Thus copal officials, archdeacons, and all who could then excommunicate, followed the papal example in this respect. They considered the Roman Church their model, and inferred that they should not be niggardly in the use of such weapons. And if, as often happened, bishops themselves were suspended or excommunicated, simply for being unwilling or unable to pay the legates their journey money, why should laymen fare better? it came to pass, as Dubois said in 1300, that at every sitting of the episcopal officials in France more than 10,000 souls were thrust out of the way of salvation into the hands of Satan ;1 and in every parish, thirty, forty, or even seventy persons were excommunicated on the slenderest pretexts. Absolution from censures could indeed be purchased, but an exorbitant price was often demanded.2 § X.-The Personal Attitude of the Popes. The means used by the Popes to secure obedience, and break the force of opposition among people, princes, or clergy, were always violent. The interdict which suddenly robbed millions, the whole population of a 1 Mémoires de l'Acad. des Inscript. (1855), xviii. 458. 2 See the episcopal memorial drawn up for the General Council of 1311, Bzovius, Annal. Eccl. ann. 1311, p. 163 (ed. Colon.) country,—often for trifling causes which they had nothing to do with themselves,—of Divine worship and sacraments, was no longer sufficient. The Popes declared families, cities, and states outlawed, and gave them up to plunder and slavery, as, for instance, Clement v. did with Venice, or excommunicated them, like Gregory XI., to the seventh generation, or they had whole cities destroyed from the face of the earth, and the inhabitants transported, -the fate Boniface VIII. determined on for Palestrina. It is a psychological marvel how this unnatural theory of a priestly domination, embracing the whole world, controlling and subjugating the whole of life, could ever have become established. It would have required superhuman capacities and Divine attributes to wield such a power even in the most imperfect way with some regard to equity and justice, and conscientious and really religious men would have been tormented, nay, utterly crushed, under the sense of its rightfulness and the corresponding obligations it involved. There was indeed no want of modest phraseology; every Pope asserts in the customary language that his merit and 1 Verci, Storia della Marca Trivig. iii. 87. capacities are unequal to the dignity and burden, but for all that, their constant endeavour for centuries to increase their already excessive power is a proof that no need for restricting themselves was usually realized. There have been kings who said they would not be absolute rulers if they could. So the Popes of the first centuries could say, We desire not to rule over canons and councils, but to be ruled by them. But since Nicolas I., and especially since Gregory VII., the principle was avowed that the Pope is lord of canons and councils; the law is not his will, but his will is law. In numberless cases, of course, his will was simply the custom and practical tradition of the Curia, and the Pope, the mightiest ruler in the world, was in one sense the most limited since the eleventh century, for he could only act as the temporary depositary of this capital of power, a steward who ought to increase, but must never suffer it to be diminished. The strongest will must succumb before the quiet, passive, but energetic resistance of a corporation bound together by common interests, working by a common rule, and striving for a common end; how much more the good intentions of individual Popes, generally of great age when elected, who saw but a few years of work before them, and knew by long experience the firmness of that serried phalanx of officials surrounding them, whose opposition soon reduced them to a mere trunk without arms or feet. And thus it came to pass that, while those at a distance felt and said that the proverbial shortness of Popes' lives was a providential dispensation to save the Church from utter ruin,1 the Popes admitted that they felt themselves the most unfortunate of men. Thus Adrian IV. was driven to the melancholy avowal that no condition is so pitiable as a Pope's, whose throne is planted thick with thorns, and his destiny only bitterness, with a heavy weight pressing on his shoulders. It was this consciousness of supreme power in theory, and of lamentable slavery and dependence on a purely selfish Court in practice, combined with a feeling of the curse that must rest on such an administrative machine, composed of clerical parasites and vampires, which extorted the complaint uttered by Nicolas v. before two Carthusian monks, that no man in the world was more wretched and unhappy than he was, that nobody who came near him told him the truth, and that his Italians were insatiable, etc. Still later, Marcellus II. exclaimed, 2 1 Joh. Sarisb. Polyc. 6. 24; Opp. iv. 60 (ed. Giles). 2 Vespas, Vita Nicol. v. in Muratori, Script. Rer. Ital. xxv. 286. under a similar feeling of anguish, that he did not see how a Pope could be saved.1 One may say without exaggeration, that the individual Popes did not know the whole extent of their power, it was so immense. More than a century's legislation, steadily directed to the one end of selfaggrandizement, from the Dictatus of Gregory to the latest articles of the Extravagantes, had so well provided for every contingency, that a Pope could never be at a loss for some legitimate plea for interference, however purely secular the point at issue might be. By the formula, "non obstante," etc., the Pope's right was secured of suspending for that particular case any papal law which chanced to conflict with the interests of the Curia. The whole legislation of the ancient Church was gradually abrogated, or sometimes changed into the precise opposite. The papal decretals had devoured the decisions of councils, like Pharaoh's seven lean kine. What had become of the Nicene, Chalcedonian, and African canons? Like half-buried tombstones in a deserted churchyard, scattered fragments of this older order cropped up here and there. "It is clear as the noonday sun," said Chancellor Gerson, the 1 Pollidor. Vit. Marc. II., 132 (Roma, 1744). |