if we should silently consent to this, we should receive their friendship, gifts, marks of submission, praise, and much honour. But as to do this does not accord with our office and our duty, there is nothing which, by the grace of Christ, can separate us from His love; it is safer for us to die than abandon His law.' The Pope, who possessed no material power, and relied for support upon moral principles alone, must have meant that the law of God should everywhere be revered and obeyed; to enforce this was not merely his right, but his most solemn duty.

1 L. i. Ep. 63, ad Sanc. Reg. Arag. p. 339.

2 Nicol. II. Ep. ad Mediolan. (c. i. Omnes, d. 22): 'B. Petro terreni simul et coelestis imperii jura commisit.' Bossuet, P. i. 1. i. sect. 2, c. xxxvi. p. 179, explains the passage with a reference to Matt. xvi. 18.

3 Mamachi, Orig. et Antiqu. iv. p. 179.

By very many authors. Vide Anti-Janus, p. 136.

Leo M. Serm. 4, c. iv. p. 19: 'Quod tantam potentiam dedit ei, quem totius Ecclesiae principem fecit.'

Optat. c. Parmen. ii. 1. Aug. de Unit. Eccl. c. viii. n. 20 (on Ps. ii. 8), in Ps. lxxxi. et cxxi.

* Responsorium to the sixth lesson on the feast of SS. Peter and Paul, 29th June: Tibi tradidit Deus omnia regna mundi.'

Greg. 1. iii. Ep. 10, p. 439.

9 L. ii. Ep. 12, p. 372, ad Halberst. Ep.

PART III. IT IS FALSE THAT GREGORY TAUGHT THAT THE POPE COULD TAKE AND DISPOSE AS HE WOULD OF KINGDOMS AND OF THE POSSESSIONS OF PRIVATE Persons.

§ 1. Gregory's words. § 2. Personal holiness of Popes. § 3. Gregory's death in exile. § 4. Alleged fruitlessness of his conflicts. § 5. Their result. § 6. Gregory's aim to free the Church from ignominious shackles.

$ 1.

It is asserted that, according to Papal doctrine as declared by Gregory VII., at a Council held in Rome in 1080, the Pope, when presiding over a Council of bishops, could, in virtue of his authority to bind and to loose, dispose absolutely not only of empires, kingdoms, and principalities, but of the possessions of all men.1 But as a fact Gregory does not attribute this power

to bishops assembled with him in Council, for of these no mention was made, but to the Apostles Peter and Paul, upon their thrones in heaven, and thus indirectly to God, who will refuse nothing to these the Church's potent guardians and intercessors. Gregory prays that they will obtain that Henry, being mercifully chastised by God in this life, may be led to amend his ways, that all the world may acknowledge the power of the holy Apostles, and that sinners may do penance, and save their souls (with a reference to 1 Cor. v. 5).3 Gregory's words here, which certainly contain no dogmatic definition, have met with the same misrepresentation as has befallen other passages.5

1 Allgemeine Zeitung, 19 June 1870. Cf. Schulte, i. p. 32.

? Hefele notes this quite justly against Stenzel and Gfrörer, Conc. v. p. 132. Also Bossuet, 1.c. sect. 1, c. x. p. 104. Cf. Fessler, Sammlung vermischter Schriften, Freib. 1869, pp. 73-75; The True and the False Infallibility, trans. p. 70, original p. 41.

3 The words are: Agite nunc, quaeso, patres et principes sanctissimi' (who in the beginning are addressed as Petre princeps Apostolorum et Paule doctor gentium), ut omnis mundus intelligat et cognoscat, quia si potestis in coelo ligare et solvere, potestis in terra imperia, regna, principatus, ducatus, marchias, comitatus et omnium hominum possessiones pro meritis tollere unicuique et concedere. . . . Addiscant nunc reges et omnes saeculi principes, quanti vos estis, quid potestis. Confundantur utinam ad poenitentiam, ut spiritus sit salvus in die Domini.' Cf. 1. viii. Ep. 17, pp. 590, 591.

