XII. Reformation of the Eleventh Century

 [ British Critic, April 1841]

 PERHAPS the greatest of the wants under which our religious literature labours at this day is that of an ecclesiastical history. It is inconvenient enough to have no good commentary on Scripture, and so little of systematic theology; but the Creed tells us the principal points of doctrine, and Scripture is to the pious mind, in some sense, its own interpreter. But the providences of God towards His Church during eighteen centuries, though contained in outline in prophecy, are consigned to no formula or document, clear enough to convey its own meaning, and minute enough to impress its peculiarities upon the private Christian. Not even the wildest advocate for the right of Private Judgment ever professed to apprehend past facts, as he might think he discovered revealed doctrines, without the assistance of books or teachers. Rather such an one will commonly be found to depreciate, instead of pretending to, historical knowledge: he will apply the Caliph Omar's argument to the events of 1800 years, and say that except for the first and three last centuries they are not to be studied at all, as being little or nothing better than the times of predicted evil. He shuts up God's dealings with His Church under a formula, and is contented with symbols which neither he nor any one else can put into plain English.

 It is difficult justly to estimate the injury done to our whole view of Gospel truth by our ignorance of ecclesiastical history. Every department of theology acts upon the rest, and if one is neglected the others suffer. Our view of doctrine affects our view of history, and our view of history our view of doctrine; and our view of doctrine the sense we put upon Scripture: and our interpretation of Scripture our ethics, and our ethics our interpretation of Scripture. And, moreover, the history of the past ends in the present; and the present is our scene of trial; and to behave ourselves towards its various phenomena duly and religiously, we must understand them; and to understand them, we must have recourse to those past events which led to them. Thus the present is a text, and the past its interpretation. To a child there is no difference between one fact and another in the religious world. He does not understand their mutual relations or their respective bearings. He has, when an infant in arms, learned to classify and dispose of objects of sense; he knows that the church spire is not so near him as his nose or his hand, and that leaves are parts of the tree, and not of the sky or the earth, with which they are conterminous. But he cannot learn without the assistance of others the meaning of moral facts; and, as things are, he commonly grows up and lives and dies as ignorant of those of an ecclesiastical character as he was when he first had the faculty of thought. "What is the difference between a Methodist and a Roman Catholic?" and "Why are we not all Quakers?" are the questions which a thoughtful child of five years old may ask; and it is not at all clear whether he is likely to have taken any real steps towards the solution of them by the time he is fifty. This of course is witnessed in the case of political and social facts quite as much as in ecclesiastical. What a different meaning, for instance, has the so-called "Catholic Relief Bill," or the Reform Bill, to men of twenty and of thirty! How differently has the character of the Duke of Wellington come out to the present generation since the publication of his dispatches! How differently appear our present relations with Russia to those who know and those who are ignorant of the history of the last century! Men enter into life, and take what they find there, and put their own interpretation upon it, if their imaginations are not pre-occupied with the one true historical comment. This is why there is such difficulty in rousing the public mind to understand the importance of certain measures, proposed or resisted: to the public they are facts without meaning. What virtue is there in a name to those who are dead to it? Why should not Brutus stir a spirit as soon as Cæsar? It is the association which is everything; but to those who know not the true history of that to which the name belongs, there are no associations with it, or wrong ones.

 The case is the same as regards words written or spoken. Take an orator and he shall make a speech, or an author and he shall write a pamphlet, or a preacher and he shall deliver a sermon; and then let it be considered how differently the speech, or the pamphlet, or the sermon, in each case seems to persons who know him well and those who do not. Very different for better and for worse; let him be a man of pomp and parade, or of smoothness and artifice, and strangers will be taken in, and admire the very words, turns of speech and gestures, which make those who know him well only cry out, "How like so-and-so!" On the other hand, the deep feeling and reality of another sort of man go clean over the heads of those who do not know him, while friends are pierced by every word. Let the very same speech or sentiment come from two persons, and it has quite a different meaning, according to the speaker, and takes a different form in our minds. We always judge of what meets us by what we know already. There is no such thing in nature as a naked text without note or comment.

 It is a curious fact, that these remarks even apply to the case of personal appearance, as is sometimes proved by the test of portraits. Let a likeness, taken twenty years ago, be put before two persons, now for the first time, one of whom knew the subject of it at the time, and the other did not, and the former will think it like him as he is now, and the latter will deny the likeness. We colour our ocular vision with the hues of the imagination: as reason is said to deceive our eyes in the phenomenon of the horizontal moon, so memory is a gloss upon them here. Our friend has grown fat, or his temples are higher, or his face is broader, or lines have come to view along his cheek, or across his forehead, and yet in certain cases we shall be heard to say, that such a one has not altered at all since the day we first knew him. To us his youth is stamped upon his maturity, and he lives in our eye, as well as in our mind, as when we first gave him our affection. We are surprised on going into the world to hear him called a middle-aged man.

 In such a case, to be sure, we have an instance of an abuse of the important instrument which has been above insisted on. But we adduce it to prove the extent of the influence which the knowledge of the past has on the present; that it may become excessive and out of place, that we may become mere antiquarians and pedants, that we may bury ourselves in the illusions of history, when we should be contemplating things as they are before us, is very certain: but the danger at this day rather is, lest, from total ignorance of history, we should be obliged to determine every action and every principle by the only test which will practically be left us, the test of visible expediency. And late ecclesiastical occurrences supply some melancholy instances in point. This will be the certain consequence of treating history as an old almanac, whatever persons of some station in the Church may say to the contrary.

 And, again, it must be recollected that men will form their theories and write books on religious subjects, whether or not they have the facts, which alone can enable them to do so justly. To assign causes, to draw out relations, is natural to man; and he will do it on a theory, rather than not at all. A number of answers can be given to the question, What is the Church? We are far from saying that in so complicated a question only one, or perhaps that any one, is right and true; but whatever is right, whatever wrong, surely we must go to history for the information. If we are content merely to look round us to catch up certain peculiarities which meet our eye, listen to what is said in parliament or the newspapers, or in some fashionable chapel, and then proceed to form our theory, we shall probably approach about as near the truth as the clever Oriental who defined the English as a nation who live on the sea, and make penknives. This is a remark which applies in a measure even to writers of a deeper tone of thought: we are just now becoming rich in treatises on ecclesiastical politics and doctrine: let us take good care that our arbitrary views do not get ahead of our knowledge.

