monarch, by virtue of his title of "king of the Romans," claimed the right to veto any election to the papal chair. In the year 483, when Odoacer sent his first lieutenant, Basilius, from Ravenna to Rome, the latter was invested with the titles " eminentissimus " and " sublimis." The pope accordingly appeared as politically the subject of his Arian overlord. The advantage thus gained by the tem-poral power appears to have been the result of its inter-vention, which SIMPLICIUS (468-483) had himself solicited, in the elections to the papal office, and one of the principal acts of the Palmary Synod (above referred to) was to repudiate the chief measures of Basilius, which had been especially directed against the abuses that prevailed on such occasions, and more particularly against bribery by alienation of the church lands. The assertion of this authority on the part of the civil power .was declared by the synod to be irregular and uncanonical, and was accordingly set aside as not binding on the church. The fierce contests and shameless bribery which now accompanied almost every election were felt, however, to be'so grave a scandal that the synod itself deemed it expedient to adopt the ordinance issued by Basilius, and to issue it as one of its own enactments. In order more effectually to guard against such abuses, BONIFACE II., in the year 530, obtained from a synod specially convened for the purpose the power of appointing his own successor, and nominated one Vigilius—the same who ten years later actually suc-ceeded to the office. But a second synod, having decided that such a concession was contrary to the traditions of episcopal succession, annulled the grant, and Boniface himself committed the former decree to the flames. At his death, however, the recurrence of the old abuses in a yet more flagrant form induced the senate to obtain from the court of Eavenna a measure of reform of a more com-prehensive character, and designed to check, not only the simoniacal practices within the church itself, but also the extortion of the court officials.
In the year 526 Dionysius Exiguus, a monk in Rome, Dionysius. undertook the labour of preparing a new collec tion of the "Exiguus, canons of the councils, and, finding his production favourably received, proceeded also to compile a like collection of the papal letters or decretals, from the earliest extant down to those of Anastasius II. in his own day. The letters of the popes were thus placed on a level with the rescripts of the emperors, and in conjunction with the canons formed the basis of the canon law, which afterwards assumed such importance in connexion with the history of the church. The negative value of the collection formed by Dionysius may be said, however, almost to equal that of its actual contents; for, from the simple fact that it does not contain those yet earlier decretals subsequently put forth by the pseudo-Isidorus, it affords the most con-vincing disproof of their genuineness.

Results of sub______ The substitution of the rule of the Greek emperors for that of the Gothic monarchs was inimical in almost every respect to independence and reputation of the popedom. For a short interval before Justinian landed in emperors. Italy, AGAPETUS (535-536), appearing as the emissary of Theodotus to the Eastern court, assumed a bearing which inspired the emperor himself with respect, and his influ-ence was sufficiently potent to procure the deposition of one patriarch of the Eastern capital and to decide the election of another. But, after Belisarius entered Koine and the city had been reduced to subjection, the pontiff was seen to be the mere vassal of the emperor, and not only of the emperor but of the courtezan on the imperial throne, The deposition of SILVERIUS (536-540), and his mysterious fate at Pandataria, together with the elevation of VIGILIUS (540-555), the nominee of the abandoned Theodora and her pliant slave, completed the degradation of the Roman see. Each successive pope was now little more than a puppet which moved at the pleasure of the Eastern court; and the apocrisiarius or deputy whom he maintained at that court was generally (as in the case of Pelagius I., Gregory I., Sabinian, Boniface III., Martin) his own successor—an honour purchased, it can hardly be doubted, by systematic compliance with the imperial wishes. In the career and fate of Vigilius the papal office was dishonoured as it had never been before, at once by the signal unworthiness of its bearer and by the indignities heaped upon him by the savage malice of his foes. So sinister, indeed, had become the relations between the Roman bishop and the Eastern court that PELAGIUS I. (555-560) is said to have besought Narses to send him to prison rather than to Constantinople.

_____ / Lombards In the year 568 the Lombards invaded Italy. Like the of the Goths they become converts to Arianism ; but they were

bards a'S0 ^ar ^eSS clv^ze^-' aQd looked with little respect on Roman institutions and Roman habits of thought, while their arrogance, faithlessness, and cruelty gained for them the special detestation of the Roman see. Their conquests did not extend over all Italy. Ravenna and the Penta-polis, Venice, Rome and its duchy (as the surrounding district was then termed), Naples, Calabria, and Sicily remained subject to the empire. In the peninsula the pope was, after the exarch of Ravenna, the most powerful potentate, and the presence of a common foe caused the relations between himself and the empire to assume a more amicable character. The emperor, indeed, continued to control the elections and to enforce the payment of tribute for the territory protected by the imperial arms; but, on the other hand, the pontiff exercised a definite authority within the Roman duchy and claimed to have a voice in the appointment of the civil officers who administered the local government. From the time of Constantiue the Great the church had possessed the right of acquiring landed property by bequests from indi-viduals, and the Roman see had thus become greatly enriched. Some of its possessions lay far beyond the con-fines of Italy. It was one of the last acts of Celestine I. to address to the emperor Theodosius II. an appeal for the imperial protection of certain estates in Asia, which a lady named Proba had bequeathed to the Roman see for the maintenance of "the clergy, the poor, and certain monasteries" (Coustant, ed. Schoenemann, p. 879). "Ever since the restriction of the Western empire," says Mr Bryce, "had emancipated the ecclesiastical potentate from secular control, the first and most abiding object of his schemes and prayers had been the acquisition of territorial wealth in the neighbourhood of his capital. He had indeed a sort of justification, for Rome, a city with neither trade nor industry, was crowded with poor, for whom it devolved on the bishop to provide." The motives for acquiring such wealth did not, accordingly, cease to actuate the pontiff, even when the paralysing influences of the imperial despotism were again very sensibly felt; but the territory thus gained, known as the "patrimonium Petri," must not be supposed to have involved that claim to temporal sovereignty put forth at a later period. Ori-ginally bestowed mainly for the relief of the sick and desti-tute, the patrimonial revenues came, in course of time, to be applied to the maintenance of the pope himself and the clergy of his diocese, and to the erection and repair of churches. They were strictly inalienable; and the pontiff himself was regarded simply as the steward, for the time being, of the estate.

Under GREGORY I. (590-604), commonly known as Gregory "the Great," this territorial wealth became largely aug- the Great mented; and, although, amid the universal demoralization and widespread misery of his age, he professed to discern the unmistakable signs of the approaching -end of the world, the efficient administration of the estates of the church was an object of his unceasing solicitude. Of noble descent, great wealth, and considerable learning, he possessed also a capacity for administration not inferior to that of his predecessor Leo, and his best energies were devoted to the interests of his diocese and the alleviation of the want and misery of which it was the constant scene. His Letters, which constitute a remarkable picture both of the man and his age, and attest the minute and unwearied care which he bestowed on everything relating to the affairs of his see, appear to have been taken as the model for the Liber Diurnus, or journal of the Roman curia, which was commenced in the following century. In other respects his genius for administration, his good sense and tact, are equally conspicuous. Through his influence with Theude-linda, the wife of Agilulf, the Lombard monarch, he not only succeeded in averting another siege of Rome, but he also managed to bring about the establishment of amicable relations between the Lombards and the Roman popula-tion. With the Byzantine court he did his best to maintain a friendly intercourse, although in his zeal on behalf of monasticism he withdrew his apocrisiarius from Constan-tinople, when the emperor Maurice forbade his soldiers to assume the monastic life. It is perhaps the greatest blot on Gregory's memory that, when the emperor and his family were cruelly murdered by Phocas, who seized upon the imperial dignity, Gregory was not above congratulating the usurpe/ on the circumstances of his accession, an act of adulation but insufficiently extenuated by his panegyrists, as taking its rise in feelings of genuine, though mistaken, religious enthusiasm. His efforts on behalf of primary edu-cation, which have caused him to take rank in the Roman calendar as the patron saint of school festivals, are deserv-ing of high praise; but, on the other hand, his illiberal condemnation of the pagan literature (in striking contrast to the Benedictine traditions of a later time) diminishes not a little our impression of his real greatness. He stands, however, among the foremost of the popes, and the impress of his character and teaching must be held to have permanently modified the views and policy of the Roman curia.

The personal qualities and virtues of Gregory are thrown into stronger relief by the comparative insignificance of his successors in the 7th century, whose tenure of office was, for the most part, singularly brief and inglorious. His immediate successor was SABINIANUS (604-606), who after a few months' tenure of office, and an inter-val of a whole year which remains entirely unaccounted for, was succeeded by Boniface III. (607). Boniface was the last apocrisiarim who had represented Gregory at the im-perial court, and he appears to have been successful in completely winning the favour of Phocas, who at his sug-gestion passed a decree declaring " the Apostolic Church of Rome " to be " the head of all the churches." He did this, says Paulus Diaconus, " because the church of Constan-tinople had styled itself the first of all the churches."1 In this manner the imperial veto was distinctly pronounced on the claim of the Byzantine Church to be regarded as of universal authority—a claim which it now became the policy of the Church of Rome to assert on her own behalf on every possible occasion. The new and intimate relations which Gregory and his emissaries had created between the church and the great Teutonic races especially favoured these assumptions. Frankland and England alike were brought within the range of influences of incalculable after importance, the development of which in the 7th and 8th centuries may fairly be looked upon as constituting a distinct era in the history of the popedom. In Rome itself, on the other hand, the interest of the drama becomes perceptibly lessened. In the long and rapid succession of the pontiffs, most of them pliant Greeks or Syrians, the nominees of the exarch of Ravenna, and intent on winning the favour of both the emperor and his representative, scarcely one appears as actuated by more than the tradi-tional views of his office and its functions. One of them, who ventured to thwart the imperial purpose, paid dearly for his conscientiousness. The Byzantine capital, at this period, was distracted by the interminable controversies carried on between the Monothelites and their opponents. The emperor, the half-insane Constans, arrogated to him-self the function of mediating between the contending parties, and sought to wring from MARTIN I. (649-653) an authoritative assent to a compromise of doctrine which, to that pontiff, appeared to involve the sacrifice of ortho-doxy. The latter convened a council at the Lateran and formally condemned the proposed solution. He was soon after induced to repair to Constantinople, and, having there been arraigned on a false charge of fomenting political in-trigue, was deprived of his see and, although in advanced years and feeble health, banished to a gloomy prison on the Euxine, where he soon after died. Advances But, while thus menaced and dishonoured in Italy, the made by papal power was making important advances in the west. the . In England the resistance offered by the representatives the Wes't" °f the British Church was soon overcome, and from the time of the council of Whitby (664) the teachings and traditions of Gregory, as enforced by Augustine, Theodorus, Wilfrid, and others, found ready acceptance. The human-izing influences which these representatives of the Roman culture diffused around them exercised a potent spell over the minds and wills of the English population. Monas-teries were founded; cathedrals rose, each with its school of instruction for the young, and its charity for the needy; and a spirit of filial though far from slavish devotion to Rome was everywhere created. Relations In Frankland, however, the Merovingian kings and
to Frank- the populations of Neustria and Austrasia exhibited a
land.

1 De Gestis Longobard., __. iv., c. 36 ; this remarkable passage is
reproduced by Bede, De Temporum Ratione, Migne, Patrol., xc. 565;
and also by Auastasius, De Vitis ___. Pont., in life of Boniface III.,
Migne, Patrol., exxviii. 671.

different spirit, and the civil power showed no disposition to welcome foreign Interference even in connexion with ecclesiastical institutions. It is observed by Guizot that from the death of Gregory the Great to the time of ] Gregory II. (604-715) not a single document exists which i can be cited as proof of intercommunication between the rulers of Frankland and the papacy. The series of events which led to such different relations, enabling the Roman pontiff eventually to shake off both his fear of the Lombard and his long dependence on the Byzantine emperor, forms one of the most interesting passages in European history.
In the year 715 the long succession of pliant Greeks Gregory and Syrians in the papal chair was broken by the election II-of a man of Roman birth and endowed with much of the strength of purpose that belonged to the ancient Roman. In GREGORY II. (715-731) men recognized no unworthy successor of his great namesake, and by Gibbon he is regarded as the true " founder of the papal monarchy." In no respect were his care and religious sentiments more conspicuously manifested than in connexion with the evangelization of distant lands, and it was under his auspices that the celebrated Winfrid or Boniface first commenced his famous missionary work in Frankland. His rapid success in the work of converting the still heathen populations is a familiar story. From GREGORY III. (731-741) Boniface received the appointment of papal legate; he took the oath of perpetual fidelity to the supreme pontiff, and wherever he went he preached the duty of a ; like submission. He enforced the theory of the Catholic unity and of the obligation of the whole body of the clergy | to render implicit obedience to the representative of that | unity,—the successor of St Peter, the spiritual superior of | all earthly tribunals.

While bonds of union were thus being created in the West, theological differences were exercising a very different though not less important influence in the East. It was in the year 731 that Gregory ILL, the last of the pontiffs who received the confirmation of his privileges from Constantinople, issued a sentence of excommunication against the Iconoclasts. It was the papal rejoinder to the decree of Leo the Isaurian, passed in the preceding year, commanding that all images in the churches of the empire should be forthwith removed. Although he was a Syrian by birth, orthodoxy was dearer to Gregory than political ' allegiance, and the sequel justified his policy. The ; emperor, indeed, retaliated by what could not but be deemed a disastrous blow. AH the dioceses within the empire where the Roman pontiff had hitherto claimed ' obedience—Calabria, Sicily, and Illyricum—were forth-I with absolved from their ecclesiastical allegiance, and the
_ revenues from their rich "patrimonies," which had before flowed into the papal treasury, were confiscated. But the tie which had hitherto bound the popedom to the empire was thus effectually broken.