If the same remark should be made now as on another occasion, when a similar misrepresentation was corrected (A. Z. 24 March 1871), viz. ‘occasionally the Pope did not wait until the Apostles granted his prayer,' we reply that this is a confusion of two distinct things. The act of the Pope, which in no way involved the actual loss of dominion nor proceeded upon the general principle that the Pope could at will depose or appoint kings, this act was not denied by Bishop Fessler; who only sought to prove, and did prove, that Gregory did not lay down this general principle ascribed to him. Shifting the point in question has always been a favourite practice with the Janus party.

5 Another passage is quoted (in the Allgemeine Zeitung, 19 June 1870, No. 37) from Gratian, c. xv. d. 81, according to which any one commits the crime of idolatry who assists at the Mass of a married priest, and the blessing of such a one becomes a curse. This passage, which, as it stands, is not to be found in Gregory's epistles, is made up of two parts-the one, even to the words of the Prophet, 'I will curse your blessing,' as the Roman censor observes, is to be found in Marianus Scotus (Pertz, ser. v. 561; Migne, 1.c. P. ii. Ep. 55, p. 692; Mansi, Suppl. ii. 2; Migne, 1.c. pp. 785

788); the other is very common with Gregory, to wit, that as in 1 Kings xv. 22, 23, and in Greg. M. Lib. ult. Moral. c. x., disobedience is called idolatry (1. ii. Ep. 45, 66, pp. 397, 416; 1. iv. Ep. 11, p. 465; 1. v. Ep. 24, p. 480; 1. vii. Ep. 24, p. 568; 1. ix. Ep. 20, p. 622; Ep. 34, p. 638; Conc. Greg. ib. pp. 814, 817. Cf. also Innoc. III. 1. ii. Ep. 213, vi. 38; Migne, ccxiv. 772; ccxv. 43). Gregory was well aware that married priests, who were protected by the Council of Gangra, can. 4, formerly offered the Holy Sacrifice, especially in the East; but he had the strongest motives for executing his decree against clerical marriage with the support of the laity, whom for that reason he prohibited from unnecessarily hearing the Mass of 'presbyteri concubinarii' (1074, can. 4). By encouraging bad priests, and by disregarding the punishments which hung over them (can. 3), the people partook in their sin; and this disobedience was as the sin of idolatry (in the wider sense of the word); so too the blessing of a suspended or irregular priest, received in contempt of the Church's sentence, could not be productive of good. Non tam incontinentium, quam pro incontinentia damnatorum missas audire prohibuit,' says Bernold, Apolog. c. xix. p. 778; who also treats of the Conc. Gangr. c. 4.

§ 2.

What Gregory says of the personal holiness of Popes1 refers not to himself, but to the many saints amongst his predecessors. It is drawn from the Roman Synod of Pope Symmachus,2 and is supported by the example of numerous Popes who have become better and more zealous amidst the anxieties and labours of their pontificate.3 As an instance, take Leo IX., whom Gregory knew personally, and who lived as Pope a life of great austerity, and became more and more holy during his pontificate.4

1 Bossuet, 1. i. sect. 1, c. xi. p. 107. Janus, p. 121.

2 Bianchi, t. i. 1. ii. § 10, n. 3, pp. 280-283.

3 L. viii. Ep. 24: Ad Sedem Apostolicam rite ordinatos meritis B. Petri meliores effici et omnino sanctos.' But Ep. 21, ad Herm, is merely

'meliores.'

Cf. Höfler, Deutsche Päpste, ii. p. 70 seq.

$3.

Gregory died in exile, and without having accomplished the work he had undertaken; but the words of Stephen of Halberstadt show us how to regard this seeming failure. 'Is it not,' he says, 'more blessed to die a good death than to live an evil life? Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice' sake (Matt. v.