 We have now given some of the reasons why we are especially obliged to Mr. Bowden for the life of Hildebrand, known in history as Pope Gregory VII., which he has lately given to the world. No one can write without opinions: we are far from saying that Mr. Bowden has not his own, and that of a very decided character; but what we principally thank him for is his narrative of facts; he has drawn out the facts of a momentous and wonderful period of history with great distinctness and perspicuity, and we are sure that no one will rise from the perusal of his volumes without respectful feelings towards their author for the information and instruction he has provided. We do not intend to make this article a panegyric on Mr. Bowden; but to convey to the reader by means of it some account of his subjects. Yet, before proceeding to business, it is but justice to him to say, that he has given us at once a very learned and very well-arranged history. To have read the original sources diligently and to report them accurately is one great praise; but a far more difficult task is the combination and adjustment of materials. To bring out the course of events so that a reader may go away with a definite impression upon his mind of what has passed through it, is a very difficult art. We are not perhaps quite satisfied with Mr. Bowden's style; but we eulogize his composition. He is a very neat and skilful artist, a clear and forcible narrator; makes a great many points, and every one of them tells.

 2.

 But now let us proceed to his work itself. It is the history of the commencement of that great reformation of the Church in the middle ages, which Providence conducted through the instrumentality, partly divine, partly human, of the Papal Monarchy. It is usual to call the times in which it occurred the dark ages; but, properly speaking, that title applies to the centuries which preceded it. No exaggeration is possible of the demoralized state into which the Christian world, and especially the Church of Rome, had fallen in the years that followed the extinction of the Carlovingian line (A.D. 887). The tenth century is even known among Protestants par excellence as the sæculum obscurum, and Baronius expresses its portentous corruption in the vivid remark that Christ was as if asleep in the vessel of the Church. "The infamies prevalent among the clergy of the time," says Mr. Bowden, "as denounced by Damiani and others, are to be alluded to, not detailed." Vol. i., p. 144. When Hildebrand was appointed to the monastery of St. Paul at Rome, he found the offices of devotion systematically neglected, the house of prayer defiled by the sheep and cattle who found their way in and out through its broken doors, and the monks, contrary to all monastic rule, attended in their refectory by women. The excuse for these irregularities was the destitution to which the holy house was reduced by the predatory bands of Campagna; but when the monastic bodies were rich, as was the case in Germany, matters were worse instead of better. Unworthy brethren of the conventual orders, Mr. Bowden tells us, incessantly beset the ears of princes and great people, who had the presentation to abbeys and benefices, offering sums so large in purchase that secular competitors were excluded. The world wondered, says an historian of the times, himself a monk, from what springs such rivers of wealth could flow; and understood not how the riches of CrSsus or Tantalus could be amassed by men who had taken on them the scandal of the Cross and the profession of poverty. Adelbert, Archbishop of Bremen, though himself a man of pure life and austere practice in an age of general dissoluteness, conceived a plan, by means of the imperial influence which he enjoyed, of making Hamburg the seat of his power, and establishing a sort of papacy in the North. With this purpose in view, he was tempted to grasp at every method of increasing his revenues, and disgraced his rule by a wide-spread system of corruption and plunder. Associating himself with a profligate favourite of the Emperor, he despoiled without shame the lands and revenues of the less powerful religious communities, and put up to sale every office, civil or ecclesiastical, which fell to his disposal. On an archbishop in France, who had contrived to bribe to silence the principal evidences against him of simony, at length being brought to confess his guilt and being deposed, no less than forty-five bishops and twenty-seven other dignitaries or governors of churches came forward to confess the criminal mode by which they had obtained their benefices, and retired from stations which they had no valid right to retain. In Lombardy, the Archbishop Guido in the eleventh century was said to have invariably demanded a price for the favour of admission into holy orders; his clergy were in their own way as deeply involved in the guilt of simony as himself, till their very flocks learned to treat them with open manifestations of contempt, reviled them in the house of God itself, and hooted them along the streets. In the times of St. Romauld, who died in 1027, the practice of emperors selling bishoprics, bishops their preferments, and laymen their benefices, was so recognized and ordinary, that when the saint had spoken even to religious persons of simony as a sin, he seemed to them to inculcate over-strained and fanciful notions.

 Even two centuries earlier than this, when, as appears on the face of the facts, the corruption was not so general, a Council of Paris had complained that many of the clergy were so occupied in the pursuit of gain and other worldly avocations that they suffered many infants to die without baptism. A Council of Aix-la-Chapelle of the same date prohibits extortion and intemperance in bishops, and protests against their non-residence. A Synod of Pavia a little later prohibits the clergy the practice of sumptuous banquets and the use of dogs and hawks. Hincmar judged it expedient to issue a decree against the pawning by the clergy of the vestments and the communion plate. In 829, the prelates assembled in council at Paris found it necessary to urge Louis the Debonair to use all his influence in extirpating simony, "this heresy so detestable, this pest so hateful to God," from the Church. The Synod of Meaux, in 845, renewed the warning. And Leo IV., in or about 847, denounced it in an epistle to the Bishops of Britanny as a crime condemned by many Councils. The nobles secured the ordination of their younger sons or relatives for the sole purpose of qualifying them for the acceptance of lucrative benefices; giving them, while they did so, the same military training and secular habits with the rest of the family. Others procured admission to the priesthood for dependants whom they intended to retain in subordinate stations in their household. "Such," says Agobard, Archbishop of Lyons, "is the disgrace of our times, that there is scarcely one to be found who aspires to any degree of honour or temporal distinction who has not his domestic priest; and this, not that he may obey him, but that he may command his obedience alike in things lawful and things unlawful; in things human and things divine; so that these chaplains are constantly to be found serving the tables, mixing the strained wine, leading out the dogs, managing the ladies' horses, or looking after the lands."

 Mr. Bowden shall inform us of a scene which took place during the minority of the Emperor Henry the Fourth:

 "At the commencement of vespers before the king and court at Goslar, at the solemn season of Christmas, 1062, a dispute arose between the servants of the Bishop of Hildesheim and those of the Abbot of Fulda, with regard to the position of the seats of their respective masters. The abbot, by ancient usage, was entitled to sit next to the metropolitan; but the bishop, indignant that any should take this place, within his own diocese, in preference to himself, had commanded his domestics to place the chairs accordingly. The dispute soon led to blows, and but for the interference of Otho of Bavaria, would have terminated in bloodshed. This noble asserted the rights of the abbot, and the bishop was consequently foiled. He looked forward however to a renewal of the contest under more favourable auspices; and at the feast of Pentecost following, previously to the entrance of the king and prelates into the Church, he secreted behind the high altar Count Ecbert and some well-armed soldiers. As the contending prelates proceeded to their seats, the affray between the servants began again; when the count suddenly springing from his ambush, rushed with his followers upon the astonished men of Fulda, and drove them with blows and menaces from the church. But they too had made preparations for a violent struggle, and had friends and arms at hand. In a body they rushed once more into the sacred building, and engaging their enemies with swords in the midst of the choir, confusedly mingled with the choristers. Fiercely was the combat waged: 'throughout the church,' says Lambert of Aschaffenburgh, 'resounded, instead of hymns and spiritual songs, the shouts of the combatants and the screams of the dying; ill-omened victims were slaughtered upon the altar of God; while through the building ran rivers of blood, poured forth, not by the legal religion of other days, but by the mutual cruelty of enemies.' The Bishop of Hildesheim, rushing to a pulpit or some other conspicuous position, exhorted his followers, according to the same writer, as with the sound of a trumpet, to persevere in the fray, and encouraged them by his authority, and by the promise of absolution, to disregard the sanctity of the place. The young monarch called in vain on his subjects to reverence his royal dignity; all ears were deaf to his vociferated commands and entreaties; and, at length, urged by those around him to consult his own safety, he escaped with difficulty from the thickening tumult, and made his way to his palace. The men of Fulda by the efforts of Count Ecbert, were at length repulsed, and the doors of the church closed against them; upon which, ranging themselves before the building, they prepared to assault their enemies again, as soon as they should issue from it; and there remained until the approach of night induced them to retire." Vol. i., pp. 235-237.