Under these circumstances a compact with the Lombards, who had by this time become converts from Arianism to the Catholic faith, would have seemed the obvious policy on the part of Rome, had not the political aims of the former stood in the way. The Lombard coveted the possession of the capital, and this design, the cherished design of centuries, marked him out as perforce the foe of the popedom. In his extremity, therefore, the Alliance Roman pontiff turned to the Frank, untainted by the with the heresy of Arianism, and already, as the result of the teach- Carolin-ing of Boniface, disposed to assent to any claims of the dynasty-papacy which did not involve the diminution of his own prerogatives or the restoration of alienated revenues. In the year 752 Pepin le Bref assumed the dignity and title \ of "king of the Franks." He did so, the annalists are unanimous in assuring us, with the consent and sanction of Pope Zacharias, and he was anointed and crowned by-Boniface—a momentous precedent in relation to European history. In the following year, during the pontificate of STEPHEN III. (752-757) Aistulf, the king of the Lombards, invaded the duchy of Rome with the avowed purpose of adding the capital itself to his dominions. He seized Ravenna and the exarchate; and Stephen, finding remonstrance and entreaty alike unavailing, fled for protection to the Frankish territory and was received by King Pepin with every mark of sympathy and profound respect. Within a short time after, Pepin invaded the Lombard domain and wrested from its monarch an extensive terri-tory embracing Ravenna and the Pentapolis; and at a council held at Quiercy, in the same year (754), he handed over this territory to Stephen, " to be held and enjoyed by the pontiffs of the apostolic see for ever." Such appears to be the real origin of that " donatio," or gift of terri-tory (referred back, by the invention of after times, to the age of Constantine the Great), which constituted the pope a temporal ruler over what were subsequently known as the "States of the Church." The munificence of Pepin was rivalled by that of his son. In the year 774, on the occasion of the visit of Charles (known as the Great) to Rome, the donation of his father was made the ground for soliciting and obtaining a yet larger grant, comprising much of the territory already bestowed, but extending to at least double the area stipulated for in the earlier donation.

State of It will thus be seen that, towards the close of the 8th the papal century, the germs of the chief papal claims were already claims at jn existenoe anc[ oniy needed for their full development of the those favouring conditions which, with the lapse of time, 8th were certain to occur, and for which, from its peculiar century, character as an institution, the popedom itself was so well able to watch and wait. Already the pontiff claimed the dispensing power, i.e., the right to dispense with the observance of the existing canonical law under conditions determinable at his pleasure. Already he claimed the right to confer privileges—a power subsequently wielded with enormous effect in enabling monastic and episcopal foundations to urge their encroachments on the rights and jurisdiction of the secular power. He assumed again, in Western Christendom at least, the rights of an universal metropolitan—demanding that in all elections to bishop-rics his sanction should be deemed essential; and the arrival of the pallium from Rome was already awaited with anxiety by all newly-elected metropolitans. By the encouragement which was systematically given to appeal to Rome, what had before been the exception became the practice, and that "extraordinary" authority, as it was termed, which had been introduced, in the first instance, only under the pretext of providing a fixed court of appeal in cases of dispute which threatened otherwise to prove incapable of adjustment, developed into an immediate and ordinary jurisdiction—into an authority, that is to say, which in all questions of graver import set aside that of the bishop, and even that of the metropolitan, and made reference to Rome the rule rather than the exception. In theory, although the claim was admitted neither by the rulers of Frankland nor by those of England, the Roman pontiff already claimed also to present to all benefices. Although he had not, as yet, assumed the distinctive insignia of his. office—the triple crown and the upright pastoral staff surmounted by the cross—he more and more discouraged the application of the name of "papa" (pope) to any but himself. The title of "universal bishop," which both Pelagius II. and Gregory the Great had dis-claimed, seemed his by right after the decree of Phocas, and with the lapse of two centuries from that time was assumed by no other rival. The titles of " apostolicus," "claviger" (the bearer of the keys), and "servus sei-vorum Dei" were claimed in like manner as exclusively his. One temporal potentate had already received his crown as a grant from the pontifical chair; the occupant of that chair was already himself a temporal sovereign.

That the mediaeval conception of the papal office was one of gradual and slow development appears accordingly of to be beyond all reasonable doubt, and this feature belongs in common to the whole hierarchical system. We find, theory for example, that the conception of the episcopal order and its functions grew with the increasing power and wealth of the church. In like manner if we compare the theory of the equality of bishops one with another, enunciated by Cyprian, with the prerogatives of a metropolitan, as laid down at the council of Antioch (341), and subsequently further magnified, we are conscious of the introduction of what is tantamount to a new theory. And, finally, we become aware of yet another hierarchical order, as we see rising up the patriarchates of Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople, each invested by the church with an assigned order of precedence. Something, however, was yet wanting which should crown the gradations thus successively created, and com-plete the analogy to the Roman political organizations —the institution of the monarchical dignity. It was for this supreme honour that Rome and Constantinople con-tended, at a time when, from various causes and circum-stances, the other patriarchates had sunk into an inferiority too marked to admit of rivalry. In this contest the patriarch of Constantinople rested his claim on what may be termed the traditional political foundation—the honour due to the patriarch of the chief seat of empire; this plea, although already sanctioned by the church, was met on the part of Rome by a counter appeal to the supreme reverence due to what was not merely an " apostolica sedes," but a see founded by two apostles, of whom one was the chief of the apostolic order. In this remarkable abandonment of the ancient plea for pre-eminence and the limitation of the argument to that derivable from the claim to be an apostolic see, much of the difficulty and obscurity that belong to the earlier history of the papacy had probably its origin. And it seems but too probable that the endeavour to disguise this change, and to repre-sent the claims advanced by Innocent I., by Leo I., by Gregory the Great, and by Hadrian II., as already virtu-ally asserted and admitted in the ith century and in yet earlier times, has given rise to endless wrestings of isolated passages in writers of good authority, to deliberate falsi-fication of genuine documents, and to what are allowed on all hands to be direct and palpable forgeries. Another feature, which has been made subservient to no small amount of misrepresentation, must not be overlooked. From their earliest appearance, the distinctive claims advanced by the Roman see can only be regarded as a series of encroachments on that original conception of tho episcopal office maintained by Cyprian. And so long as the other patriarchates—Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem—maintained their ground, these encroachments wore a comparatively inoffensive guise, being little more than the assertion of the rights of a patriarch or supreme metropolitan within the Roman diocese. But, in addition to and distinct from the patriarchal supremacy, there was the theory of the primacy of the bishop of Rome over all the bishops, patriarchs, and metropolitans—at first little more than an honorary distinction and carrying with it no definite authority or jurisdiction. When the patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem could no longer appear as rivals and Rome was confronted by Constantinople alone, this theory was brought much more prominently forward; while at the same time, in order the better to enforce the papal claims, a confusion was designedly and skilfully introduced of the honorary primacy derived from St Peter with the actual rights of the head of the Roman diocese. The precedents afforded by the former were adduced in support of the universal jurisdiction claimed by the latter, and in an ignorant and uncritical age were with little difficulty represented as affording sufficient warrant for a large proportion of the claims asserted in the 9th century. It is by the light which we derive from these considerations that we are enabled to discern what appears to be the only theory which offers a solution of the tradition respecting St Peter and his successors that is in harmony with the historical evidence. When we consider that in the course of the 5th century papal Rome, partly from the ambition of her pontiffs, partly from the concurring influence of external circumstances, had acquired a position of authority in relation to Christendom at large which afforded the pro-spect of yet more complete and general pre-eminence, and that towards the assertion of such pre-eminence her claim to rank as the greatest and most honoured of the " apostolic<E sedes" seemed to offer effective aid, the appearance of legends and spurious documents tending to support such a claim can excite no surprise in the minds of those familiar with the literature of the period. As in the 2d century the attempt to reconcile two earlier and corrupt traditions respecting St Peter's presence and work in Rome gave rise to the tradition of his five-and-twenty years' episcopate, so, we can understand, it was probably sought to substitute for the simple tradition preserved in " Hegesippus " and Irenseus, with respect to St Peter's suc-cessors, official records (purporting to supply details such . as no other church had preserved, and such as it is in the highest degree improbable that the church at Rome should have succeeded in preserving) of an early episcopal succes-sion ; while the discrepancies of the different lists that profess to record this succession admit, again, of an adequate if not a satisfactory explanation, if we regard them as, for the most part, independent and purely con-jectural efforts to invest the earlier episcopal office .with an historical importance to which in the first two centuries it certainly had not attained.
While the Western primate was thus growing in dignity, wealth, and influence, those ecclesiastical potentates who had once claimed an equal or coordinate rank, with the sole exception of the patriarch of Constantinople, alto-gether ceased to exist. The Saracen conquests in Syria and Egypt had involved the loss of Jerusalem to Christen-dom (637), and this had been speedily followed by the extinction of the churches of Antioch and Jerusalem. The patriarch of Constantinople represented, accordingly, the only spiritual power which could compare with that of Rome; but, while he continued to be the submissive vassal of the Byzantine court, that court was compelled to see the once no less submissive pontiff of Rome changed into a successful invader of its Italian possessions and into a determined repudiator of its articles of faith. In the Creation year 800 Charles the Great received at the hands of Leo of the III., in Rome, the imperial crown, and the titles of Holy "emperor "and "Augustus." The authority by virtue of Empire, which Leo assumed the right to confer such dignities was probably by no means quite clear even to those who were witnesses of the imposing ceremony. It may perhaps be best described as derived partly from his sacerdotal func-tion, as displayed in the consecrating rites, and partly from the fact that he also acted as the representative of the people in their capacity of electors. To the Byzantine emperor, the whole ceremony and the titles conferred seemed a direct menace to his own prerogative, and com pleted the estrangement between the West and the East.

From that time down to the 15th century Greek institu- tions and Greek culture were the special objects of dis- like and distrust to the papacy. The use of the Greek , language had already been discontinued in the records of the Roman Church; and the study of its literature was now systematically discouraged. The assumption by Charles of the imperial dignity and the consequent rise of the " Holy Roman Empire " were events on the importance of which it is unnecessary here to dwell. By the theory thus established, a temporal supremacy or " condominium " was created corresponding to the spiritual supremacy of the popedom, and the Boman emperor claimed from all other rulers in Christendom an allegiance corresponding to that which the Boman pontiff claimed from all other ecclesiastical potentates. The imperial authority and papal authority were thus complementary the one to the other. The emperor claimed to confirm the papal elec- The em- tions : the pope claimed to confer the imperial crown upon pire and the emperor. But the precise adjustment of these respec- ^)nlpope" tive claims, and the further assumptions which they sug- gested or favoured, according as the empire or the papacy proved for the time the stronger, gave rise to a series of memorable struggles which sometimes assume proportions that constitute them the pivot on which contemporary history throughout Europe may be said to revolve. The compact originally made between the empire and the pope- dom, however plausible in theory, was indeed attended with no little danger to both. At one time it appeared probable that the state would overwhelm the ecclesiastical organization and convert it into a machine for political purposes; at another time it seemed no less likely that the latter would subjugate the former and reduce all Western Christendom to a vast spiritual tyranny. During the three centuries that followed upon the creation of the Holy Roman Empire—from the year 800, that is to say, down to the Concordat of Worms (1122)—it was chiefly the former contingency that seemed the more probable. During the pontificate of NICHOLAS I. (858-867), how- Nicholas ever, the papacy again made a perceptible advance. I- Nicholas intervened with signal effect in the disputed succession to the Eastern patriarchate, and asserted more distinctly than it had ever been asserted before the theory of the Boman supremacy. He dared, also, to forbid the divorce of Lothair (the powerful monarch of the vast terri- tory which stretched from the German Ocean to the Mediterranean) from his wife Theutberga, thereby estab- lishing an important precedent for papal interference in questions of private morality. And, finally, in his arduous struggle with Hincmar, metropolitan of Rheims, he gained an important victory over the powerful prelates on the Rhine in the question of appeal. It must, however, be admitted that this last advantage was gained only by the The false use of forged documents—the pseudo-Isidorian decretals, decretals, which seem to have first seen the light about the year 850; it was pretended that they had been compiled by Isidore of Seville, an eminent writer and ecclesiastic of the 7th century, and had been brought from Spain to Mainz by Riculfus, the archbishop of that city. This col- lection embodied a complete series of letters purporting to have been written by the popes of Rome from the time of Clemens Romanus down to that with which the collec- tion by Dionysius Exiguus commences, thus filling up the entire blank, and affording among other data ample prece- dent for appeals to Rome of the kind against which Hincmar had protested. When some doubt was raised as to the genuineness of the collection, Nicholas did not scruple to assure Hincmar that the originals had been lying from time immemorial in the Roman archives. Among many other fundamental positions laid down in these decretals was one to the effect that no council of the church had canonical validity unless it had been summoned with the sanction of the holy see. The assertion of this theory rendered it necessary considerably to extend the practice of appointing papal legates (legati a latere), who now became the ordinary channels of .communication between Rome and the Western churches, and through whom all affairs of importance were transacted. The legate convened the provincial councils and presided over them, taking precedence even of the metropolitan. .Such encroachments enable us at once to understand how it was that Henry I. of England deemed it necessary to demand from Paschal II. a promise that no legate should be sent into the kingdom until the royal assent had been previously obtained. From the pontificate of Nicholas we date a notable diminution in the power of the metropolitans.

