Nearly three centuries passed before the seed sown produced its full harvest. For almost two hundred years, from the death of Nicolas I. to the time of Leo IX., the Roman See was in a condition which did not allow of any systematic acquisition and enforcement of new or extended rights. For above sixty years (883-955) the Roman Church was enslaved and degraded, while the Apostolic See became the prey and the plaything of rival factions of the nobles, and for a long time of ambitious and profligate women. It was only renovated for a brief interval (997-1003) in the persons of Gregory v. and Silvester II., by the influence of the Saxon emperor. Then the Papacy sank back into utter confusion and moral impotence; the Tuscan Counts made it hereditary in their family; again and again dissolute boys, like John XII. and Benedict IX., occupied and disgraced the Apostolic throne, which was now bought and sold like a piece of merchandise, and at last three Popes fought for the tiara, until the Emperor Henry III. put an end to the scandal by elevating a German bishop to the See of Rome.

With Leo IX. (1048-1054) was inaugurated a new era of the Papacy, which may be called the Hildebrandine. Within sixty years, through the contest with kings,

bishops, and clergy, against simony, clerical marriage, and investiture, the Roman See had risen to a height of power even Nicolas 1. never aspired to. A large and powerful party, stronger than that which two hundred years before had undertaken to carry through the Isidorian forgery, had been labouring since the middle of the eleventh century, with all its might, to weld the States of Europe into a theocratic priest-kingdom, with the Pope as its head. The urgent need of reform in the Church helped on the growth of the spiritual monarchy, and again the purification of the Church seemed to need such a concentration and increase of

ecclesiastical power. In France this party was supported by the most influential spiritual corporation of the time, the Congregation of Cluny. In Italy, men like Peter Damiani, Bishop Anselm of Lucca, Humbert, Deusdedit, and above all Hildebrand,-who was the life and soul of the enterprise,-helped on the new system, though some of them, as Damiani and Hildebrand, differed widely both in theory and practice.

It has not perhaps been sufficiently observed that Gregory VII. is in fact the only one of all the Popes who set himself with clear and deliberate purpose to introduce a new constitution of the Church, and by new means.

He regarded himself not merely as the reformer of the Church, but as the divinely commissioned founder of a wholly new order of things, fond as he was of appealing to his predecessors. Nicolas I. alone approaches him in this, but none of the later Popes, all of whom, even the boldest, have but filled in the outline he sketched.

Gregory saw from the first that Synods regularly held by the Popes, and new codes of Church law, were the means for introducing the new system. Synods had been held, at his suggestion, by Leo IX. and his successors, and he himself carried on the work in those assembled after 1073. But only Popes and their legates were henceforth to hold Synods; in every other form the institution was to disappear. Gregory collected about him by degrees the right men for elaborating his system of Church law. Anselm of Lucca, nephew of Pope Alexander II., compiled the most important and comprehensive work, at his command, between 1080 and 1086. Anselm may be called the founder of the new Gregorian system of Church law, first, by extracting and putting into convenient working shape everything in the Isidorian forgeries serviceable for the Papal absolutism; next, by altering the law of the Church, through a tissue of fresh inventions and

interpolations, in accordance with the requirements of his party and the stand-point of Gregory. Then came Deusdedit, whom Gregory made a Cardinal, with some more inventions. At the same time Bonizo compiled his work, the main object of which was to exalt the Papal prerogatives. The forty propositions or titles of this part of his work correspond entirely to Gregory's Dictatus and the materials supplied by Anselm and Deusdedit.2 The last great work of the Gregorians (before Gratian) was the Polycarpus of Cardinal Gregory of Pavia (before 1118), which almost always adheres to Anselm in its falsifications.3

4

The Preface of Deusdedit to his work is the programme of the whole school whose labours were at length crowned with such complete success. The Roman Church, says the Cardinal, is the mother of all Churches, for Peter first founded the Patriarchal Sees of the East, and then gave bishops to all the cities of

1 The contents of the Anselmian collection are known from the list of chapters in the Spicilegium Rom. (ed. Mai, vi. ); from Antonius Augustinus, Epitome Juris Pontif. (Paris, 1641); and from the citations of Pithou in the Paris edition of Gratian, 1686.

2 Nova Patrum Biblioth. (ed. Mai), vii. 3, 48.

3 Ivo of Chartres, though a contemporary of Cardinal Gregory, cannot be reckoned among the Gregorian canonists. Much as he was influenced in his compilations by Isidore, and sometimes by Anselm, still in certain important articles he held to the old Church law.

It is found in Memorie del Card. Passionei (Roma, 1762), p. 30.

the West. Councils cannot be held without the sanction of the Pope, according to the decisions of the 318 Fathers at Nice. The Roman clergy rule without the Pope, when the See is vacant, and therefore Cyprian and the Africans humbly submitted to their decisions before the election of Cornelius-a pet crotchet of the Cardinal's, which Anselm, who was not a Cardinal, did not adopt. He adds, that he writes in order to confirm the authority of Rome and the liberty of the Church against its assailants, and maintains that the testimonies he has collected disprove all objections, on the principle that the lesser must always yield to the greater-i.e., the authority of Councils and Fathers to the Pope. With this one axiom-which not only opened the door wide for the Isidorian decretals, but prevented any attempt to moderate their system by an appeal to the ancient canons-the revolution in the Church was accomplished in the simplest and least troublesome manner.

Clearly and cautiously as the Gregorian party went to work, they lived in a world of dreams and illusions about the past and about remote countries. They could not escape the imperative necessity of demonstrating their new system to have been the constant practice of