 Miserable as are the above specimens of those truly "dark ages," yet they are decency itself compared with the atrocities which in the same era disgraced the see of Rome. At the close of the ninth century, Stephen VI. dragged the body of an obnoxious predecessor from the grave, and, after subjecting it to a mock trial, cut off its head and three fingers, and threw it into the Tiber. He himself was subsequently deposed, and strangled in prison. In the years that followed, the power of electing to the popedom fell into the hands of the intriguing and licentious Theodora, and her equally unprincipled daughters, Theodora and Marozia. These women, members of a patrician family, by their arts and beauty, obtained an unbounded influence over the aristocratic tyrants of the city. One of the Theodoras advanced a lover, and Marozia a son, to the popedom. The grandson of the latter, Octavian, succeeding to her power, as well as to the civil government of the city, elevated himself, on the death of the then Pope, to the apostolic chair, at the age of eighteen, under the title of John XII. (A.D. 956.) His career was in keeping with such a commencement. "The Lateran palace," says Mr. Bowden, "was disgraced by becoming a receptacle for courtezans: and decent females were terrified from pilgrimages to the threshold of the Apostles by the reports which were spread abroad of the lawless impurity and violence of their representative and successor." Vol. i., p. 83. At length he was carried off by a rapid illness, or by the consequences of a blow received in the prosecution of his intrigues. Boniface VII. (A.D. 974), in the space of a few weeks after his elevation, plundered the treasury and basilica of St. Peter of all he could conveniently carry off, and fled to Constantinople. John XVIII. (A.D. 1003) expressed his readiness, for a sum of money from the Emperor Basil, to recognize the right of the Greek Patriarch to the title of ecumenical or universal bishop, and the consequent degradation of his own see; and was only prevented by the general indignation excited by the report of his intention. Benedict IX. (A.D. 1033) was consecrated Pope, according to some authorities, at the age of ten or twelve years, and became notorious for adulteries and murders. At length he resolved on marrying his first cousin; and, when her father would not assent except on the condition of his resigning the popedom, he sold it for a large sum, and consecrated the purchaser as his successor. Such are a few of the most prominent features of the ecclesiastical history of these dreadful times, when, in the words of St. Bruno, "the world lay in wickedness, holiness had disappeared, justice had perished, and truth had been buried; Simon Magus lording it over the Church, whose bishops and priests were given to luxury and fornication."

 2.

 Had we lived in such deplorable times as have been above described, when Satan seemed to have been let loose at the end of his thousand years, and had we been blessed with any portion of divine light to understand, and of love to desire better things, we might have asked whether it was conceivable that the Church should ever recover itself from the abyss into which it was sunk. Where was the motive principle where the fulcrum, by which it was to be righted? What was left but for matters to become worse and worse, till the last ray of truth and righteousness died away, and the last saint was gathered in, and the end of all things came, and the Judge with it? One thing we should have felt for certain, that if it was possible to retrieve the Church, it must be by some external power; she was helpless and resourceless; and the civil power must interfere, or there was no hope. So thought the young and zealous emperor, Henry III. (A.D. 1039), who, though unhappily far from a perfect character, yet deeply felt the shame to which the Immaculate Bride was exposed, and determined with his own right hand to work her deliverance. In one respect, indeed, he was plainly unequal for so high a mission, had he had other credentials of it; he who was not possessed of the grace of personal purity, could not hope to remove the more flagrant scandals with which the clergy of the day were laden; but this good thing had he, that, with all his ecclesiastical prerogatives and possessions, he had in no single instance incurred the guilt of simony; he had the most awful impression and the most acute feelings of its heinousness; and thus, if he could not animadvert upon one of the two chief sins of the day, he might aspire to be a censor of the other. And so much is undeniable, that, though he cannot be considered as regularly called to the work, and though a movement had already begun, as we shall presently see, in the Church itself, which, humanly speaking, would have effected it without him, yet in matter of fact, this well-meaning prince did begin that reformation which ended in the purification and monarchical estate of the Church. He held a Council of his bishops in 1047; in it he passed a decree that "Whosoever should make any office or station in the Church a subject of purchase or sale, should suffer deprivation and be visited with excommunication;" at the same time, with regard to his own future conduct, he solemnly pledged himself as follows: "As God has freely of His mere mercy bestowed upon me the crown of the empire, so will I give freely and without price all things that pertain unto His religion." This was his first act; but he was aware that the work of reform, to be thoroughly executed, must proceed from Rome, as the centre of the ecclesiastical commonwealth, and he determined, upon those imperial precedents and feudal principles which Charlemagne had introduced, himself to appoint a Pope, who should be the instrument of his general reformation.

 The reigning Pope at this time was Gregory VI., and he introduces us to so curious a history that we shall devote some sentences to it. Gregory was the identical personage who had bought the papal office of the profligate Benedict IX. for a large sum, and was consecrated by him, and yet he was far from a bad sort of man after all. As to his traffic in holy things, he seems to have viewed it in the light of the worthy persons in our own days, whose advertisements concerning the sale or purchase of advowsons or presentations figure in the newspapers; and he really does seem to have committed his act of simony with the very best intentions, which he did in fact carry out, so far as his bargain was made good to him. He had been known in the world as John Gratianus; and at the time of his promotion was arch-priest of Rome. "He was considered," says Mr. Bowden, "in those bad times more than ordinarily religious; he had lived free from the gross vices by which the clergy were too generally disgraced." He is described as "idiota et miræ simplicitatis," and, what perhaps is included in this account of him, he was unlettered. He could not be quite said to have come into actual possession of his purchase; for Benedict, his predecessor, who sold it to him, being disappointed in his intended bride, returned to Rome after an absence of three months, and resumed his pontifical station, while the party of his intended father-in-law had had sufficient influence to create a Pope of their own, John, Bishop of Sabina, who paid a high price for his elevation, and took the title of Sylvester III. And thus there were three self-styled Popes at once in the Holy City, Benedict performing his sacred functions at the Lateran, Gregory at St. Peter's, and Sylvester at Santa Maria Maggiore. Gregory, however, after a time, seemed to preponderate over his antagonists; he maintained a body of troops, and with these he suppressed the suburban robbers who molested the pilgrims. Expelling them from the sacred limits of St. Peter's, he carried his arms further, till he had cleared the neighbouring towns and roads of these marauders. On an outcry being raised at the unclerical character of such performances, brilliant as they were, he associated with him Lorenzo, Archbishop of Amalfi, who was an exile at Rome, as his coadjutor, and, while the latter undertook the direct duties of the papal office and government, he devoted himself to that police department in which he seemed so much to excel.