The false decretals have been described as the source to which we may trace that great revolution in the relations of church and state which now gradually supervened. The Hadrian pontificate of HADRIAN II. (867-872) is especially notable for the application which he sought to make of some of the principles which they laid down. When Lothair, king of Lotharingia, died without heirs, Hadrian claimed the right to bestow the crown on the emperor Louis. Christian Europe, however, was not as yet prepared to accept this bold extension of the papal prerogatives. The kingdom was seized by Charles the Bald, and Hadrian was reminded in a manifesto drawn up by the bishops of Germany that he could not at once be " universal pope and universal king." But the weakness of Charles's claim was unde-niable, and we accordingly find him, five years later, con-senting to receive the imperial crown at the hands of JOHN VIII. (872-882), not as his heritage but as a gift from the pope. During the dark and stormy period that intervened between the death of Charles the Bald and the coronation of Otto the Great at Rome (962), the Carlovingian empire broke up, and the results that followed were disastrous both for the popedom and the empire. The Saracens occu-pied southern Italy, and menaced on more than one occasion the capital itself ; the Normans poured in successive waves over Frankland; the ravages of the Magyars were yet wider spread and not less terrible. Alike in the civil and the ecclesiastical world the elements of strife and insub-ordination were let loose; and, while the feudal lords defied the authority of their king, and the power of the French monarch sank to the lowest ebb, the bishops in like manner forsook their allegiance to the Roman pontiff. The archbishops of Ravenna and Milan appeared indeed as his rivals, and the political influence which they com-manded more than equalled his : the 10th century has been designated " the noon-day of episcopal independence." Degrada- The history of the curia at this period is marked by the tion of deepest moral degradation and the most revolting scenes, the curia, rp^g papaj jurisdiction was limited almost entirely to the capital itself, and even the succession of the pontiffs them-selves is with difficulty to be traced. The office, indeed, was sometimes disposed of by the influence of immoral women. The pontificate of STEPHEN VI. (or VII., 896-897) is remembered only for the inhuman manner in which he treated the lifeless corpse of his predecessor Formosus; that of SERGIUS III. (904-911) for the virtual reign of Theodora and her daughter, the two most notorious courte-zans of the age; STEPHEN IX. (939-942) was disfigured for life by the brutal treatment which he received at the hands of the Roman mob. Otto and In the dismembered empire, the kingdom of Germany John first exhibited signs of returning order and cohesion; and ^i- at the solicitation of Pope JOHN XII. (9§5-963) King Otto led an army into Italy, rescued the land from its cruel oppressor, Berengar, the feudal lord of the realm, and was anointed emperor at Rome. John, however, who was one of the worst of the pontiffs, ill repaid the service rendered to the see; and, foreseeing that the restoration of justice and law was likely to prove fatal to his own misrule, he proceeded to plot the emperor's overthrow. He was summoned to appear before a council presided over by the latter, to meet the accusations brought against him, and, having failed to appear, was formally deposed. On the same occasion the imperial right to confirm the election to the papal office (which had been for some time in abeyance) was formally restored. Of the pontiffs whose names stand in the subsequent succession two were anti-popes, BENEDICT V. (964) and BONIFACE VII. (984-985), set up by the party in rebellion against the imperial power.

With the restoration of law and order the ancient re-gard for the popedom regained its hold on the minds of men. Under the guidance of the celebrated Gerbert, the Gerbert youthful enthusiasm of Otto III. aimed at making Rome alld otto once more the centre of political dominion and the seat of 11 ' the imperial power. Hugh Capet, too, professed himself the " defender of the church." A strong sense began also to find expression of the infamy attaching to the associa-tions of the curia. At the first of the two councils convened at Rheims in 991 it was formally demanded, by what decree it was that " numberless priests of God, famed alike for learning and virtue, were subjected to the rule of monsters of iniquity wanting in all culture, whether sacred or profane." The French monarchs Were glad, however, to purchase the support of the papacy to aid them in their struggle with the rebellious chieftains by whom the very existence of their authority was menaced, and, until the action of the papal legates again roused the spirit of national resistance, the Capetian dynasty was loyal to the Roman see. That it was so was in no small measure due -to the virtues and abilities of GREGORY V. (996-999), the kinsman of Otto III., a-young man of considerable attain-ments, austere morality, and great energy of purpose, who succeeded to the papal chair at the age of twenty-four. He was succeeded by Gerbert, Pope SILVESTER II. (999-1003), from whom Otto III. derived, as already stated, his ideas of Italian and papal regeneration. But in Germany neither the nobility nor the episcopal order could contemplate with equanimity the projects of either pontiff or emperor, and Otto's schemes were met with a stubborn and paralysing resistance. Then the feudal princes of the Boman states rose in insurrection; and the ardent young reformer was taken off—it was believed, by poison—at the age of two and twenty, to be followed in the next year by his faithful preceptor on the pontifical throne.

With the disappearance of these two eminent men the Ascen-popedom relapsed into its former degradation. The feudal dency of nobility—that very " refuse " which, to use the expression thl? .^"da of a contemporary writer, it had been Otto's mission " to sweep from the capital"—regained their ascendency, and the popes became as completely the instruments of their will as they had once been of that of the Eastern emperor. A leading faction among this nobility was that of the counts of Tusculum, and for nearly half a century the popedom was a mere apanage in their family. As if to mark their contempt for the office, they carried the election of Theophylact, the son of Count Alberic, a lad scarcely twelve years of age, to the office. BENEDICT IX. (1033-1045), such was the title given him, soon threw off even the external decencies of his office, and his pontificate was disgraced by every conceivable excess. As he grew to manhood his rule, in conjunction with that of his brother, who was appointed the patrician or prefect of the city, resembled that of two captains of banditti. The scandal attaching to his administration culminated when it was known that, in order to win the hand of a lady for whom he had conceived a passion, he had sold the pontifical office

itself to another member of the Tusculan house, John, the arch-presbyter, who took the name of GREGORY VI. (1045-46). His brief pontificate was chiefly occupied with endea-vours to protect the pilgrims to Rome on their way to the capital from the lawless freebooters (who plundered them of their costly votive offerings as well as of their personal property), and with attempts to recover by main force the alienated possessions of the Roman Church. Prior, however, to his purchase of the pontifical office, the citizens of Rome, weary of the tyranny and extortions of Benedict, had assembled of their own accord and elected another pope, John, bishop of Sabina, who took the name of SILVESTER III. (rival pope, 1044-46). In the meantime Benedict had been brought back to Rome by his powerful kinsmen, and now reclaimed the sacred office. For a brief period, there-fore, there were to be seen three rival popes, each denounc-ing the others' pretensions and combating them by armed force. But even in Rome the sense of decency and shame had not become altogether extinguished; and at length a party in the Roman Church deputed Peter, their arch-deacon, to carry a petition to the emperor, Henry III., soliciting his intervention. The emperor, a man of deep religious feeling and lofty character, responded to the appeal. He had long noted, in common with other thoughtful observers, the widespread degeneracy which, taking example by the curia, was spreading throughout the church at large, and especially visible in concubinage | and simony,—-alike regarded as mortal sins in the clergy. ! He forthwith crossed the Alps and assembled a council at j Sutri. The claims of the three rival popes were each in turn examined and pronounced invalid, and a German, Suidger (or Suger), bishop of Bamberg, was elected to the office as CLEMENT II. (1046-47).
The degeneracy of the church at this period would seem to have been in some degree compensated by the reform | of the monasteries, and from the great abbey of Cluny in The Ger- Burgundy there now proceeded a line of German popes, man wno jn a great measure restored the dignity and repu- I popes, tation of their office. But, whether from the climate, always ill-adapted to the German constitution, or from poison, as the contemporary chronicles not unfrequently suggest, it is certain that their tenure of office was singu-larly brief. Clement II. died before the close of the year of his election. DAMASUS II., his successor, held the office Leo IX. only twenty-three days. LEO IX., who succeeded, held it for the exceptionally lengthened period of more than five years (1049-54). This pontiff, although a kinsman and nominee of the emperor, refused to ascend the throne until his election had been ratified by the voice of the clergy and the people, and his administration of the office pre-sented the greatest possible contrast to that of a Benedict IX. or a Sergius III. In more than one respect it constitutes a crisis in the history of the popedom. In conjunction with his faithful friend and adviser, the great Hildebrand, he projected schemes of fundamental church reform, in which the suppression of simony and of married life (or concubinage, as it was styled by its denouncers) on the part of the clergy formed the leading features. In the year 1049, at three great synods successively convened at Rome, Rheims, and Mainz, new canons condemnatory of the prevailing abuses were enacted, and the principles of monasticism more distinctly asserted in contravention of those traditional among the secular clergy. Leo's pontificate closed, however, ingloriously. In an evil hour lie ventured to oppose the occupation by the Normans, whose encroachments on Italy were just commencing. His ill-disciplined forces were no match for the Norman bands, composed of the best warriors of the age. He was himself made prisoner, detained for nearly a twelvemonth in captivity, and eventually released only to die, a few days after, of grief and humiliation. But, although his own career terminated thus ignominiously, the services rendered by Leo to the cause of Roman Catholicism were great and permanent; and of his different measures none contributed more effectually to the stability of his see than the formation of the College of Cardinals. The title of The Col " cardinal" was not originally restricted to dignitaries con- lege of nected with the Church of Rome, but it had hitherto been Cardinals, a canonical requirement that all who attained to this dignity should have passed through the successive lower ecclesiastical grades in connexion with one and the same foundation; the cardinals attached to the Roman Church had consequently been all Italians, educated for the most part in the capital, having but little experience of the world beyond its walls, and incapable of estimating church questions in the light of the necessities and feelings of Christendom at large. By the change which he intro-duced Leo summoned the leaders of the party of reform within the newly-constituted college of cardinals, and thus attached to his office a body of able advisers with wider views and less narrow sympathies. By their aid the administration of the pontifical duties was rendered at once more easy and more effective. The pontiff himself was liberated from his bondage to the capital, and, even when driven from Rome, could still watch over the inter-ests of both his see and the entire church in all their extended relations; and the popedom must now be looked upon as entering upon another stage in its history—that of almost uninterrupted progress to the pinnacle of power. According to Anselm of Lucca, it was during the pontifi-cate of Leo, at the synod of Rheims above referred to, that the title of " apostolic bishop " (Apostolicm) was first declared to belong to the pope of Rome exclusively. The short pontificate of NICHOLAS II. (1059-61) is memorable change chiefly for the fundamental change then introduced in the in the method of electing to the papal office. By a decree of the meth°<l °f second Lateran council (1059), the nomination to the office eleotlon" was vested solely in the cardinal bishops—the lower clergy, the citizens, and the emperor retaining simply the right of intimating or withholding their assent. It was likewise enacted that the nominee should always be one of the Roman clergy, unless indeed no eligible person could be found among their number. At the same time the direst anathemas were decreed against all who should venture to infringe this enactment either in the letter or the spirit. The preponderance thus secured to the ultramontane party . and to Italian interests must be regarded as materially affecting the whole subsequent history of the popedom. The manner in which it struck at the imperial influence was soon made apparent in the choice of Nicholas's successor, the line of German popes being broken through by the election of Anselm, bishop of Lucca (the uncle of the historian), who ascended the pontifical throne as ALEXANDER II. (1061-73) without having received the sanction of the emperor. His election was forthwith challenged by the latter, and for the space of two years the Roman state was distracted by a civil war, Honorius II. being supported as a rival candidate by the imperial arms, while Alexander main-tained his position only with the support of the Norman levies. The respective merits of their claims were con-sidered at a council convened at Mantua, and the decision was given in favour of Alexander. Cadalous, such was the name of his rival, did not acknowledge the justice of the sentence, but he retired into obscurity; and the remainder of Alexander's pontificate, though troubled by the disputes respecting a married clergy, was free from actual warfare. In these much vexed questions of church discipline Alexander, who had been mainly indebted for his election to Hildebrand, the archdeacon of the Roman Church, was guided entirely by that able churchman's

The crusades in relation to the papacy.

The De-cretum of Gratian.

Growth of the canon law.

advice, and in 1073 Hildebrand himself succeeded to the office as GREGORY VII. (1073-85). From the memorable struggle between this pontiff and the emperor, Henry IV., we date the commencement of that long series of contests between the papal and the imperial power which distracted alike the holy see and the empire. In the two main objects to which his policy was directed—the enforcement of a celibate life among the clergy and the prohibition of investiture (see INVESTITURE) by the laity—Gregory had on his side the sympathy of the best and most discerning minds of his age. Lay investiture was little more than a cloak for the inveterate and growing abuse of simony, for which the distribution of church patronage by secular potentates afforded special facilities, and the burden of which was now increased by those other forms of tribute, the "regale," "jus spolii," and "servitium," which the growth of the feudal system had developed. But in the hands of Gregory this scheme of ostensible reforms ex-panded first of all into independence of the temporal power, and finally into a claim to dominate over it. Other schemes (not destined to be realized) engaged his lofty ambition— the conquest of Constantinople, the union of the Eastern and Western Churches, and the expulsion of the Saracens from Christendom. He died in exile; but the theory of his office and its prerogatives which he asserted was brought by his successors to a marvellous realization.

The first crusade, which may be looked upon as generated by Gregory's example and a reflex of the policy which led him to sanction the expedition of William of Normandy against England, materially favoured papal pretensions. It was proclaimed as a religious war, and it was as a mode of penance that the Norman and Latin warriors were enjoined to gratify their ruling passions of plunder and adventure. More especially it brought to the front of the drama of European action the Latin as opposed to the Teutonic elements,—the part taken by Germany in these gigantic expeditions in no way corresponding to her position among European powers. It was impossible that the excommunicated emperor Henry IV. should place himself at the head of such an enterprise, and it was accordingly by URBAN II. (1088-99) that the direction was assumed, and it was under his auspices that the first crusade was proclaimed at Clermont. As the movement gathered force, the prestige of the popedom was still further enhanced by the fact that the warriors who had before appeared in the field under the banners of the empire now did so as loyal sons of the church. The new orders of chivalry,—the Knights of St John, the Templars, the Teutonic Order,—each bound by religious vows, received their commissions from the pontiff, were invested by him with the sword and the cross, and acknowledged no allegiance to the emperor.

