most learned theologian and warmest friend of the Church in that age, "that the ordinances of the four first and subsequent General Councils have been metamorphosed and exposed to mockery and oblivion through the ever-increasing avarice of Popes, Cardinals, and Prelates, through the unjust constitutions of the papal Court, the rules of the Chancery, and the dispensations, absolutions, and indulgences granted from lust of domination."1

"

To the Popes, not to the German emperors, belongs the title "semper Augustus" as formerly understood. They are always aggrandizers of the kingdom," i.e., of their own. They became such under the sincere conviction, cherished from earliest youth, that the welfare of the whole Church and Christian world depended on their power being great and irresistible; that their right and power, and theirs alone, was truly divine, and therefore unlimited, because no mere earthly right could limit an authority given from heaven. And we must recognise the sincerity of this conviction, by which the Popes were thoroughly possessed, even when it drove them to the use of crooked means, to falsification, forgery, and misrepresentation.

Everything which Popes had formerly shrunk from or 1 Tract. de Ref. Eccl. in Conc. Univ. c. 17.

avoided, or been cautioned against, they now eagerly seized upon. Gregory the Great had complained that, under the pressure of business, his mind could not rise to higher things.1 Even Alexander II., in 1066, when the great centralization movement was just beginning, said that for five years he had scarcely been able to pay any attention to the internal affairs of his own special flock, the Church of the city of Rome, still less of foreign Churches.2 Early Church history was one long warning for the Popes not to mix themselves up with the affairs of foreign Churches, and want to decide from a distance on one-sided and partial information. Every one in the ancient Church, the Popes included, was persuaded that nothing is more injurious in Church matters than decisions made at a distance, in ignorance of local circumstances. As a rule they made mistakes, and involved themselves in humiliations and contradictory judgments. So it was with Basilides in Spain, Hilary of Arles in Gaul, Marcellus of Ancyra, Eustathius of Sebaste, Meletius at Antioch, with Eros and Lazarus, and with Apiarius in Africa; constantly the Popes made rash mistakes, and were deceived, imposed

1 Greg. M. Ep. i. 1; vii. 25. 5.

2 Bouquet, Script. Rer. Gall. xiv. 543.

upon, and misled through their hurried or importunate action. And constantly had the wisdom of the Nicene decision been commended, that everything should be examined and decided on the spot. The Popes and Gregorians were ready enough, indeed, to appeal to the Nicene canon, but they appealed to the spurious one. And if, in the fourth and fifth centuries, the Popes only interfered with the concerns of foreign Churches now and then at long intervals, and in the same way as the bishops of other apostolical sees, such cases occurred now by thousands in one year, and every new reservation was a copious source of emolument, so that Bishop Alvaro Pelayo tells us that whenever he entered the apartments of the Roman Court clergy, he found them occupied in counting up the gold coin which lay there in heaps.1

Every opportunity of extending the jurisdiction of the Curia was welcome. Nothing was too insignificant. Exemptions and privileges were so managed that fresh grants became constantly necessary. Thus, e.g., the immunity from episcopal censures granted beforehand to individuals and whole colleges was an inexhaustible source of revenue. And the bishops on their side were

1 De Planctu Eccl. ii. 29.

compelled to procure papal privileges, at least to enable them to guard their property with censures against holders of Roman privileges; the Bishop of Laon obtained such a privilege from Urban Iv.1 So far was the principle, "divide et impera," carried at Rome, that even cathedral chapters, who are supposed to be the immediate counsellors and presbytery of the bishop, were armed with privileges and exemptions against him, and he against them. If we look at the huge number of Papal privileges conferred in the thirteenth century on one national Church only, the French, we cannot but marvel at the slavish spirit of the bishops, who dared not move an inch without sanction from Rome, as well as at the utter insignificance of the objects for which special authorization or dispensation from Rome was thought necessary. If a monastery wanted leave for the sick to eat meat, or the inmates to talk at dinner, a permission from the Pope was required. Above all, bishops, convents, and individuals needed to protect themselves by Papal privileges against the censures and spiritual methods of extortion employed so prodigally by the Legates.2

1 Gallia Christ. vi. instr. 308.

2 A clear idea of these may be formed from inspecting Brequigny's and Pardessus' Tables Chronologiques, 1230-1300, A.D.

§ XI-The Relation of Popes to Councils.

Hitherto the Church had known but one means of protection against internal corruption, that of Councils. But the attitude towards Councils taken up by the Popes since Gregory VII. made this too unavailing. Councils were perverted, as we shall see, into mere tools of Papal domination, and reduced to a condition of undignified servitude, which made them mere shadows of the Councils of the ancient Church.

All synods counted as œcumenical, and whose decrees had force throughout the universal Church, were held during the first nine centuries in the East,-at Nicæa, Ephesus, Chalcedon, and Constantinople. During that period the Popes had never once made the attempt to gather about them a great synod of bishops from different countries. Two centuries followed, the tenth and eleventh, without any great synod. In 1123, immediately after the close of the Investiture controversy, and to confirm and seal the great victory won through the Gregorian system, Calixtus II. assembled a numerous synod, afterwards called Ecumenical (the first Lateran) at which, very significantly, twice as many abbots as bishops (600 to 300) were present. No contemporary