 This was the point of time at which the Imperial Reformer made his visitation of the Church and See of the Apostles. He came into Italy in the autumn of 1046, and held a Council at Sutri, a town about thirty miles to the north of Rome. Gregory was allowed to preside; and, when under his auspices the abdication of Benedict had been recorded, and Sylvester had been stripped of his sacerdotal rank and shut up in a monastery for life, Gregory's own turn came, and, as there was no one competent to judge the highest ecclesiastical authority upon earth, as he was admitted really to be, the following device was taken to get rid of him:

 "His (Henry's) bishops, the cases of Gregory's rivals having been disposed of, requested the pontiff to state, for their information, the circumstances of his own election to the Papal office; and, when they had thus drawn from him an admission of the unholy traffic by which that transaction had been accomplished, they brought before him the impropriety of his conduct in a manner so glaring, that the confounded Pontiff at length exclaimed, 'I call God to witness that, in doing what I did, I hoped to obtain the forgiveness of my sins and the grace of God. But now that I see the snare into which the enemy has entrapped me, tell me what I must do?' The bishops having thus obtained their point, replied, 'Judge thyself condemn thyself with thine own mouth; better will it be for thee to live, like the holy Peter, poor in this world and to be blest in another, than like the magician Simon, whose example misled thee, to shine in riches here, and to receive hereafter the sentence of condemnation.' And the penitent Gregory, in obedience to the suggestion spoke as follows: 'I, Gregory, bishop, servant of the servants of God, pronounce that, on account of the shameful trafficking, the heretical simony, which took place at my election, I am deprived of the Roman See. Do you agree,' he concluded, 'to this?' 'We acquiesce,' was the reply, 'in your decision;' and the ex-Pope at once divested himself of the insignia of pontifical authority." Vol. i., p. 119.

 The new Pope whom the Emperor gave to the Church instead of Gregory VI., Clement II., a man of excellent character, died within the year. Damasus II. also, who was his second nomination, died in three or four weeks after his formal assumption of his pontifical duties. Bruno, Bishop of Toul, was his third choice; he was a relation of Henry's, mild and unambitious in character, fervent in his devotion, courteous and popular in his manners, and possessed, if not of commanding talents, of considerable energy and activity of mind. He was far from desiring his elevation; when the proposal was first made to him, he requested three days to consider of it; at the end of which he made a confession of his faults before the assembled Council, with the hope of gaining their permission to decline it. But they overruled his objections, and he found himself compelled on the spot to assume the style and honours of a pontiff (A.D. 1049). Such was the person, and such the manner of his promotion, who is now known as St. Leo, the ninth of that name.

 3.

 And now we are arrived at the moment when the State reformer struck his foot against the hidden rock, and found to his surprise that, in that apparently disorganized and lifeless frame, which he was attempting to new-make, there was a soul and a power of self-action adequate both to its recovery and to its resistance against foreign interference. He had chosen a Pope, but "quis custodiat ipsos custodes"? What was to keep fast that Pope in that very view of the relation of the State to the Church, that plausible Erastianism, as it has since been called, which he adopted himself? What is to secure the Pope from the influences of some Hildebrand at his elbow, who, a young man himself, shall rehearse, in the person of his superior, that part which he is one day to play in his own, as Gregory VII.? Such was the very fact; Hildebrand was with Leo, and thus commences the ecclesiastical career of that wonderful man, to whose history Mr. Bowden has devoted his reading. Hildebrand was at this time from thirty to forty years of age, having been born between 1010 and 1020; his birthplace, as it is supposed, Soana, in Tuscany; his father a carpenter. He had been soon removed from home to the care of an uncle, the Abbot of St. Mary's on the Aventine, who is supposed to be the same with that Lorenzo, Archbishop of Amalfi, whom Gregory VI. had made his coadjutor, and whose assertion of ecclesiastical power had previously led to his banishment from his own diocese by Guaimar, prince of the city. Such a man was a happy master for the champion of the Church; and under his auspices Hildebrand had rapidly acquired a knowledge of the seven liberal sciences, while he exhibited from his earliest years the rudiments of that devotional temperament, which in after-life so strikingly characterized him. He was, says one of his annalists, a monk from his boyhood; his life, from its very commencement, was one of abstinence, mortification, and self-command.

 Arrived at man's estate, he had undertaken a journey across the Alps, and resided for some time in the celebrated monastery of Cluni in Burgundy, the strictness of which formed an acceptable contrast, in the eyes of the austere youth, with the laxity of manners which prevailed at Rome. The Abbot Odilo, himself an eminent saint, was equally pleased with Hildebrand, applying to him prophetically the words, used by the Angel of the commissioned Reformer who went before the first Advent, "He shall be great in the sight of the Lord." On his return to Rome, disgusted with the prevalent corruptions, Hildebrand would have quitted the city again and for good, but was fixed in a resolution to stay after an occurrence not unlike, in character and termination (if we may compare together such opposite fortunes as those of a Pope and a Lord Mayor), the "turn-again" passage in the history of Whittington. He afterwards served under the unfortunate Gregory VI. On Gregory's downfall, Hildebrand was carried by Henry across the Alps with Gregory himself; and thus he was at hand, when Leo, on his appointment to the papacy, invited his assistance. Such was Hildebrand, and such his previous history; and now what advice will he give to the mild and unassuming Bruno? Mr. Bowden shall tell us.