But of all the schemes which Gregory's genius conceived and promoted none was more important in its after-effects than the expansion given to the pseudo-Isidorian decretals —in the first instance by Anselm of Lucca, again by Cardinal Deusdedit, and finally by the celebrated Gratian, a monk of Bologna, who lived about the middle of the 11th century. By Gratian these accumulated forgeries were reduced to order and codified; and his Decretum, as it was termed, stands to the canon law (CANON LAW) in much the same relation that the Pandects of Justinian stand to the civil law. Further additions were subsequently made by Gregory IX., Boniface VIII., and other pontiffs, and in this manner a vast code was gradually elaborated which, serving as the framework of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction in every land, was associated with separate courts and professed by a distinct body of jurists. The canonists were naturally ardent defenders of the system from whence they derived their professional existence, and everywhere represented the faithful adherents of Rome.
Another movement at this period, which gave effective aid in the diffusion of the palpal influence and authority, was the rise of the new religious orders,—the Camaldules Rise of (c. 1012), the Cluniacs (o. 1048), the Carthusians (c. 1084), new

and the Cistercians (1098). ilthough each of these orders m°nastl°
. orders

professed a distinct rule, anc a sanctity and austerity pf life which put to shame the degenerate Benedictines, their presence was far from proving an unmixed benefit to the districts where they settled. They rejected the episcopal jurisdiction, and purchased their local independence by com-plete and immediate subjection to the pope. Wherever, accordingly, their houses rose there was gathered a band of devoted adherents to Rome, ever ready to assert her jurisdiction in opposition to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction claimed by the secular clergy or the civil jurisdiction claimed by the temporal power.

On the death of Urban, Cardinal Rainerius, a native of Tuscany, and a man of considerable learning and capacity, succeeded as PASCHAL II. (1099-1118). During the Pasohalil. earlier years of his pontificate he is unfavourably distinguished by the manner in which he sanctioned, if he did not instigate, the cruel and unnatural revolt of the young prince Henry (afterwards the emperor Henry V.) against his father. The later years of Paschal's rule seem mainly a record of the nemesis which overtook a policy dictated by the most heartless and selfish ambition. " Paschal," says Milman, " is almost the only later pope who was reduced to the degrading necessity of being disclaimed by the clergy, of being forced to retract his own impeccable decrees, of being taunted in his own day with heresy, and abandoned as a feeble traitor to the rights of the church by the dexterous and unscrupulous apologists of almost every act of the papal see." One of the most memorable phases of this long process of humiliation is marked by the treaty of Sutri (Feb. 1111), when the young emperor compelled Paschal to surrender all the territorial possessions and royalties which the church had received either from the emperor or from the kings of Italy since the days of Charlemagne, together with numerous other political and fiscal privileges, while he himself renounced the right of investiture. The indignation of the ecclesiastical world compelled Paschal to retire from this treaty, and ultimately, after long evasions, to become party to a second, whereby the former conditions were completely reversed. The emperor resumed the right of investiture, and that burning question again lit up the flames of war. Paschal being too far pledged by his own solemn oath, a metropolitan council assembled at Vienne assumed to itself the authority of excommunicating the emperor, de-claring that the assertion of the rights of lay investiture in itself constituted a heresy. The great prelates of Germany rose in insurrection against the emperor. He retaliated by seizing on the vast possessions (comprising nearly a quarter of Italy) which Matilda, countess of Tuscany, at her death in 1115, had bequeathed to the Roman see. The pope and the cardinals responded by re-enacting the sentence of excommunication. Henry occu-pied Rome; and Pope Paschal died in the Castle of St Angelo, exhorting the cardinals with his latest breath to greater firmness than he himself had shown in maintaining the rights of the church. Paschal was the first of the pontiffs to discontinue the use of the imperial years in dating his acts and encyclicals, substituting instead the year of his own pontificate. The short rule of CALIXTUS II. (1119-24), disgraced although it was by the savage II. revenge which he perpetrated on his rival the antipope

Gregory VIII., was characterized by wise and resolute administration. A Frenchman by birth, he was the first to establish those intimate relations with France which rendered that state the traditional ally of the Roman see, and culminated in the secession to Avignon. Germany, on the other hand, appears from this time as generally heading the anti-papal party, espousing the cause of the antipope, and siding with Ghibelline faction. But the chief event in the pontificate of Calixtus, and one which may be looked upon as inaugurating a new era in the history of our sub-ject, was the Concordat of Worms of the year 1122. Concordat By this memorable treaty, which, accepted as the law of ofWorms. Christendom, seemed to promise an ultimate conclusion of the long struggle, an understanding was at last arrived at. The emperor ceded the right of investiture by the ring and the pastoral staff,—thereby renouncing that at which the church most demurred, the appearance of assuming to be in any way the transmitter of the spiritual succession, but retaining the right of granting church benefices or other property by the symbol of temporal power, the sceptre. The pope, on the other hand, consented that the election of bishops and abbots should take place, according to canonical procedure in the presence of the emperor, but that neither bribery nor compulsion should be resorted to, and that, in the case of disputed elections, there should be a right of appeal to the metropolitan and provincial bishops. In Germany the investiture with the regalia by the sceptre was to precede the consecration, the dependence of the higher clergy being thus secured to the emperor; but in other countries the lay investiture was to take place within six months after consecration. In an appended clause a re-servation was made which afterwards became a fruitful germ of controversy: the elected dignitary bound himself to dis-charge his feudal obligations to the emperor arising out of his investiture with the temporalities, " except in all things which are acknowledged to belong to the Roman Church."

During the pontificate of INNOCENT II. (1130-43) the importance of the new relations established with France Bernard are to be seen in the all-commanding influence of BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX (q.v.), the unswerving supporter of the 'raux' papal claims, round whose career indeed the life of the Western Church for half a century may be said mainly to revolve. In the struggle, arising out of his disputed election, with the antipope, Anacletus II., Innocent succeeded in gaining the support of Bernard, and through Bernard that of the emperor Lothair; and the narrative of his restoration to his see by the imperial forces, after an exile of four years, is one of the most dramatic episodes in papal history. Technically, at least, Anacletus had the better claim to the papacy, having been elected by a majority of the cardinals ; but Innocent secured the support of Lothair by making over to him the territory bequeathed by the countess Matilda. In return for this concession, Lothair accepted the imperial crown from Innocent in the church of the Lateran, and acknowledged himself the pope's vassal, —in the language of the inscription recording the event, "Post homo fit Pap*, sumit quo dante coronam." Renewal The change in the imperial dynasty, involving as it did stru°»le *ne setting aside of Lothair's son-in-law as emperor, revived with'the the rivalry between the empire and the papacy; and the empire. Ghibellines, or adherents of the Hohenstaufen (or Swabian) line, now represented a more distinctly defined party in opposition to the Guelfs, who sustained the traditional policy of the Saxon imperial line, and sided with the popes. Frederick Barbarossa, although he consented to receive the imperial crown at the hands of HADRIAN IV. (1154-59), required that pontiff altogether to disavow the notion of having conferred it as a beneficium upon a vassal, main-taining that, through the election of the princes, he held his crowns (both kingly and imperial) of God alone.

During the pontificate of ALEXANDER III. (1159-81) Frederick supported the cause of the antipopes. A dis-puted election, in which the merits of the candidates are even yet more difficult to determine than in the election of Innocent II., gave rise to a series of counter claims, and Alexander, during his long pontificate, had to contend with four successive antipopes each backed by the imperial arms. Only the election of the first, Victor V. (antipope, 1159-64), however, had real canonical validity, the claims of the others having always been regarded by all orthodox Catholics as presumptuous. It was during the latter part of Alexander's government that Rome achieved a great moral triumph in England in the reaction ; which followed upon the murder of Thomas Becket and ' the abrogation of the Constitutions of Clarendon. Eight years later the attention of all Christian Europe was riveted ! by the memorable occurrence which marked the consum-j mation of the truce of Venice (1178), when Frederick i Barbarossa prostrated himself before the aged pontiff and | held his stirrup as he mounted his palfrey.

Passing by the comparatively unimportant careers of the ! five popes whose names stand between those of Alexander I and INNOCENT III. (1198-1216), we find ourselves at the Innocent stage which marks the culmination of the papal power. The august descent of this pontiff; his learning as a canonist and his commanding genius ; the interdicts which he could venture to impose on great realms, whether ruled by the astute sagacity of a Philip Augustus or by the reckless folly of a John; his sentences of excommunica-tion, hurled with deadly effect at emperor and at kings; the vigour with which he wrested whole provinces from the imperial domination—the march of Ancona and the 1 duchy of Spoleto—to weld together into one compact whole the Patrimonium and the Bomagna; the energy with j which he repressed the heresies which threatened the unity of the church; the boldness with which he defined the doctrine of transubstantiation; his patience in working and waiting for opportunities, and the promptitude with which ; he seized the occasion when it arrived,—such are the features which combine to render the eighteen years' pontificate of \ Innocent III. a period of unrivalled lustre and importance j in the history of the popedom. It was now that the papal power may be said to have effectually impressed its theory of sacerdotal government upon Europe; that the canon law, wherein that theory was elaborated, began to be taught in the universities which rose throughout Europe —Bologna, Padua, Paris, Orleans, Oxford, and Cambridge; that ecclesiastical discipline everywhere modelled itself on the practice of Rome; that the mendicant orders, : especially those of St Dominic and St Francis of Assisi, with their irregular enthusiasm, skilfully converted bj ; Innocent into a widely-diffused, untiring, and devotee1 propaganda, roused a new spirit alike in the universities and among the illiterate laity, and became a powerful instrument wherewith to coerce to obedience the episcopal order and the whole body of the secular clergy.

The chief interest attaching to the pontificates of HONORIUS III. (1216-27), GREGORY IX. (1227-41), and INNOCENT IV. (1243-54) arises from their connexion with the policy and career of Frederick II. (emperor 1210-50). ' To the whole traditions of the popedom Frederick was especially obnoxious, menacing on the one hand its standard of doctrine by his reputed scepticism, and its newly acquired possessions on the other by his schemes for the revival of imperial supremacy in Italy. In the sequel his designs were baffled by the ability and resolution of Gregory and Innocent; and at the general council of Lyons (1245) Frederick was deposed both from his imperial and his kingly dignities, and his subjects declared to be absolved from their fidelity. In this manner the power claimed by the Roman pontiff of deposing even kings received the im-plicit sanction of a general council. The empire, worsted in Italy, broke down in Germany. In 1268 Conradin, the grandson of Frederick and the last representative of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, was cruelly put to death by Charles of Anjou, and the long contest of the empire with the popedom came to an end. Gregory The policy of GREGORY X. (1271-76), a man of ability x- and moderation, deserves the praise of having apparently aimed at the general good of Christendom, so far, at least, as not incompatible with the overweening pretensions which he continued to uphold. Gregory endeavoured to compose the bitter jealousies and long-continued strife of the Italian states by the establishment of a general protectorate under Charles of Anjou, king of Naples, and to reconcile Guelf and Ghibelline by concessions to the leaders of the latter party. He effected a temporary agreement with the Eastern Church; and he sought to put an end to the abuses and rivalries which now almost invariably accompanied each election to the pontificate by intro-ducing a new method of proceeding on such occasions. In the meantime, the growing spirit of nationality had already received a striking exemplification in France by the enact-ment of the Pragmatic Sanction (1268). Of this measure, which has been described as the foundation of the Gallican liberties, it will here suffice to say that it consists of a series of enactments expressly directed against all those encroachments of the popedom with respect to collations to benefices, elections to bishoprics, simoniacal practices, ecclesiastical promotions, imposts, and other forms of exaction, such as we have already noted in their gradual growth. Shielded from criticism by the fact that it was The sanctioned by the pious Louis IX., the loyal son of the Praf- church, the Pragmatic Sanction passed at the time unchal-Sanctiou 'enged eyen by the papacy itself. Of the extent to which the latter was becoming more and more a political institu-tion we have striking evidence in the brief pontificate of CELESTINE V. (1294). A hermit of the Abruzzi, of austere and holy life, he had been elected pope in the hope that his reputation for virtue might in some measure restore the character of his office. Something more, however, than mere sanctity and blamelessness were now necessary for the o discharge of the duties of a position which by its associa-tions demanded the exercise of statecraft, political intrigue, and a wide knowledge of affairs. In less than six months Celestine resigned an office for which by lack of experience and ability he was altogether unfitted, but leaving behind him a tradition of self-devoted and holy life which found expression in the institution of a new religious order, that of the Celestinians, afterwards blended with the Fraticelli, or Spiritual Franciscans. Upon BONIFACE VIII. (1294-1303) the signs of the times and the development of a spirit and of institutions incompatible with the pre-tensions of his predecessors were altogether lost. A man of considerable abilities, indomitable will, and imperious nature, he enunciated in yet more uncompromising terms the theory of the papal supremacy. In the memorable bull Unam sanctam Ecclesiam (18th Nov. 1302), he de-clared that the church could have but one head—a two-headed church would be a monstrosity; and he explained away the traditional interpretation of the symbolic mean-ing of the two swords, by affirming that the temporal sword wielded by the monarch was borne only at the will and by the permission of the pontiff (ad nutum et patientiam sacerdotis). Dazzled by the apparent success which at-tended his first measures, he was only confirmed in his policy by the resistance he encountered in France and England. In Philip the Fair, however, he was matched with an antagonist as resolute and unscrupulous as him-self and one who better understood the tendencies of the age. In the struggle that ensued Philip had the whole French nation, including the episcopal order, on his side; the pontiff was worsted, and his humiliation and sense of defeat hastened his end.
papacy.

