century there had been an emulation in establishing universities, it was never theology, but jurisprudence and medicine, that was thought of. Although they had some great theologians to show, as Aquinas, Bonaventure, Ægidius Colonna, the Italians gladly left the care of theology to the French, English, and Germans, and such of them as desired to become theologians, like those just named, had to seek their education and sphere of work abroad. Dante says of his countrymen that they only study the Decretals, and neglect the Gospels and the Fathers. And among Italians the Roman clergy did least for the cultivation of theological science.1

The Popes were the more ready to abdicate all influence through the cultivation of science, since so many other means of action were open to them, and such as could not in the long-run bear scientific examination. Moreover, they had the new Religious Orders of Dominicans and Minorites for that work, who, acting under the most stringent censure and discipline of Rome, exercised through their own Generals, and being accustomed to identify the interests of their own Order with those of the

1 Reumont observes (Geschichte der Stadt Rom, ii. 678) that the intellectual productiveness of Rome was at best very slight.

Curia, had given every guarantee that they would repudiate whatever did not subserve the new Roman system. It was from the bosom of these Orders, especially the Dominicans, that the Curia selected its official court theologian—for one at least it was obliged to have—the Master of the Sacred Palace.

And thus, as Roger Bacon and contemporary writers generally state, juristic science, and not theology, was the sure road to Church dignities and preferment. For theology, as conducted by the school of St. Anselm of Canterbury, Abailard, Bernard, Robert Pullus, Hugh and Richard of St. Victor, and the other scholastics before Aquinas, had done nothing directly for strengthening the papal dominion over the world and establishing the Gregorian system. Nowhere in the writings of these theologians is there any exposition of the doctrine of Church authority on the basis of the papal system. The dealings with the Greeks, before and after the Synod of Lyons in 1274, and the newly discovered spurious testimonies of Greek Fathers and Councils, as well as Gregory IX.'s collection of Decretals, first introduced it into theology. The jurists were the first to prostitute their science to an instrument of flattery, and it was not till after the end of the thirteenth century that the theolo

gians followed them in the same path. Those who took that line belonged mostly to the great Mendicant Orders, who had the most urgent reasons for advancing rather than depreciating the plenary papal jurisdiction, to which they owed the privileges and exemptions so lavishly bestowed on them; and if any of their members had written in an opposite sense, they would have been sure soon to find themselves in the convent prison. Only men in so extraordinary and abnormal a position as Occam and other "Spirituals," could be influenced in a contrary direction; and such writers, as we see in the case of the acute Marsilio of Padua, could find no certain track in the maze of forgeries and fictions, though they saw through some of them.1

To this jurisprudence, viz., the corrupt system of canon law perverted into an instrument of despotism, and to the Papacy, the wretched state of moral and religious degradation throughout Western Christendom was generally ascribed. By the united streams flowing from

1 [Marsilio of Padua, a famous jurist, wrote a book called "Defence of the Faith against the Usurped Jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff," which had the distinction of being the first work condemned in a papal Bull, issued by John XXII. in 1327. It was answered in the Summa of Agostino Trionfo of Ancona (dedicated to John XXII.), an Augustinian friar, who maintained the Pope's absolute jurisdiction over the whole world, Christian or Pagan, and over Purgatory.—TR.]

these two fountains-both, up to 1305, Italian-the Bolognese School of Law and the Curia-men said the whole world was poisoned. "It is the jurists," according to Roger Bacon, "who now rule the Church, and torment and perplex Christians with processes endlessly spun out." And, in fact, the most powerful Popes, such as Innocent III. and Innocent IV., Clement IV. and Boniface VIII., attained as jurists the highest dignity and sovereignty over the world. Bacon thought the only remedy was for canon law to become more theological or Biblical. He saw a source of corruption, just as Dante did, in the papal Decretals, and the precedence over Holy Scripture assigned to them.2

We see how deep that remarkable man, Roger Bacon, saw into the causes of corruption which were hidden from most of his contemporaries, although he, like all the rest, could only form conjectures, and could not gain that clear insight which was impossible without historical and critical information unattainable in his day. But he believed, and many for forty years (since 1225) had been hoping with him, that a purification of the Church was approaching, through the means of a God-fearing Pope, and, perhaps, with the co-operation

1 Opus Tert. ed. Brewer, 1859, p. 84.

2 Paradiso ix. 136-8.

of a good emperor, consisting essentially in a thorough reform of the system of Church law.1

§ XIII. The College of Cardinals.

The two main pillars of the new Papacy, and, at the same time, the two institutions which knew how to fetter the Popes themselves, and make them subservient to their own interests, were the College of Cardinals and the Curia. In proportion as the rupture, partly conscious, partly unconscious, between the Papacy and the old Church order and legislation was consummated, the College or Senate of Cardinals took shape, and in 1059, when the right of papal election was transferred to it, became a body of electors.2 Through the Legations, and their share in the administration of what had become

1 Rog. Bacon, Compend. Stud. ed. Brewer, pp. 339-403. "Totus clerus vacat superbiæ, luxuriæ, avaritiæ," etc. Here, too, he dwells on the decay of all learning for forty years past, attributing it principally to the corruption of Church law.

2 [Before 1059, the right of election resided in the whole body of Roman clergy, down to the acolytes, with the concurrence of the magistrates and the citizens. Nicolas II., acting under Hildebrand's advice, issued a Bull conferring the elective franchise exclusively on the College of Cardinals, reserving, however, to the German Emperor the right of confirmation. By a Bull of Alexander III., in the third Lateran Council (1179), two-thirds of the votes were required for a valid election, and this regulation is still in force. See Cartwright's Papal Conclaves, pp. 11-16, and cf. Hemans's Medieval Christianity, pp. 73, 101, where the Bull of Nicolas is quoted at length. The forms to be observed in Conclave, still in force, were fixed by a constitution of Gregory X. in the Second Council of Lyons, 1272. -Cartwright, pp. 20 seq.; Hemans, pp. 362-3.-TR.]