 "Bruno knew and respected his zeal and ability, and, as he happened to be at Worms during the session of the Council, the newly-chosen pontiff sent for him, and requested him to be the companion of his intended journey to Rome. 'I cannot,' said Hildebrand, 'accompany you;' and, when pressed to declare the reason of this, probably unexpected, refusal, he said, 'Because you go to occupy the government of the Roman Church, not in virtue of a regular and canonical institution to it, but as appointed to it by secular and kingly power.' This led to a discussion, in which Bruno, gentle and candid by nature, and already, perhaps, inclined in his heart to favour the principles which Hildebrand now advocated before him, permitted himself to be convinced that the legitimate electors of the See of St. Peter were the Roman clergy and the people; and he prepared to shape his course accordingly. Returning to Toul, to make the necessary preparations, and to take a farewell of his diocese, he set out thence in a style very different from that which had usually been adopted by the nominees of Teutonic sovereigns in their inaugural journeys to the papal city. Instead of the rich pontifical attire which they were wont, from the day of their nomination, to assume, he clothed himself in the simple habit of a pilgrim, thus publicly testifying to the world that, notwithstanding the act of the German Henry and his Council, he considered that his real election was yet to come. Leaving Toul on the third day from the festival of Christmas, he halted on his way, at the monastery of Cluni, and from hence, if not from Toul itself, was accompanied by Hildebrand, in his unostentatious progress to the papal city. At that city, barefooted, and clad in the humble guise which he had thus assumed, Bruno arrived in the early part of February, 1049; and as he found the clergy and people assembled, and uttering hymns of thanksgiving and shouts of joy in honour of his arrival, he at once addressed them, and having announced to them the mode of his election in Germany, entreating them fully and freely to declare their sentiments on the subject. Their election, he said, was of paramount authority to every other; and if what had been done beyond the Alps did not meet with their general approval, he was ready to return a pilgrim as he had come and to shake off the burden of a responsibility, which he had only upon compulsion undertaken. His discourse was responded to by an unanimous shout of approval; and Bruno, installed without delay in his office, assumed thenceforward the name of Leo IX." Pp. 137-139.

 It seems, then, there is a hidden power in the Church struggling with Henry in the person of his own nominees, and that, as regards the very point through which the system of Charlemagne introduced corruption into it. The State appointment to the Church offices, which was the result of the Carlovingian changes, implied the secular character of offices held by virtue of such an appointment; and that presumed secular character led to their being treated as secular, that is, to simony in obtaining them, and to a worldly use of them. Henry's reform then was conducted on a principle which involved and perpetuated the very evils which it was intended to remove; if the Church was under secular jurisdiction, it was fairly open to secular use. This feeling it was, the perception of this axiomatic truth, which the Church's instinct, or divine sense, seemed to be travailing with and bringing into effect at the era before us; and now let us, under Mr. Bowden's guidance, inquire into the history of the momentous doctrines, which it eventually succeeded in establishing.

 When Christians have but a partial confidence in their own principles, there is a great temptation, when Church matters go wrong, to give up God's way, and take whatever is recommended by the expediency of the moment. The ancient and true methods of proceeding appear quite out of date and place; the old materials, instruments, centres, and laws, on which the Church once moved, are apparently worn out by use; and what remains but to take up whatever comes to hand? We need not go to past ages for illustrations of this remark. In all times, weeds and scum, and all that is worthless, float on the surface, and precious gems lie at the bottom of the deep; and where there is neither faith to accept nor penetration to apprehend, what does not obtrude itself upon the senses, men are very ready to put up with what they see, in despair of meeting with what may be more to their purpose. Thus in Hildebrand's age, it might be plausibly argued that ecclesiastical affairs had, in the changes of society, devolved to the civil power; that the State was their natural administrator; that it had the means, and none but it, of reforming the Church. It might be urged that the old high spirit, beautiful as it had been, was no more; that there was no place within the Church on which a reformer could place himself, who desired to operate upon it; that whether he attempted pastors or flock, regulars or seculars, the ground would give way under him. The necessity of the case then formed the vindication of the Emperor's conduct, were there no other plea in its behalf; and yet in matter of fact, out of that hopeless chaos rose, and upon it found a seat, the broadest and most sovereign rule which the Christian world has seen.

 In truth, taking the corruptions of that day at the worst, they were principally on the surface of the Church. Scandals are petulant and press into view, and they are exaggerated from the shock they communicate to beholders. Friends exaggerate through indignation, foes through malevolence. In the worst of times there is always a remnant of holy men, out of sight, scanty perhaps in numbers, but great in moral strength, and there is always even in the multitude an acknowledgment of truths which they do not themselves practise. Among all men, educated and unlettered, there is a tacit recognition of certain principles as the cardinal points of society, which very rarely come distinctly into view, and of which the mind is the less conscious because of their being intimately near to it. Such there were in Hildebrand's day, and the secret of his success lay in his having the genius or the faith to appeal to them. We should rather say the faith; for this is remarkably the case, and is exemplified in our own day; that what is commonly admired as commanding talent is far more rightly to be regarded as a firm realizing grasp of some great principle, and that power of developing it in all directions, and that nerve to abide faithful to it, which is involved in such a true apprehension.

 The fundamental notion of the Hildebrandine period was the ecumenical power of the Pope, which had been matured by a variety of circumstances, and remained in the European mind even in the most scandalous and trying times. Mr. Bowden has struck off some of these operative causes with great power. In the first place, Rome was the only apostolical see in the West, and thereby had a natural claim to the homage of those sees which were less distinguished. This pre-eminence was heightened by her inflexible orthodoxy amid the doctrinal controversies in which the Eastern sees had successively erred, and by the office of arbitrator and referee, which she held, amid their rivalries and quarrels. Further, when the descent of the barbarians had over-whelmed or exterminated the nations and churches of the Empire, Christian Rome became the instrument of the conversion of the heathen population, and the patriarchal centre of the new world which it created. And when the seat of temporal power had been removed to Constantinople, or re-founded in France or Germany, the Roman See came into a position of independence and sovereignty which could not be the lot of Churches living under the immediate shadow of the imperial throne. It became the rival of the eastern Cæsars and the viceroy of the western. Moreover, in the age of feudalism, when monarchy was the only form of civil polity, there would be at once a tendency in the ecclesiastical state to imitate it, and an expediency in doing so in order to meet and counteract its aggressions. And, amid national changes and the rise and fall of dynasties, it was natural for struggling leaders to seek support from a settled power like Rome, and to recognize that power by asking for its exercise. And it must be considered too that power has always a tendency to increase itself and that, independently, as it would seem, of the wishes or efforts of its possessors.