With the death of Boniface fell also the papacy of the Fall of Middle Ages, both in theory and in fact:—in theory, the through the ascendency of counter views such as those put mec forth in the De Monarchia of Dante, and in the writings 1 of Aegidius Colonna and John of Paris, which enforced the reasonableness and necessity of the supremacy of the political power; in fact, from the manner in which the French monarch succeeded not only in repelling the papal pretensions but in eventually reducing the Roman see itself to be a mere instrument of his will and a submissive agent in the furtherance of his policy.

The origin, the growth, the characteristics, the assump-tions, and the downfall of the mediaeval papacy having now been traced out, it remains to note, as concisely as practicable, the chief features in the later history of the institution. In the year 1305 CLEMENT V. (1305-14), The an Aquitanian by birth, was elected after long contention popes at to the pontificate. He was invested with the tiara at Avignon-Lyons, and subsequently (1309) transferred his court from Rome to Avignon. The pressure put upon him by King Philip is generally assigned as the cause of this step, but it is not improbable that he was only too glad to escape from the strife then waging between the two great fac-tions, the Orsinis and the Colonnas, at Rome. At Avignon, for a period of nearly seventy years, derisively styled the " Babylonian captivity," pope after pope held his court. Degraded to a state of splendid vassalage to France, their luxury, pride, rapacity, and avarice became a bye-word in subser-Europe, while their complete subservience to the political p1™^ 8 aims of the French crown effectually alienated from them the good will and sympathy of England and Germany. When JOHN XXII. (1316-34) sought to interfere in a double election to the empire, the diet at Frankfort de-nounced his whole policy in terms that startled Europe by their boldness; and the electoral union at Rense in 1338 passed a resolution declaring that _" whoever was chosen by the electors became at once both king and emperor, and did not require that his election should be approved and sanc-tioned by the apostolic see." Other causes contributed effectually to lower the papacy in the estimation of Europe. Clement V. concurred in the infamous devices by which Philip procured the suppression of the Order of the Templars, and the barbarous cruelties inflicted on the Growth noble victims produced in the popular mind a feeling of of abuses deepest aversion for the authors of those proceedings. The traffic in benefices was now again developing into a gigantic scandal and abuse. Annates and Peter's pence were exacted with an insatiable rapacity. Italy itself, in-deed, torn between contending parties and impoverished by the interruptions to commerce, offered but a barren field for plunder, but in the countries north the Alps the pope's emissaries were everywhere to be seen, ever intent on their errand of exaction. The wealth thus acquired was partly devoted towards extending the territorial pos-sessions of the see; and Avignon and the county of Venais-sin, purchased in 1348 from the crown of Provence, remained papal until the French Revolution. It is not a, little significant that this increase in wealth and territory should have been concomitant with the sinking of the moral influence of the papacy to its lowest ebb. In Eng-land the civil power endeavoured to check this system of extortion by re-enacting the Statutes of Praemunire-and Provisors. In Germany the deep discontent to which it gave rise formed an important contributing element in the causes which brought about the Reforma-tion. In France the luxury and gross immorality of the court at Avignon, described in graphic and scathing language by Petrarch, are assigned by other contemporary writers as conducing largely to the corruption of morals throughout the realm. Even among the religious orders themselves there began to be signs of insubordination, and the Fraticelli, or Spiritual Franciscans, who now took their rise, openly avowed that the principles which they professed were designed as a protest against the appalling degeneracy of the curia; while great scholars in the universities, like William of Occam and Marsilio of Padua, brought the dialectics and new philosophical tenets of the schools in the universities to bear with no little effect on the whole system of the popedom.

The outbreak of the great schism struck no less deeply at those sentiments of veneration and deference which _____ wont to gather round the pontiff's chair. The majority in the college of cardinals were Frenchmen, and, on the death of Gregory XI. in 1378, it seemed only too probable that another Frenchman would be elected his successor. The discontent of the citizens of Rome at the withdrawal of the curia from the capital had now, how-ever, reached a culminating point. This feeling, it is to be noted, was by no means one of mere sentiment and attachment to tradition, for the diversion of appeals, pil-grimages, deputations, and embassies, with their attend-ant influx of travellers, and of large streams of wealth and business from Rome to Avignon, had materially affected the prosperity of the former city. On the occasion of the new election the prevailing dissatisfaction found vent in menacing demonstrations on the part of the population, and even in scenes of actual violence. In order to appease the city the terrified cardinals determined on the unani-mous election of an Italian, Prignani, archbishop of Bari, who assumed the title of URBAN VI. The election was singularly unfortunate. The new pontiff, intoxicated by his sudden and unexpected fortune, assumed such arrogance of demeanour and showed himself so altogether wanting in moderation and self-control that the cardinals put forth the plea that they had discharged their function as electors under intimidation, and declared the election invalid. In proceeding to elect another pontiff, their choice fell upon one of their own number, Robert of Geneva, known as CLEMENT VII. (1378-94). For a period of thirty-eight years, Christian Europe was scandalized by the conten-tions of two rival popes, the one holding his court at Rome, the other at Geneva, each hurling anathemas, excommunication, and the foulest accusations at the other, and compared by Wyclif to "two dogs snarling over a bone "—a simile which in itself affords significant proof of the manner in which the popedom had fallen in the estimation of Christendom. The potentates of Europe, in declaring themselves "in the obedience," as it was termed, of one or the other pontiff, were swayed almost entirely by political considerations, in which jealousy of France was the predominant sentiment. Italy, Germany, Bohemia, England, Flanders, Hungary, and Poland, all de-clared themselves in the obedience of the pope at Rome; Scotland, Savoy, Lorraine, declared themselves, 'along with France, in that of the pope at Avignon. The Spanish kingdoms, which at first stood aloof, ultimately also decided, though from somewhat different motives, in favour of the latter pontiff. At last, at the commence-ment of the 15th century, an endeavour was made to prevail on both the reigning popes—Gregory XII. at Rome, Benedict XIII. at Avignon—to renounce their claims, with a view to the restoration of church union. The proposal was met by both popes with persistent and unscrupulous evasion. France, indignant at the subter-fuges of Benedict, withdrew her support, and he accordingly retired to Perpignan. The cardinals attached to either court met together at Leghorn, and agreed to summon a general council, to meet at Pisa on the 25th March 1409. In the meantime isolated scholars and divines throughout Europe, among the regular and the secular clergy alike, were pondering deeply the lesson taught by the papal history of the last six centuries, and in the place of the traditional theories of appeals to popes, to councils, or to emperors there was growing up another conception, that of the essential falsity of the axioms on which the theory of the papal supremacy had been built up, and of Scrip-tural authority as the only sure and final source of guid-ance in deciding upon questions of doctrine and morality.

But as yet, before ideas such as these had been suffi- The great ciently developed and events had prepared the popular councils, mind for their reception, the remedy that most commended itself to the leading minds of Christendom was that of a true general council. Such was the idea which influential churchmen of the age—men like Peter D'Ailly, cardinal of Cambrai, and John Gerson, chancellor of the university of Paris, who, while they deplored the discipline, still assented to the doctrines of the church—believed to be the best solution of the difficulties in which that church had become involved. The opinions of the doctors of the canon law and of theology at the universities had been taken, and at Oxford as in Paris it had been decided that a general council might be summoned even against the will of the pope, and that, when thus convened, its authority was superior to his. Such were the circumstances under which in 1409 the council of Pisa was Council summoned. The council enunciated the dogma of its own °f pisa-supremacy; it deposed the rival popes; it constituted the two separate bodies of cardinals a single conclave, and by this conclave a new pope, ALEXANDER V. (1409-10) was elected. Schemes of general ecclesiastical reform were dis-cussed ; and then after a four months' session the assembly adjourned, to resume, at an interval of three years, its yet more memorable deliberations at Constance. In the intervening time, Alexander V. died, not without strong suspicion of his having been removed by poison through the machinations of his successor, the notorious Balthasar Cossa, who assumed the title of JOHN XXIII. (1410-15), and took up his residence in Rome. It is with this pontiff that the gross abuse of indulgences is said to have first arisen. In the year 1416 the council of Constance met, Council amid the most sanguine expectations on the part of religious Europe, but it achieved practically nothing in the sfcance-direction of church reform. It deposed John XXIII., but MARTIN V. (1417-31), by whom he was succeeded, although in some respects an estimable pontiff, skilfully availed himself of the disturbances in Bohemia and the hostile inroads of the Turks to postpone all questions of reform to a future occasion. On the other hand, the actual results of its deliberations were reactionary in their tend-ency. The council burned John Huss, one of the first to assert the rights of the individual conscience in opposition to the prevailing hierarchical system ; it crushed the party of reform in the university of Paris, and banished their great leader. The council of Basel (1431-49), although Council it re-enunciated the principle of the superiority of a of Basel general council over the pope, found, when it sought to proceed to the more practical reforms involved in placing restrictions on the abuses practised under the papal sanc-tion, that it had assumed a task beyond its powers. Under the pretext of bringing about a reconciliation with the Eastern Church, and inviting its delegates to the delibera-tions of the council, EUGENIUS IV. (1431-47) proposed to transfer the place of meeting from Basel to some Italian city. The council, well knowing that such a measure would be fatal to its independence, refused its assent; Eugenius retaliated by dissolving the council; the council, by suspending the pope. Thereupon Eugenius summoned Council another council at Ferrara, which was afterwards removed of to Florence. The council of Basel, as a last resource, Florence. arr0gateci to itself the papal functions, and then proceeded to elect Amadeus, duke of Savoy, pope, with the title of FELIX V. In this extreme measure it failed, however, Policy of to carry with it the more influential European powers, the chief Germany, after an ineffectual endeavour to mediate between tne rival popes, assumed, in the first instance, an attitude of strict neutrality, but was ultimately won over by the crafty Aeneas Sylvius (afterwards Pius II.) to conclude the notable Concordat of Vienna (1418). By this mercenary arrangement the newly-elected emperor, Frederick III., altogether renounced whatever advantages had, down to that time, been gained by the labours of the council of Basel, receiving in return from Nicholas V. certain concessions with respect to all episcopal elections in his own hereditary dominions, together with a hundred of the most valuable benefices, the visitatorial rights in relation to the monasteries, and a tenth of the monastic revenues. The policy adopted by France was of an alto-gether different character. She preferred to adjust her ecclesiastical liberties on the basis defined and sanctioned by the royal authority at the congress of Bourges. The Pragmatic Sanction there enacted was registered by the parliament of Paris, 13th July 1439,—thus becoming part of the statute law of France. In this celebrated mani-festo the spirit of Gerson and the university of Paris spoke again; but, while its twenty-three provisions rendered it peculiarly obnoxious to the Roman see, the manner in which it set aside all royal nominations made it no less distasteful to the monarchy. Louis XI., feigning to yield to the pressure put upon him from Rome, abolished it, but it was re-enacted by Louis XII. Eventually, in the year 1516, amid the full flow of the advantages which he had gained by the victory of Marignano, Francis I. permitted the Pragmatic Sanction to be superseded by the Concordat of Bologna,—a disastrous compromise of principles, wherein, while some important concessions were made to Leo X., the crown interference with the administration of the church was more effectually established than ever, and the independence of the Gallican clergy reduced to a shadow. The concordat made no mention of the councils of Constance, Basel, and Bourges, or of their fundamental conception of the superiority of a general council over the pope; and it left the opportunity open for the reintroduction of annates. On the other hand, the monarchical authority achieved a signal triumph ; and, although the parliament of Paris loudly protested, and even ventured to set aside some of the royal nominations subsequently made, its voice was silenced by a peremptory decree issued in the year 1527.

To return to the council of Basel. Although supported at first by the electors of Germany, it was, in the sequel, completely circumvented by the machinations of the able but unscrupulous Aeneas Sylvius; and Pope Eugenius, at his death, seemed almost to have regained the allegiance of Christendom. Under NICHOLAS V. (1447-55), the work of reunion was brought to a completion. The council of Basel dissolved itself; and Felix V., laying aside his empty title and dignity, retired into Savoy, and was shortly after promoted to the rank of cardinal by Nicholas himself. The popedom was not destined ever again to witness the phenomenon of a rival pontiff; and no council since the council of Basel has ever ventured to assert its authority as superior to that of the Roman chair. At the council of Florence that theory had been the papal definitely contravened (1439) by the enunciation of the following canon, in which the counter theory first received a Florence, complete and distinct exposition:—"We define the holy apostolic see and the Roman pontiff to have primacy over the whole earth, and the Roman pontiff to be himself the successor of the blessed Peter, chief of the apostles, and the true vicar of Christ, and to exist as head of the whole church and father and teacher of all Christians ; and that to him, in the blessed Peter, our Lord Jesus Christ has com-mitted full power of feeding, governing, and directing the universal church, even as is [also] contained both in the acts of the oecumenical councils and in the sacred canons."