10). Was Nero blessed because he outlived the Apostles Peter and Paul; Herod, because he outlived St. James; or Pilate, because he outlived our Lord? Nothing of the kind; what more unblessed! The words of Wisdom (v. 1-9) are our mainstay we may be contemned, sent into banishment, put to death; but not bent, not vanquished. We are proud of our fathers, who, despising the commands of princes, have earned an everlasting reward." Did he live in vain, strive in vain, suffer in vain, whose fame after death was so great, whose followers were so numerous, whose friends were the noblest of his contemporaries, such as Altmann of Passau, Gebhard of Salzburg, Bruno of Merseburg, Anselm of Canterbury, Anselm of Lucca, Paul Bernried, Berthold, Donizo, Hugo of Flavigny, Mathilda of Tuscany, and the Empress Agnes ?2 If we allow that this holy Pope was not entirely free from all human weakness, the truth remains that, with courage and determination, he fought a fight that was necessary to secure the liberty and rights of the Church.3 The struggle was no doubt violent, but a struggle arising from the wisest laws, the most salutary institutions, the best-founded rights, is made violent by human passions; and it cannot be maintained that the cause of this civil war was really the opposition made by the Church to the shocking tyranny and vice then prevalent. To attribute the crimes and disorders consequent upon the great struggle to the Pope alone, and not also to Henry IV. and to the antipope, whose followers, in 1089, cruelly murdered Bishop Bonizo at Piacenza, and were guilty everywhere of acts of violence, is to disregard the first principles of justice. Gebhard of Salzburg and Hugo of Flavigny, as well as the assembly at Tribur in October 1076, attributed all the evils of the empire and the Church to King Henry and his assembly at Worms. It is by no means proved that Rome effected Henry V.'s desertion of his father, obstinate and excommunicated though he was.4 Conrad, his elder and better brother, had left his father in 1093. Henry V., in 1104-5, pretended that he required nothing of his father but the restoration of the peace of the Church and his reconciliation with the See of Rome; and sent deputies to

This we know, that

Paschal II., received absolution from the censures, and dispensation from the oath he had taken not to seize the government during the lifetime of his father.5 This the Pope could all the better grant as he had long ceased to consider Henry IV. the lawful king. Henry V. was, however, equally false to his spiritual and to his natural father, and his disposition was exactly like that of Henry IV., whose defective education and moral faults were repeated in his son. More than one of Gregory's successors had to suffer from them. But it cannot be said with truth that Gregory's conflict failed of obtaining the aim he had in view he succeeded in his principal object of putting an end to investiture as practised under Henry IV., and of establishing the free election to Church offices, which had become a vital question. His idea of delivering bishops and abbots from all feudal service was followed up by Urban II. and Paschal II., and was formally expressed for the first time at the Council of Clermont in 1096, and again, more emphatically, at the treaty of Sutri in 1111; but that was only a secondary, not a primary object. That the faith of nations was strengthened and the dignity of the priesthood enhanced; that greater purity was required from the clergy and more firmness from the bishops; that the Church was preserved from the danger of her offices becoming hereditary, and from the formation of a priestly caste; and that new religious societies, full of true zeal, arose,s—these were some results of Gregory's conflict, and truly they were not insignificant.

1 Stephan. Halberst. Ep. ad Walram. (Migne, 1.c. p. 1448).

2 Vide the witnesses collected by Gretser in Migne, 1.c. p. 199 seq. Godfrey of Vendôme, 1. i. Ep. 7 (Migne, clvii. p. 457), quotes the veridica vox B. Gregorii, qui pro defensione fidei mortuus est in exilio.'

3 Vide also Reumont, Gesch. der Stadt. Rom. ii. p. 366 seq.

4 Abbot Hermann, in the Narratio restaur. Abbat. S. Martini, stands apart and far from the scene of action. Otbert, de Vita Henr. IV. and Otho of Freising, vii. 8, say that he was incited to it by the discontented nobles. Vide also Giesebrecht, Kaisergeschichte, iii. p. 702 seq.

5 Pertz, v. 108. Stenzel, Gesch. der fränk. Kaiser, 580 seq. Döllinger, Lehrbuch, d. K.G. ii. pp. 155, 156. Hefele, Conc. Gesch. v. p.

250.

• Hildebert, Cenom. ii. Ep. 21: Quis enim potest praeter eum invenire,