 To these historical causes, doctrinal sanctions, true or pretended, lent their aid. From the first, indeed, prerogatives were attached to the Church of Rome which belonged to no other but her; but these were extravagantly increased by certain well-known forgeries, of which Mr. Bowden gives us an interesting account. The chief of these were the pretended Decretals, a variety of letters, decrees, and other documents, purporting to be the work of bishops of Rome from the very earliest times. This celebrated forgery made its appearance between the years 830 and 850, and what is remarkable did not proceed from Rome, but from the North, from Mentz, being, as would appear, the work of a deacon of that city of the name of Benedict. Under all circumstances it is natural for the weaker portion of the community to desire the means of appeal from the arbitrary will of their rulers, and that to a power safe from the local influences of those against whom they themselves desire protection; and this operated in an especial way in disposing the German bishops towards Rome, passing over their own metropolitans, at a time when the civil power was in the hands of tyrants but partially reclaimed from barbarism. The Churches then of Germany naturally looked to Rome for protection against their secular governors; and the forgery in question was the expression of their previous wishes, as well as the formal basis in justification of them in time to come. The spurious series, says Mr. Bowden, is throughout consistent with itself, and is occupied throughout in asserting the Church's independence from every species of secular dominion or jurisdiction; and "the bishop of the holy and universal Church" is declared to be the Pope. To him all cases of importance are to be referred; he is the head and cardinal point of all Churches, and by him they are all to be governed [n.]. Such was the combination of circumstances under which the supremacy of the Pope over other bishops had been established, both in fact and in public opinion; and in this connexion we are led to quote the following just and important remark of our author:

 "The pontiffs," he says, "did not so much claim new privileges for themselves as deprive their episcopal brethren of privileges originally common to the hierarchy. Even the title by which these autocratical prelates, in the plentitude of their power, delighted to style themselves, 'Summus Sacerdos,' 'Pontifex Maximus,' 'Vicarius Christi,' 'Papa' itself, had, nearer to the primitive times, been the honourable appellations of every bishop; as 'Sedes Apostolica' had been the designation of every bishop's throne. The ascription of these titles therefore to the Pope only gave to the terms a new force, because that ascription became exclusive; because, that is, the bishops in general were stripped of honours to which their claims were as well founded as those of their Roman brother; who became, by the change, not so strictly universal, as sole, bishop. The degradation of the collective hierarchy, as involved in such a relative exaltation of one of its members, was seen and resisted by one not likely to entertain unreasonable or exaggerated views of the dangers to be expected from Roman aggrandizement, the truly great and good Pope Gregory I. 'I beseech your Holiness,' said this pontiff to the Patriarch of Alexandria, who had addressed him, contrary to his previously expressed desire, by the title of Papa Universalis, 'to do so no more; for that is taken from you which is bestowed, in an unreasonable degree, upon another ... I do not reckon that to be honour, in which I see their due honour taken from my brethren; for my honour is the honour of the Universal Church, the solid strength of my brethren: I then am truly honoured when the proper share of honour is assigned to each and to all. But if your Holiness styles me "Universal Pope," you renounce that dignity for yourself which you ascribe universally to me. But let this be done no more ... My predecessors have endeavoured, by cherishing the honour of all members of the priesthood throughout the world, to preserve their own in the sight of the Almighty.'

 "And even at a much more mature stage of the growth of papal pretensions, in the eleventh century itself, we find the pontiff Leo IX., in an epistle to the Grecian Patriarch, Michael Cerularius, repeating the assertion, made by Gregory in the above epistle, that his predecessor and namesake, Leo the Great, to whom the title of Ecumenical Patriarch had been offered by the Council of Chalcedon, had repudiated the proud appellation, by the ascription of which to one prelate an affront would be offered to the equal dignity of all." Vol. i., pp. 64-66.

 The causes we have been enumerating had effected the introduction of papal supremacy, even before the dark times to which the Hildebrandine period succeeded; and it is observable that, even amid the moral and political degradation of the Roman See in the ninth and tenth centuries, the theory still maintained its hold upon the public mind. We find Dietrich, Archbishop of Treves in 969, soliciting and obtaining from John XIII. for himself and his successors that precedence among the archbishops of Germany, which the office of legate was considered to confer. Stephen of Hungary, a secular prince, at the end of the tenth century, with a view of strenthening his authority over his half-converted subjects, had obtained from Sylvester II. the permission to combine his regal title with that of Apostolic Legate. Gregory V., the immediate predecessor of Sylvester, when he excommunicated the son of Hugh Capet for an illegal marriage, excommunicated also the Archbishop of Treves, who had solemnized it, and the other bishops who had countenanced it with their presence; and on that prince defying the sentence, had put his kingdom under an interdict, with such effect that he was deserted by his whole court and household, and even the two domestics who remained with him, avoiding his touch as infected, threw every plate and vessel out of which he had eaten and drunk into the fire. And, to take another specimen of prerogative, John XV. about the same date, had begun the practice of canonization, acting, as he expressed it, "by the authority of the blessed Peter, prince of Apostles," from whom he claimed to be the one visible head of the community of the faithful, the "bishop of the holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church." It cannot be denied then, that in spite of the dreadful demoralization of the Church and popedom in the tenth and eleventh centuries, there was laid in the temper of the age and the feelings of society a deep and firm groundwork, if men could be found who had the heart to appeal to it, for reforming and purifying the Church by an internal effort, and without recurring to the temporal power, which seemed at first sight the obvious, or rather the only resource.

 Here then was the point of battle between the Church and the State. The State said to the Church, "I am the only power which can reform you; you hold of me, and your dignities and offices are in my gift." The Church said to the State, "She who wields the power even of smiting kings, cannot be a king's creature; and if you attempt to reform her, you will be planting the root of corruption by the same hand which cuts off its branches."

 4.

 The struggle between the parties began from the commencement of Hildebrand's political history. Before his intimacy with Leo IX., he had, as we have seen, been connected with the unfortunate Gregory VI.; yet, even he, guilty as he was of a crime to which Hildebrand so earnestly opposed himself from first to last, committed it with the object of asserting, against the aristocracy, the dormant right of the Roman clergy and people to elect their own bishops. After this time Hildebrand seems to have been the chief spring in ecclesiastical movements in the papal city, for a space of twenty-four years, till the time of his own elevation. During that period he served the Popes Leo IX., Victor II., Stephen IX., Nicholas II., and Alexander II., all of them virtuous or even austere persons, steadily developing and realizing by successive acts the purification of the Church and the theory of her independence and sovereignty. For the interesting history of this period, we must refer to Mr. Bowden's second book, on which our limits will not allow us to enter, but from which, as a specimen of its contents, we will extract two or three passages from the history of two saints, Leo, whom we have already introduced to the reader, and Peter Damiani.