Thus re-established and confirmed in his own theory of his office and its functions, the Roman pontiff regained somewhat of his former hold on the estimation of Europe, popedom There was also at the same time discernible a marked improvement, so far as regarded extSrnal decorum, in the century. associations of the curia ; and, until the ascendency of the Borgias, the names of NICHOLAS V. (1447-55), Pros II. (1458-64), and SIXTUS IV. (1471-84) redeemed the reputation of the Roman see, if not for sanctity, at least for learning. The last-named pontiff, however, lies under the imputation of having been the first to institute trials for witchcraft, an example which spread, in later times, far wider than the boundaries of Roman Catholicism itself. In the latter half of the 15th century the popedom retires altogether into the background of European history. The pretensions of the pontiff were not, indeed, in any way retracted or modified, but his actual policy was no longer commensurate with these, and the former weapons of the interdict and the anathema had fallen into disuse. The popes became little more than territorial princes, their politi-cal and ecclesiastical influence being exerted mainly with reference to the material interests of the States of the Church. It was one of the most baneful results of these changed external relations that each more ambitious pontiff —the Farnesi, the Borgias, the Delia Roveres, and the Medici—aspired to found an hereditary sovereignty or principality in connexion with his own family, and the most valuable possessions of the church were successively alienated. By the next pontiff the holders of such pro-perty would be not unjustly regarded as usurpers, and it would be the first aim of himself and his party to eject them from the lands and revenues thus acquired. In this manner deadly feuds were generated, which became hereditary in the different families, and proved an unfailing source of sanguinary feuds and bitter animosities.

With the tacit surrender of the theory of the supremacy of general councils, the Holy Boman Empire itself came also virtually to an end ; and Germany, broken up into a The number of independent principalities, often involved in papal _ internecine strife, presented a striking contrast to the Germany, advances which France and Spain were making in the direction of consolidation and order. The papacy found a direct apparent advantage in fomenting this disunion, and in no country were the exactions of its emissaries more shameless or extortionate. Eventually, however, both these phases of its policy proved eminently detrimental to the Roman interests. For, while the unscrupulousness of its agents did much to foster a strong aversion to the tenets which they inculcated, and thus paved the way for the reception of Lutheran doctrines, the isolation to which each German state was reduced proved favourable to its freer action, and enabled it, in no small measure, to pur-sue that independent policy which, in several instances, materially aided the progress of the Reformation. The history of the popedom from this point (c. 1517) to the commencement of the council of Trent (1545) will be found in the article on the REFORMATION.

The distinctive features of the doctrinal belief formulated by the council of Trent were mainly the outcome of Jesuit influences (see JESUITS) ; and, enforced as these tenets were by the terrorism of the Inquisition, the Increased freedom of thought which during the revival of learning hostility na(j passed comparatively unchallenged within the pale papacy °^ kne cnurch was now effectually extinguished. But it to free must at the same time be admitted that, concurrently thought, with this tendency to greater rigidity of doctrine, Roman Catholicism became characterized by far greater earnest-ness of religious teaching, displayed a remarkable activity in the cultivation of theological learning, and abolished, or sought to abolish, many glaring abuses. In this amend-ment, however, Rome had at first but small share. The Reformation movement within the church took its rise in Spain; and the purely political feeling which now con-stituted so considerable an element in the papal policy led each pontiff to regard with no little jealousy the overween-ing aggrandizement of the Spanish monarchy. Political considerations, in fact, sometimes prevailed over theologi-cal sympathies. PAUL III. (1534-49), in endeavouring to trim his sails between the contending influences of France and Spain, more than once took side with the powers who were fighting the battle of Protestantism. While thus involved in antagonism to the chief of the Financial Catholic powers, the Roman see found its difficulties not a little enhanced by the alienation of the revenues formerly derived from those countries which now professed the Protestant faith. Prior to the 16th century the States of the Church had enjoyed an almost unrivalled prosperity. That prosperity was mainly owing to their immunity from direct taxation. Nothing had contributed so much to the unpopularity of Hadrian VI. as his endeavour to levy a small hearth-tax, in order to replenish to some extent the coffers emptied by the prodigality of his predecessor. The loss of the revenues alienated by successive pontiffs was now aggravated by the failure of the supplies derived from the collection of Peter's pence and annates in Protestant countries. Even the sums levied in those kingdoms which continued to profess Catholicism suffered consider-able diminution before they reached the Roman treasury, and the main source of revenue at this period appears to have been that represented by the sale of offices. In the serious financial embarrassment in which the curia now found itself involved, every expedient was had recourse to in order to meet the inevitable expenditure; and it is to the example of the papal treasury that Von Ranke attri-butes the commencement of national debts. In default of the contributions no longer levied in England, in the United Provinces, and in northern Germany, the pope found himself under the necessity of taxing his own territory; and in this manner the Romagna, once so prosperous, was crushed by a weight of taxation which ultimately embraced every article of merchandise. The farmer and the peasant left the land; and the papal pro-vinces, formerly the most fertile and prosperous in Italy, degenerated into a series of ill-cultivated, unwholesome, and unproductive wastes. Relations If left to rely solely on the loyalty of its adherents and to the the prevalent impression of its abstract merits, the position temporal Qj popedom at this period, viewed in connexion with

"DOWGr

its financial difficulties, might well have seemed almost hopeless, had not its interests
been so closely interwoven with those of the secular power. The latter indeed was frequently induced to connive at the papal exactions from the mere fact that it shared largely in the proceeds; and in France the very advantages gained by the crown led it to regard with complacency a system by which the royal influence and the royal revenues were alike so largely augmented. The temporal ruler was thus sometimes found a firm supporter of the popedom, even although involved in hostilities with the reigning pope.

During the pontificate of JULIUS III. (1550-55), who dreamed away his closing years in the splendid palace and gardens which he had himself designed near the Porta del Popolo, the curia played a merely passive part in the great European drama ; but with the accession of Cardinal Caraffa, who assumed the title of PAUL IV. (1555-59), it became animated by another spirit. An energetic supporter of the doctrines already promulgated by the council of Trent, devoted to the cause of the church, but hating the Spaniard with the traditional hatred of a Neapolitan, his support was given entirely to the French interests in European politics. He proclaimed himself at once the liberator of Italy and the reformer of the church. In his plans of reform, although he relied mainly on the Inquisition, he included alike the monastic orders and the secular clergy. His successor, PIUS IV. (1559-65), Pius IV. although a man of different character, pursued a similar policy. The council of Trent assembled again under his auspices, but its discussions now concerned only points of Roman doctrine and discipline, and the rupture with the Protestant communions was complete. With the accession of Pius V. (1566-72), who had filled the office of Pius V. chief inquisitor in Rome, the conditions of the papal policy had become less embarrassing. Spain now stood at the head of the Catholic powers, and England at the head of the Protestant. In France the issue of the deadly struggle that was being waged between the Huguenots and the League, which seemed likely to decide the religious destinies of Europe, was still doubtful. Philip II. accordingly appeared as the natural ally of the popedom, and Pius, having once accepted the position, remained true to this alliance throughout. The lavish expenditure of GREGORY XIII. (1572-85) brought back the former con-dition of financial embarrassment. He not only made large grants to aid the cause of Catholic education, and especially the newly-founded colleges of the Jesuits, but he systematically subsidized the powers who fought on the side of the church. Although the revenues of the papal states were again on the increase, the rate of exchange during Pope Gregory's pontificate was never once in their favour. At last the pressure became insupportable. The spirit of Guelf and Ghibelline revived. The Romagna rose in insurrection; and, eventually, the aged pontiff died broken-hearted amid the disorganization and lawless-ness which surrounded him on every side. But already the tide of Protestantism was beginning to ebb; and the famous bull In Coena Domini, which Gregory promulgated in 1584, enjoining the extirpation of the different heresies in Germany, indicated the growing weakness of the Lutheran communities.

The five years embraced by the pontificate of SIXTUS V. (1585-90), the last of the really great pontiffs, mark another great crisis in the history of the popedom. At his accession, the papal authority had dwindled to its narrowest limits, being recognized scarcely anywhere save in Spain and Italy, and in a few islands of the Mediterranean. To his tact, ability, and good sense, conjoined with the widespread activity of the Jesuits, and aided by the dissensions that prevailed among the Pro-testant sects, Catholicism was mainly indebted for the remarkable reaction in its favour which set in with ths closing years of the 16 th century—an episode of which the 7 th book of Kanke's History of the Popes supplies a comprehensive sketch. Sixtus conciliated the great landed proprietors whom his predecessor had driven into insurrection by calling in question the validity of their title-deeds and by attempts to re-appropriate their lands; he repressed the prevailing brigandage with merciless severity; notwithstanding his lowly extraction, he succeeded in winning the favour of the great houses—the Colonnas and Orsinis; he developed the industries and manufactures of the States; no pontiff ever effected so much for the improvement and adornment of the capital; its population, which under Paul IV. had sunk to forty-five thousand, rose to one hundred thousand; "for the third time," says Eanke, "Rome stood forth to view as the chief city of the world." Another reform introduced by Sixtus was that by which the college of cardinals, before a fluctuating body, was definitely fixed at seventy. The inconsistencies of his foreign policy are probably to be partly explained by the fact that, although the promo-tion of the interests of the church was his most cherished object, he had conceived a thorough distrust of Philip II. At the same time, while he believed that those interests would be most effectually served by the establishment of peace, and order, he necessarily regarded with aversion the revolutionary doctrines of the League, democratic in poli-tics although ultramontane in doctrine. From Henry of Navarre, indeed, he could not withhold his tribute of admiration; and on the death of Henry III. he revoked the sentence of excommunication which he had pronounced against the great Huguenot leader, and by his general policy facilitated his return to the communion of the church. In like manner, although he sanctioned the scheme of the Spanish Armada, and even promised a mag-nificent subvention to the enterprise, as soon as he learned that, if successful, it might result in the annexation of England to the crown of Spain, he withdrew his support, and, when the failure of the expedition was known, could not conceal his satisfaction.

Henry IV. of France,

Edict of Nantes.

From the time of Sixtus V. the chief importance and interest of papal history are to be found in its relations to France and Spain and to the Jesuit order (see JESUITS, vol. xiii. pp. 652-656) and, somewhat later, to Jesuitism and Jansenism (see JANSENISM, vol. xiii. p. 566) combined. During the rest of the reign of Henry IV. France witnessed a virtual triumph of Gallican principles; and, although he himself became a humble suppliant for readmission within the communion of the Roman Church, it was only to give more effectual expression to the principles of religious toleration. The edict of Nantes (1598) was promulgated, in fact, in defiance of the strongly expressed disapproval of CLEMENT VIII. (1592-1605). The per-mission accorded to the Jesuits to return to France (1603) was a measure resolved upon by Henry in op-position to the advice of both De Thou and Sully. He appears to have been actuated simply by motives of ex-pediency, but his expectations proved singularly fallacious. The Jesuits turned the opportunity thus afforded them to signal account, and succeeded in establishing a powerful ascendency in France throughout the 17th and the first half of the 18th century. The pontificate of Clement was distinguished by two other events, the one memorable in politics, the other in literature. Of these, the former was the reversion of the duchy of Ferrara, claimed from the house of Este by the apostolic see as an escheated fief; the other was the publication of the greater part of the Annates Annates Ecclesiastici of Baronius, a work of immense labour of Baro- an(j research, which, although it could not stand the test of mus- later criticism, rendered material support to the pretensions of the papacy. Baronius himself always maintained that the papacy was more indebted to France than to any other European power ; and on the death of Clement his claim to the papal chair was strongly supported by the French party in the conclave, his election being, however, lost through the opposition of the party of Spain.

It was chiefly by skilful manoeuvring that, after the few days' pontificate of LEO XI., the election of the Cardinal Borghese, as PAUL V. (1605-21), was carried, not-withstanding the opposition of the same party. Paul's election had really been in no small measure owing to the fact that his previous career had not happened to involve him in enmity with any of the cardinals. It is stated that Cardinal Bellarmine would have been chosen in his place, but the conclave dreaded the consequences of raising a Jesuit to the papal chair. Paul affected, how-ever, himself to regard his election as owing to the special intervention of Providence, and assumed the air and de-meanour which he held suitable to one divinely commissioned to restore the pontifical office to its former dignity. No pontiff ever insisted with more inflexible rigour on the attributes and exclusive powers of his office. In the measures which he initiated for the purpose of extending the influence and possessions of the church, Paul soon found himself involved in a conflict with the powerful and flourishing republic of Venice. He accused the Signory of opposing the institution of monastic and other religious foundations, of conniving at the alienation of ecclesiasti-cal property and at the suspension of the authority of the ecclesiastical courts. Finding those whom he addressed less amenable to his wishes than he anticipated, he pro-ceeded to lay the whole republic under an interdict. Such a sentence rendered it obligatory on the religious orders throughout the province to discontinue all the customary religious services; the republic, however, en-joined them, under pain of banishment, to continue those services as before. The Jesuits, along with two other newly-founded orders, the Capuchins and the Theatines, alone ventured to disobey, and were banished from the province. A fierce controversy ensued, in which the conduct of the republic was vindicated by the able pen of Fra Paolo Sarpi (better known as "Father Paul"), while Baronius and Bellarmine defended the cause of Rome. By Englishmen at that time resident in Italy, such as Sir Henry Wotton and the eminent Bedell (afterwards bishop of Ardagh), and by the English court,- the contest was watched with lively interest as affording hopes of an Italian Reformation. The quarrel was skilfully fomented by Spain, and actual hostilities were averted only by the mediation of Henry IV. of France. The later years of Paul's pontificate present him in the more favourable light of a reformer of many abuses which had crept into the law-courts of the States, and the author of numerous im-provements in the capital. He enlarged both the Vatican and the Quirinal; and the Borghese family from his time ranked as one of the wealthiest in the city.

The protection extended to the Jesuits by Paul was continued by his successor, GREGORY XV. (1621-23), and was well repaid by their devotion and energy as pro-pagandists. Gradually, in kingdom after kingdom, in principality after principality, the ground won by Pro-testantism, whether of the Lutheran or the Eeformed confession, was in a great measure recovered. In Bohemia, in Silesia, and in Moravia the Protestant ministers, if not put to death or imprisoned, were driven out, their churches closed, and their congregations forbidden to assemble. Even in the United Provinces numerous converts were made, and a footing regained for Catholic teaching which has never since been lost, while in Asia and in America new territories were won which might fairly seem to compensate the church for all that had been wrested from

PaulV.

The re-public of Venice.

Fra Paolo Sarpi.

Gregory XV.

Services rendered by the Jesuits.

it in the Old World. The cordial co-operation of the curia with the society of Jesus was suspended, however, Urban during the pontificate of URBAN VIII. (1623-44). A VIII. man of resolute and imperious nature, his conception of his own prerogatives is indicated by his memorable retort, when, on one occasion, he was confronted with a quota-tion from the pontifical constitutions, that the dictum of a living pope was worth more than those of a hundred dead ones. He claimed, indeed, the promptest deference for his decisions; while the college of cardinals, which he but rarely assembled in consistory, was treated by him with little respect. A Florentine by birth, he had witnessed in his earlier years the bitter struggle between the popedom and Spain; and it had become the cherished design of his life to render the States powerful and independent, and himself, as pontiff, the representative of a formidable political confederation. To this end he deemed it essential to prevent the duchy of Mantua from falling into the hands of a ruler who represented an influence antagonistic to, or independent of, Spain ; and in pursuit of this policy he sought the aid of Eichelieu. It was the time when the great cardinal was maturing his designs against the house of Hapsburg; and, somewhat singularly, the pope-dom was thus brought into political alliance with the statesman who was aiming at the overthrow of the very power to which Roman Catholicism had been most indebted for its restoration. In the policy of Eichelieu and that of Urban there was indeed a similar inconsist-ency. The former, while he persecuted the Huguenots at home, allied himself with Protestant powers like England, the United Provinces, and the northern German principalities ; the latter, while he had recourse to the most rigorous measures for the suppression of Protestantism in Germany, allied himself with the power on which that Protestant-ism mainly relied for support. It is scarcely too much to affirm to say that Protestantism, in the first half of the 17th century, owed its very existence on the Continent to the political exigencies of the popedom. During Urban's pontificate, in the year 1634, the duchy of Urbino was incorporated, like Ferrara, into the papal dominions, which now extended from the Tiber to the Po, uninterrupted save by the little republic of San Marino. Innocent The policy of INNOCENT X. (1644-55) was a complete ^ reversal of that of his predecessor, whose family he perse-cuted with implacable animosity. So injurious indeed were the effects of the contentions produced by these family feuds on the peace and prosperity of the city that ALEXANDER VII. (1655-67) on his election took an oath before the crucifix that he would never receive his kindred in Rome. Not less serious were the dissensions produced by the strife of political parties. We find an English visitor to Rome, during Innocent's pontificate, deeming it prudent to place himself under the protection of two cardinals—the one representing the French, the other the Spanish faction. In Innocent's eyes the treaty of Westphalia assumed the aspect of a twofold disaster : in the humiliation which it inflicted on the house of Hapsburg; and in the distinctness with which it proclaimed the superiority of the state over the church, by the declaration that all ordinances of the canon or civil law which might be found to be at variance with the provisions of the treaty should be considered null and void. Innocent even went so far as to denounce the treaty and to threaten those who assented to its provisions with excommunication—a menace treated with contemptuous indifference even by the Catholic powers. Throughout France the reign of Louis XIV, indeed, there existed a perfect during understanding between that monarch and the Jesuits; reign of and with their support he could set the pope himself at Louis defiance with impunity. Louis asserted more unreservedly than any of his predecessors the royal privileges known as the droit de regale. By this ancient right the crown claimed, whenever a bishopric was vacant, both the revenues and the distribution of patronage attached to the see as long as the vacancy continued. But in the southern provinces of Guienne, Languedoc, Provence, and Dauphine this right had hitherto never been enforced. In an edict issued in 1673, however, Louis declared that the droit de regale would in future be enforced throughout the whole extent of the royal dominions. It was in vain that Innocent protested and threatened to excommunicate those who espoused the royal claims. Louis, who was supported by the great mass of the French clergy, remained firm; and nine years later a further blow was aimed at papal predominance by the promulgation of the famous Declaratio Cleri Gallicani. In this notable manifesto, which was drawn up at St Germains in 1682 and revised by Bossuet, a formal denial was given to the theory that the pope had any power over the temporalities of kings; the superiority of a general council over the pope was once again affirmed; the administration of the affairs of the church by the pontiff, it was declared, ought in all cases to be subject to the canon law, and the papal authority to be exercised exclusively in connexion with questions of dogma, but even in such matters the de-cisions of the pontiff were not infallible and were subject to revision. INNOCENT XI. (1676-89), who had in the meantime succeeded to the papal chair, declared these resolutions to be null and void, and severely censured the French bishops who had assented to them. His repu-tation for integrity and a genuine desire to reform the church gave additional force to his protest. Among other measures for restoring order in Rome he had deprived the French ambassador of the much-abused right of asylum which, by long tradition, attached to the embassy and its extensive precincts, and afforded shelter to many of the most desperate characters in the city. The ambassador refused to yield up the privilege, and Innocent thereupon excommunicated him. Louis now seized upon Avignon, took the papal nuncio prisoner, and convened a general council. It was even believed that he had at one time con-ceived the design of creating the archbishop of Paris, who seconded and approved his policy, patriarch of France, and thus severing the last ties that bound the Gallican Church to the popedom. The courage and resolution which Inno-cent exhibited under these trying circumstances were by no means inspired solely by the conviction of the justice of his cause. Perhaps at no period are the interests and sym-pathies of religious parties to be found presenting a more complicated study. All Europe at this time was watching with alarm the rapid aggrandizement of the French monarchy ; and Innocent, in his desire to see some check placed on that aggrandizement, was even far from wishing that the Huguenots should be expelled from France. With William of Orange he openly avowed his sympathy, and it was from secret papers in the cabinet of his minister of state that Louis, through the agency of a spy, first learned the prince's designs upon England. While the Jesuits, . again, were co-operating with Louis in his assertion of the Gallican liberties, the Protestant powers were giving in-direct support to the maintenance of the papal pretensions. From the Jesuits Louis also received valuable aid in the question of the Spanish succession; and it is to their machinations that contemporary writers ascribe the fact that the Bourbon, Philip of Anjou, was named by Charles II. as the heir to the Spanish monarchy.

The virtues and milder wisdom of INNOCENT XII. (1691-1700) won from Louis what the unconciliatory attitude of his two predecessors, Innocent XI. and ALEXANDER VIII. (1689-91) had not been able to obtain. In 1693 Louis himself notified to the pontiff that the " Declaration" would

no longer be imposed as obligatory on the Gallican clergy. Innocent responded by giving his assent to the above-mentioned disposition of the Spanish crown by Charles II. Other circumstances concurred to bridge over the breach which for half a century had separated the French monarchy from the popedom. The revocation of the edict of Nantes (1685) had conciliated both the curia and the Jesuits; and in 1699 the feeling of accord between the French monarch and Innocent was confirmed by the condemnation of Fenelon's Maximes des Saints. While Protestantism was being crushed in France, Catholicism was obtaining in other countries the immunities which it would not grant. In 1697 the elector Frederick Augustus II. consented to declare himself a Catholic in order to gain the crown of Poland, and by this means a certain toleration was secured for Roman doctrine among a population bigotedly attached The bull to Lutheranism. In 1713 the celebrated constitution Uni-

Unigenitus,

Expulsion of the Jansenists from France.

genitus Dei Filius promulgated by CLEMENT XI. (1700-21) not only proved a death-blow to Jansenism, but involved in nearly the same fate that party which had hitherto fought the battle of liberalism in the Gallican Church. "All the extravagancies," says a recent writer, " engendered by Jansenism in its later and more questionable developments recoiled, however unjustly, upon the system of ecclesiastical policy vindicated by Gerson, De Marca, and Bossuet. Jansenism became manifestly dangerous to public order and the security of the state; Gallicanism, in the view of a despotic Government, seemed involved in the same odious category; and it was deemed necessary, in consequence, to visit both with an impartial exhibition of the same persecuting rigour " (Jervis, Church of France, ii. 278). Many of the Jansenists, driven from France, retired to Utrecht, a church which, without professing Jansenist principles, long continued to uphold the standard of doctrine fixed by Tridentine canons in opposition to the dangerous advance of Jesuitism. The Jansenists were always distinguished by their resolute opposition to the theory of papal infalli-bility, and with their fall a chief obstacle to the promulga-tion of that dogma was removed.

Decline of the popedom in political importance.

But, while, with respect to the acceptance of doctrine, the losses of the 16th century were thus materially retrieved, the popedom was sinking rapidly in political importance. Its influence in the Italian peninsula dwind-led to within the limits of the States of the Church; and the dynastic succession in Naples and Sicily, in Parma portance. and Piacenza, underwent a total change without the curia or the pontifical interests being in any way consulted. The results of the War of the Spanish Succession dis-appointed in every way the hopes of Clement XI.; and his chagrin, when he found himself compelled to recognize the pretensions of the archduke Charles to the Spanish crown, was intense. The manner in which the conclusion of the war demonstrated the growing power of England was again a sinister omen for the permanence of the papal system.

Increas-ing unpopularity of the Jesuit order.

The order to whose efforts, notwithstanding an exceptional experience in France, the popedom had in other countries been largely indebted was also destined to a signal reverse. The conviction had long been growing up in the chief cities of the Continent that wherever the representatives of Jesuitism obtained a footing the cause of public order and domestic peace was placed in jeopardy. And, while, in distant lands, the vaunted successes of the Jesuit missionaries too often represented the diffusion of a merely nominal Christianity, their activity as traders was a constant source of irritation to the mercantile communities. We find, accordingly, the statesmen of Catholic Europe exhibiting, in the middle of the 18th century, a remarkable unanimity in their estimate of Jesuitism as a mischievous element in society, and also showing an increasing determination to bring all ecclesiastical institutions more and more under the control of the civil power. Carvalho, the Portuguese minister, who had himself become involved in a deadly struggle with the order at court, called upon BENEDICT XIV. (1740-58) to take measures for enforcing fundamental reforms among the whole body. Benedict, who recognized perhaps more fully than any other pontiff of the century the signs of the times, and who intro-duced not a few salutary reforms in the general relations of the curia, was far from disinclined for the task, but died before his schemes could be put in operation. His suc-cessor, CLEMENT XIII. (1758-69), on the other hand, professed to discern in the Jesuit body the surest stay of the church, and in 1765 gave his formal sanction to the peculiar form of devotion which they had introduced, known as the worship of the Sacred Heart. In 1768 he condemned their expulsion from France as "a grievous injury inflicted at once upon the church and the holy see." The dissensions fomented by their agency at the Bourbon courts continued, however, to increase; and in 1769 the representatives of the chief Catholic powers at the Koman court received instructions to present each a formal demand that the Jesuit order should be secularized and abolished. Clement, who had vainly appealed to the empress Maria Theresa for the exertion of her influence, died suddenly of apoplexy on the day preceding that on which a consistory was to have been held for the purpose of giving effect to the demands of the powers. It was expressly with the view that he should carry out the task which his predecessor had sought to evade that Car-dinal Ganganelli, CLEMENT XIV. (1769-74), was raised to the pontifical chair, chiefly through the Bourbon interest. Originally a Franciscan friar, and a man of retiring unworldly disposition, the new pontiff was painfully embarrassed by the responsibilities attaching to the policy which he was expected to carry out. At length, after four years spent in balancing conflicting evidence and overcoming the scruples of his own mind, he issued the brief Dominies et Redemptor Noster, for the suppression of the order, which he declared to have merited its ruin by " its restlessness of spirit and audacity of action." The remorse which he was said to have subsequently exhibited, combined with his sudden and mysterious end, were not without considerable effect upon his successor, Pius VI, (1775-99), who observed the utmost caution in carrying out the decree of Clement, and devoted his main efforts during his long pontificate to diverting the mind of Christendom from questions of doctrine to others of a practical and more pleasing character. The austere simplicity which had distinguished the Koman court in the time of Clement was exchanged for more than regal pomp and magnificence, while the pontiff's own subjects were benefited by the draining of the Pontine marshes, a work of immense labour, whereby a vast district extending along the sea-coast south of Rome was converted from an unhealthy swamp into a plain that subserved in some measure the purposes both of agriculture and commerce. That the suppression of the Jesuit order had been attended with no little danger to the interests of the Roman see was clearly shown by the progress which liberal opinions now began to make in Germany. The valuable researches of Muratori, which appeared in the earlier half of the 18th century had thrown a flood of light on all the circumstances of the develop-ment of the mediaeval papacy, and his labours as an editor had served, at the same time, to render the successive contemporary writers accessible for the first time to the ordinary scholar. In the year 1763 the famous treatise of Nicholas von Hontheim, suffragan bishop of Treves, published under the pseudonym of "Febronius," produced j a profound impression. It was entitled On the State of I the Church and the Legitimate Power of the Roman Bishop,

Clement XIV. decrees the sup-pressior of the order.

Pius VI.

Treatise of " Feb-ronius."

Policy of the emperor Joseph II.

The French Revolution.

Aboli-tion of the papal government.