 The pontificate of Leo IX. supplies an illustration of that mixture of catholic truth with wild romance, which pervades the history of the times. In his own person he was a model of that reform which he had in view for the whole Church. His "hours of sleep," says Mr. Bowden, "were systematically abridged by his devotions: when at Rome, it was his wont, thrice in the week, to walk barefoot at midnight from the palace of the Lateran to the church of St. Peter (from one extremity, that is, of Rome to the other) accompanied by two or three only of his clergy, for the purposes of praise and prayer: a spectacle which might well strike those with astonishment, who were accustomed to the scenes of infamy and riot, by which the palace in question, and the papal city in general, had been disgraced under the licentious pontiffs of the preceding age." Vol. i., p. 152. Yet this pure and holy man is next presented to us as leading a military expedition against the Normans, which he seems to have thought to be as little out of character with his pontifical office, as a rector of a parish among ourselves in being a magistrate and reading the riot act, or a clergyman serving the office of proctor in our Universities. It was now about fifty years since the Normans had first become known to the inhabitants of Calabria and Apulia, whither they had at first come as pilgrims, then done battle as champions of the faith, then served as mercenaries, and at length spread devastation as marauders. The pagan, to whom they had opposed themselves, was the Saracen, who from time to time made descents upon the coast, though his power was on the decline; and Mr. Bowden gives the following account of the first collision between young faith and degenerate misbelief:

 "In or about the year 1002, a petty flotilla appeared before Salerno, and a body of Saracens, landing under the walls of the place, demanded, with the customary menaces, a pecuniary contribution. Guaimar III., Prince of Salerno, and his timid subjects, felt that they had no course to adopt but submission; and their surprise was great, when about forty pilgrims from a distant land, who happened to be at the moment within their walls, requested of the prince arms, horses, and permission to chastise these insolent marauders. The request was readily complied with: the pilgrim warriors, accoutred in haste, galloped eagerly forth through the gates of Salerno; the Saracens, confounded and dismayed, fled tumultuously from the onset of this unexpected foe; and esteemed themselves happy when their retreating barks bore them out of reach of the swords of the victorious Normans.

 "The delighted Guaimar would willingly have been prodigal in his bounty towards his gallant deliverers; but he experienced a second surprise when the costly presents, which he laid before them, were firmly, though courteously, rejected. 'For the love of God, and of the Christian faith,' said the chivalrous pilgrims, 'we have done what we have done; and we may neither accept of wages for such service, nor delay our return to our homes.'" Vol. i., pp. 156, 157.

 "They departed accordingly," adds Mr. Bowden, "but not unaccompanied. Guaimar sent with them, to their native land, envoys laden with presents, such as might best tempt the countrymen of these hardy and disinterested warriors to enlist in his service. Specimens of southern fruits, superb vestments, golden bits, and magnificent horse-trappings, attracted and dazzled the eyes of the population of Normandy, and produced on the enterprising youth of the province their natural effect." This was the commencement of their connexion with southern Italy; but it was not for ever of so edifying a character. They returned in the capacity of soldiers in the pay of its petty princes, and, with the duties, they practised the vices and excesses of their profession. They were a people of warm religious feelings; but a young nation has the waywardness and uncertainty of children, and every now and then these soldiers of fortune, turning to plunder, were tempted to rifle, for the sake of gain, the holy shrines in which, on their first appearance, they had come to worship. Tidings of their sacrilegious acts reached the ears of Leo. "And when," Mr. Bowden tells us, "he saw that the insulters of the Church were also the ruthless oppressors of their fellow-creatures, when he beheld the southern gates of Rome daily thronged by the wretched inhabitants of Apulia, who, destitute, blinded, and horribly mutilated, were seeking a refuge from further tyranny behind the sheltering walls of the papal city, the pitying pontiff yielded himself entirely to the impulses of his benevolent nature," and led an army in person against the Normans. With that object he crossed the Alps and gained of the Emperor 500 Germans, most of them volunteers; then returning, he raised the banner of St. Peter in Italy, and a motley company from Apulia, Campania, and Ancona flocked around it. It is not known whether Hildebrand sanctioned this measure. Benno "his embittered adversary," as Mr. Bowden calls him, charges him with doing so; but "the statement," he continues, "appears to be unsupported by other contemporaneous authority; and the work of Benno is filled with so many palpable calumnies against Hildebrand, that nothing in the nature of an accusation can be worthy of credit which rests upon his evidence alone." It is undeniable, however, that Hildebrand, when Pope, himself entertained a somewhat similar project. On the other hand, Hildebrand's intimate friend, and the principal organ of his party, Peter Damiani, has left on record his protest against the assumption, on the part of the successor of St. Peter, of that earthly sword, which our Lord Himself denied to the Apostle. Anyhow, it was unprecedented in that age, considering Leo was Pope, and the enemy a Christian people; though bishops were in the habit of accompanying their retainers to the field, and Pope John X., somewhat more than a century before, had engaged Mahomedans in battle.

 "It was on the 18th of June, 1053, that Leo's troops confronted those of the enemy near the town of Civitella. The Normans, when aware of his intentions, had made all preparations in their power to ward off the coming blow. William Ironarm was no more; but his brothers, Humphrey and Robert, the latter of whom, subsequently surnamed Guiscard, had recently arrived in Apulia with a considerable reinforcement to the Norman forces, succeeded to the command of his intrepid warriors; and Richard, Count of Aversa, the chief of a smaller, but independent, Norman colony in Italy, brought all the force he could muster to the defence of the common cause. But the Normans were dispirited: rumour had magnified among them the scale of the papal preparations, and they were awed by the sacred character of him in whom, even while he was their enemy, they recognized their spiritual parent. The heralds, therefore, who approached Leo while he was yet within the walls of Civitella, assumed an humble tone; they deprecated his hostility, and informed him that the Norman princes, though they declined to abandon possessions which they had won, were ready to hold their conquests thenceforth by his grant, and do suit and service for them to him, as to their lord paramount. But the tall, bulky Germans, by whom the pontiff was surrounded, smiled in scorn when they beheld the diminutive though active forms of their adversaries; and Leo, inspired by their confidence, as well as by his conviction of the goodness of his cause, rejected the overtures of the Norman leaders, and demanded the total abandonment of the lands which they had recently usurped from St. Peter. This the Normans declined to concede, and therefore, feeling that no other alternative lay before them, they gave the signal for battle, before Leo had issued from the gates of Civitella. The result of the action which now took place, falsified alike the confident anticipations of the one party and the desponding auguries of the other. The impetuous charge of the Norman chivalry at once unmanned the timid Italians who composed the bulk of Leo's army, and who fled in every possible direction. Werner and his German band met the shock with the calm courage of their country; but the Normans, unresisted elsewhere, turned their flanks, and hemmed them in on every side; until this gallant troop, contending valiantly to the last, covered with their corpses the ground which they had occupied. But for their resistance, so sudden was the flight, so rapid the dispersion of Leo's army, the business of the day might seem rather to deserve the name of a slaughter than of a battle.

 "The conquering chiefs pushed on without delay, through the streets of Civitella, into the presence of Leo. But they no sooner beheld the venerable pontiff, than, exchanging the fierceness of the warrior for the subdued tone of the penitent, they fell at his feet, and in abasement and tears besought the absolution and the blessing of their vanquished enemy. Moved by this conduct, and induced by the exigency of his position, Leo revoked the sentence of anathema which he had pronounced against them; and they then escorted him with all reverence and honour to the city of Benevento. There the humbled pontiff remained nine months, during which time, at the request of his captors, he consented to grant them, in the name of St. Peter, the investiture of all their conquests, made or to be made, in Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily; which they were thenceforward to hold as fiefs of the Holy See." Vol. i., pp. 162-165.