Pins VII

and was mainly devoted to pointing out how largely the false decretals, and the application of their doctrines, had been made to subserve the later pretensions of Rome, and more especially her claims to assert the supremacy of the pontiff over general councils. On the accession of Joseph II., in 1780, to the throne of Austria, a new era commenced throughout the empire. Half the monasteries and friaries were suppressed. The bulls Uni-genitus and In Coena Domini were declared null and void within the limits of the empire. Toleration was extended to Protestant sects and to members of the Greek Church; and the introduction of papal dispensations within the Austrian dominions was declared unlawful, unless it could be shown that they were obtained without payment. Pius VI. vainly endeavoured to divert the emperor from his policy of reform by a personal visit to Vienna in 1782. He was received with enthusiasm by the populace, but with coldness by the emperor, and by prince Kaunitz, the emperor's chief adviser, with absolute rudeness. A few years later the outbreak of the French Revolution seemed to portend for the popedom a like fate to that which had overtaken the Jesuit order. A movement which abolished tithes, rejected Catholicism as the state religion, and confiscated the property of the church and the monastic orders in France was not likely, when its representatives appeared in Italy, to deal leniently with papal institutions. The demeanour of the National Assembly towards Pius himself had not been disrespectful; but the outrages on religious sentiment and decency itself perpetrated by the Convention drove the alarmed pontiff into the arms of Austria, with whom and the several reigning Italian princes he hastily concluded an offensive league. In the Italian campaign he met accordingly with no mercy at the hands of the Directory, and of Bonaparte acting as their representative. In 1797, first of all at Bologna and subsequently at Tolentino, the most rigorous conditions were imposed. The pontiff was compelled to cede to France not only Avignon and the Venaissin, but also the legations of Bologna, Ferrara, and the Romagna—an extent of territory representing fully a third of the papal dominions; while at the same time a heavy pecuniary contribution was levied, Shortly after the peace of Tolentino (February 1797) Pius was seized with an illness which seemed likely, at his advanced time of life, to prove fatal; and Napoleon, in anticipation of his death, gave instructions that no successor to the office should be elected, and that the papal government should be abolished. The sequel, however, having disappointed these expectations, the French ambassador in Rome proceeded through his agents to foment an insurrection—a design for which the demoralized condition of the capital afforded unusual facilities. The outbreak that ensued was immediately made the pretext for abolishing the existing rule, and in its place the Roman republic was proclaimed (15th February 1798). Neither his estimable character nor his advanced years served to shield the dethroned pontiff from wanton cruelty and indignities. He was treated as virtually a prisoner, his private property confiscated, and at last, after having been removed from one place of confinement to another, he expired at Valence, in August 1799, at the age of eighty-two.

It was under the protection of a schismatic power,— that of the emperor of Russia,—that, after a lapse of eight months, Pius Vll. (1800-23) was elected pope at Venice. To ordinary observers the condition of the papacy at this time seemed almost hopeless; and the skill with which those who guided its policy converted the very theories and events of the Revolution itself into a ladder whereby to regain the ancient vantage-ground is in its way not less remarkable than that contemporary career of military genius which was before long destined to so sudden an eclipse. Latin Christendom, observes Bunsen, seems throughout its history to have been ever vacillating between two extremes —that of the grossest superstition and that of the pro-foundest scepticism, of bigotry and of atheism. It can scarcely, indeed, be doubted that the tolerance and indifference, the results of contempt with respect to all religious questions, which followed upon the Revolution largely favoured the reintroduction of Roman doctrine. By the curia itself the experiences of the past were interpreted in a manner eminently favourable to its own pretensions; the altar, it was asserted, was ever the surest support of the throne, and the spiritual authority claimed by the supreme pontiff afforded the best security for the maintenance of really free institutions. Pius VIL, who as Cardinal Chiara-monte had at one time affected to approve of democratic principles, succeeded in gaining the good will of Bonaparte, and his accession was shortly followed by the concordat of 1801. The First Consul had already astonished the world by the startling change of opinion to which he gave expression in the Declaration of Milan, to the effect that " society without religion is like a ship without a compass"; and, having now resolved on the restoration of a monarchical form of government, he effected an apparent reconciliation with the Roman pontiff in order to strengthen his own hands. Catholicism was re-established as the state religion of France; but the confiscated property of the church was not restored, while the pretended reintroduction of the papal authority was deprived of all real validity by appending to the concordat certain "articles organiques" which effectually, debarred the pontiff from the exercise of any real jurisdiction within the realm. In the concordat made with the Italian republic in 1803 the canon law was revived as the code whereby all questions not provided for in new articles were to be decided. Notwithstanding that he warmly resented the manner in which he had been duped, Pius was ultimately prevailed upon by the consummate address of Talleyrand to crown Napoleon as emperor in Paris. The immediate result of this imprudent act, as regarded the popedom, was the assertion of imperial rights in Rome itself on the part of the new emperor, and a demand that the pontiff should henceforth make common cause with him against the enemies of France. On his refusal Pius was made a prisoner, and the temporal sovereignty of the Roman see declared to be at an end. At Fontainebleau, in 1813, a new concordat was wrung from the infirm and aged pontiff (whose position and treatment strongly recalled those of his predecessor), and he was compelled to surrender almost the last remnants of his authority in France and to disown all claim to rank as a temporal ruler. Pius VII. survived, however, not only to witness the overthrow of his oppressor, but to regain with the Restoration both his spiritual and temporal prerogatives ; and it was a notable feature in the proceedings that his resumption of the traditional pontifical rights in connexion with the legations was effected, in opposition to the wishes of Austria, with the support of England. He regained his chair, indeed, amid the best wishes of the Protestant powers,—a sympathy which, had he chosen to throw his influence into the scale that favoured advancement and reform, he might have retained unimpaired to the close of his pontificate. His policy, however, was thenceforth altogether reactionary. On the one hand he suppressed the circulation of the Scriptures in the vernacular; on the other, by a bull of 7th August 1814, he recalled the Jesuits, who since their dispersion in Latin Christendom had transferred the scene of their labours to Prussia and Russia. In other respects Pius's administration of his office was exemplary, and the same may be said of that of his successors, LEO XII. (1823-29), Pius

Restoration of the pope-dom by Bonaparte.

Aboli-tion of the temporal power.

Succes-sors of Pius VII.

VIII. (1829-30), and GREGORY XVI. (1831-46). The adversities arising out of the Revolution had proved a salutary discipline. Nepotism ceased to disgrace the papal court. Ecclesiasticism itself assumed another tone : its morality was pure ; its zeal in the performance of its duties conspicuous. In France there arose a new school, known as the Parti Prêtre, the school of Chateaubriand, Lamennais, and Montalembert, which rejected the ancient Gallican claims and principles, and everywhere inculcated loyalty and submission to Rome as the first duty of the Réaction Catholic. In Germany neither the enlightened and in Ger- strenuous efforts of Wessenberg nor the statesmanlike policy of Metternich could produce concerted action among the several states, which were accordingly eventually reduced to the necessity of each making separate terms with the curia on an independent basis. The result, in nearly all cases, was that, in reconstructing its ecclesiastical or-ganization, and endeavouring at the same time to estab-lish a certain modus vivendi in its diplomatic relations with Rome, each state was compelled to make concessions which largely favoured the re-establishment of ultramontane in-stitutions. The signal failure of Wessenberg, in his ad-ministration of the see of Constance, to reintroduce the principles advocated by "Febronius," may be cited as one of the most notable instances of the defeat of liberal principles. In the Netherlands and in Silesia similar reactionary movements took place. In England, the Catholic Emancipation Act (1829), although conceived in a spirit of conciliation, proved, in the embittered rela-tions then existing with Ireland, of little avail, and in reality only imparted fresh strength to the machina-tions of the ultramontane party. The main facts in the history of the popedom from this period will be found under the head of Pius IX. (1846-77), pp. 156-8, supra.

The following list taken from Gams (Series Episcoporum Romanse Ecclesiae) gives the succession of the pontiffs as accepted by the Roman Church and recorded in its registers. of the Roman Church.

== TABLE ==

== TABLE ==

Authorities.—The great series known as the Annales Ecclesiastici of Baronius, continued by Raynaldus, 42 vols. fol. (1738-56), represents a laborious but uncritical collection of materials from the earliest times down to the Reformation. The continuation by A. Theiner, embracing the period 1572-85, is of higher value. In a critical investigation of the original sources, the great work of F. Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen und der Literatur des canonischen Bechts in Abendlande (1871 sq.) is indispensable. Milman's History of Latin Christianity continues to be the fullest and most impartial source of information in English from the 1st to the 15th century; this may be supplemented by Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter vom 5ten bis löten Jahrhundert, 8 vols. (1859-72), which throws considerable light on the political and social relations of the city and the papal States ; and also by Thomas Greenwood, Cathedra Petri, a political History of the great Latin Patriarchate, 6 vols. (1856-65). This latter work, although published subsequently to the first edition of Milman, was written before it, and, according to the author, without reference to its pages ; it deserves the praise of being, at least in the earlier volumes, a piece of learned and laborious research on the part of a layman of considerable ac-quirements and candid disposition. In a comparison of the views and treatment of the two foregoing works, Win. von Giesebrecht's Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit, 5 vols. (5th ed. now publishing), will be found useful. A History of the Papacy during the Period of the Reformation, by Canon Creighton (only partly published), promises to furnish a valuable account of this period, derived from the original sources. From the Reformation, Leopold von Ranke, Die römischen Päpste in den letzten vier Jahrhunderten, 3 vols. (7th ed., 1878), is the classic work. A translation of the first edition into English by Sarah Austin appeared in 1840, and has been fre-quently reprinted. H. Geffcken, Church and State, translated by E. F. Taylor, 2 vols. (1877), supplies additional illustration, more especially of the relations in Germany. Nippold, Handbuch der neuesten Kirchengeschichte, 2 vols. (1880-83), traces the subject from the Reformation to the present time. The difficulties attach-ing to the first commencement, the earlier chronology, and the episcopal succession are elaborately treated by R. A. Lipsius, Die Quellen der römischen Petrussage (1872), and Chronologie der römischen Bischöfe bis zur Mitte des vierten Jahrhunderts (1869). For the abstract treatment of the subject, Thomassin, Vetus et nova Ecclesiae Disciplina (1773), supplies the views of the moderate adherent of the Galliean Church as opposed to the ultramoutanists; while the classic though somewhat antiquated discussion by Bingham in his Antiquities of the Christian Church (1st ed., 1708- 22) gives the corresponding yiew of the moderate Anglican. The treatise of R. Baxmann, Die Politik der Päpste, von Gregor I. bis auf Gregor VIJ., 2 vols. (1868-69), is of considerable merit. The Regesta Pontificum Romanorum, edited by Jaffe and Potthast, 3 vols., gives a kind of catalogue raisonne of the pontifical briefs, letters, and encyclicals from 67 to 1304 A.D. Of the letters them- selves no complete collection has appeared ; the volume edited by Coustant (1796) comes down only to 437, the more recent collection by Thiel embraces only the period 461-523. The Bulls of Innocent IV. and Benedict XI. have recently been,edited from the original MSS. in the Vatican, the former by M. Elie Berger, the latter by M. Grandjean. For information on technical points involving the relations of the popedom to the canon law and the church at large, see J. F. von Schultz, Lehrbuch des katholischen Kirchenrechts, 2 vols. (1856-60). The manual by F. Walter, Lehrbuch des Kirchen- rechts aller christlichen Confessionen (14th ed., 1871), of which the first edition appeared in 1822, illustrates the departure from the older ecclesiastical code which took its rise in the anti-Febronian movement. The abuses that arose out of the papal nepotism are depicted by Gregorio Leti (a convert from Romanism in the 17th century) in a well-known volume,—"II Nipotismo di Roma, or the History of the Pope's Nephews from the time of Sixtus IV. to the death of Alexander VII., in two parts : written originally in Italian and Englished by W. A., London, 1669." The tombs of the pontiffs and the associations they recall are admirably described by Gregorovius in a little volume entitled Die Grabdenkmäler der Päpste (2d ed., 1881). (J. B. M.)

Footnotes

The design of the present article is simply to give the main outlines of the history of the Papacy as an institution ; the details connected with the personal history of each pontiff will be found under the respective names of the different popes. The dates immediately after the name of each pope denote the period of his pontificate.

For this date see article " Pope" in Smith's Diet, of Christian Antiquities, p. 1657.

An expression which, it must he noted, is to be understood with considerable qualification as applied to the Roman province.
An expression which, it must he noted, is to be understood with considerable qualification as applied to the Roman province.

2 The evidence aiforded in the above two treatises carries the greater weight in that they were not written until after Tertullian had become a convert to the austere tenets of Montanism, when he must have been all the more inclined to favour the type of Christianity which then prevailed at Rome.

In the canons of the council of Nicsea (325) the authority of a
The story of the "Donation of Constantine" and the long enumeration of the possessions which he bestowed on the church, preserved in the Liber Pontificalis, must be looked upon as accretions of a later period. It is supposed, however, that Constantine built the original Vatican basilica, the church of St Agnes, and the Lateran.

That is, unless we admit the genuineness of the canons of the council of Sardica (343), which probably few who have studied the evidence will be prepared to do.

Ka0' Sv rpóirov Kcà èv TOÌS irpaKTUco'ts TSIV olicoufxeviKwv auvódcoi/ Kaì eV TO7S lépois Kavocri SiaAauPdvercu. For a long time these words were correctly rendered in the Latin, " quern ad modum et in gestis cecumenicorum concilioram et in sacris canonibus continetur, "and the passage is invariably thus quoted by the 15th and early 16th century theologians. In the Roman edition of Abraham Cretensis, however, the obvious'meaning of the Greek, viz., that the prerogatives of the pope are to be determined and exercised according to the canons of the ancient councils, is done away with by the change of et to etiam ; and the sense of the passage (which thus becomes merely a confirmatory reference) is, that the prerogatives enumerated belonged to the pope, and were also recognized in the ancient councils.






The above article was written by: J. Bass Mullinger.