 By this turn of events, Leo's defeat and captivity involved more favourable results than could have been reaped from the most brilliant victory. The Pope acquired a claim on the services of the Normans, as of vassals; and, moreover, recognition of his power to confer the investiture, as lord paramount, of extensive domains, over which they had held no previous sway. What was more to the immediate purpose of the war, the presence of the mild old man succeeded in subduing the fierceness and cruelty with which the proceedings of the Normans had hitherto been attended; an effect, moreover, which would be naturally promoted by their admission, in consequence of the compact, into the circle of recognized sovereigns and the responsibilities of legitimate power. However, Leo did not at the time find all this consolation in the issue of his military exploits. He considered the failure of his arms to be a sign of the divine displeasure that he had taken them up. He gave himself over to acts of penance. Though his health was declining, a carpet on the bare earth was his ordinary couch, a stone his pillow, and a hair shirt his garment. "Under such austerities," says Mr. Bowden, "aided as they were in their effect by the sorrows and anxieties of his mind, his constitution gradually sank; and when he at length left Benevento, and returned, in March, 1054, to the papal city, it was only to breathe his last there on the 19th of the following April, after having committed to his beloved friend Hildebrand the provisional government of the Roman Church, until a new pontiff should be appointed to the Apostolic See." Vol. i., pp. 166, 167.

 St. Peter Damiani, Bishop of Ostia, who has already been incidentally mentioned, is another personage of this period, whom the course of the history brings before us, and to whom, we think, that Mr. Bowden, as regards one passage of his life, is hardly fair, though he treats him always with that respect and honour which is his due. He speaks of him "as a man of sincere and deep devotion, of extraordinary talents, and of a monastic austerity; of too ardent a temperament to be uniformly judicious in his proceedings;" while "his faith was of a description which led him to receive, without question, a host of legends of the most absurd description." "But," he continues, "there shone forth in him a singleness and purity of character, which, in connexion with his abilities, procured him the universal respect and admiration of his contemporaries." He had devoted himself to a monastic life, and he resisted his elevation to the episcopate with all his might. "He feared," says Mr. Bowden, "to be drawn from the unremitting austerities of his retirement; and it was not until he was threatened by Stephen and his Council with excommunication, that he consented to change the life of seclusion and self-denial which he lived for the activity and notoriety of a more responsible situation." Vol. i., pp. 189, 190.

 After a time, he was sent to Milan, as legate, to set right the disorders existing in those parts which the Milanese clergy attempted to shield from reform under colour of the dignity and independence of the Church over which St. Ambrose had presided. Another point on which reform was demanded was their assertion that they had a right to marry, by virtue of a privilege granted them by the same Saint. In this business he was associated with Anselm da Badagio, Bishop of Lucca, afterwards Pope Alexander II.

 "Making their appearance in the long-disturbed city, these envoys found the archbishop and his clergy, however hostile in secret to their coming, prepared to acknowledge their authority, and to receive them with every outward mark and sign of deference. But the populace, moved perhaps by the secret instigations of their pastors, soon showed, disposed as they might be themselves to ridicule or revile these careless guides, that they were keenly jealous of the assumed independence of their native Church, and viewed with suspicion any papal interference with the proceedings of its governors. In tumultuous throngs they filled the streets, and entered the building in which the legates had convened the clerical body of the place ... The discontent at length broke out in open tumult ... The clergy, eager to augment the fray, rang the alarm-bell in the various churches of the city; the confusion increased, and even the life of Damiani was apparently in danger. But that bold and high-spirited man was equal to the crisis; ascending a pulpit, he showed himself prepared to address the tumultuous multitude. His dauntless bearing awed them to silence, and he was heard with attention, while with dignity, and all the eloquence which distinguished him, he set forth the claims which the mother Church of Rome possessed on the dutiful obedience of her daughter, the Church of Milan. He cited instances in which St. Ambrose himself had appealed to the protection of the Roman prelate, and acknowledged his pre-eminence. 'Search,' he concluded, 'your own records, and if ye find not there that what we say is the truth, expose our falsehood. But if ye find us true, resist not the truth, resist not undutifully the voice of your mother; but from her, from whom ye first drew in the milk of apostolic faith, receive with gratitude the more solid food of heavenly doctrine.'

 "This appeal, and the legate's fearless demeanour, produced a sudden turn in the feelings of his hearers ... and the clergy offered no further opposition to the legatine authority. On Peter's demand, their whole body, with the archbishop at their head, agreed to pledge themselves with a solemn vow against simony and clerical marriage; ... and Peter, thus successful in his mission, pronounced in his official character the reconciliation of Milan to the Apostolic See." Vol. i., pp. 208-210.

 Shortly after this, Damiani resolved on resigning his bishopric and retiring back to his beloved cloister, from which he had been with such difficulty separated. Here it is that we think Mr. Bowden is rather hard upon him, unless, as is certainly possible, he has reasons which do not appear in his work. He calls him "singular-minded," and he speaks of "his morbid craving after ascetic retirement." Now surely there is nothing strange in his desiring quiet, and as to whether he ought to have indulged that desire, that is a question which no one could determine but himself. Supposing he found himself falling back in self-control and divine love, would not that be a reason for doubt and deliberation what it was his duty to do? Gibbon speaks ironically of unwilling monks torn out of their retreats and seated on bishops' thrones, but no one could know but themselves how great a blessing the cloister was, and what a great sacrifice to relinquish it. The ten thousand trivial accidents of the day in a secular life which exert a troublous influence upon the soul, dimming its fair surface with many a spot of dust and damp, these give place to a divine stillness, which, to those who can bear it, is the nearest approach to heaven. A sharp word, or a light remark, or a tone, or an expression of countenance, or a report, or an unwelcome face, or an association, ruffles the mind, and keeps it from fixing itself upon its true good. "One day," says Pope St. Gregory I., "when I was oppressed with the excessive trouble of secular affairs, I sought a retired place, friendly to grief, where whatever displeased me of my engagements might show itself openly, and all that was accustomed to inflict pain might be seen at one view." There he was surprised by "his most dear son Peter the deacon," whom he had made his intimate from the time that the latter was a young man. He opens his grief to Peter in words which are so much to our purpose, that with the reader's indulgence we will digress to quote them. "My sad mind," he says, "labouring under the soreness of its engagements, remembers how it went with me formerly in my monastery, how all perishable things were beneath it, how it was superior to all that was transitory; that it was wont to think of nought but things of heaven; that, though still in the body, it went out beyond the very prison of the flesh in contemplation; that it even loved death, which is nearly to all a punishment, as the entrance of life and a reward of its labour. But now, in consequence of the pastoral charge, it undergoes the occupation of secular men, and for that fair beauty of its quiet, is dishonoured with the dust of earthly work. And after dissipating itself on outward things to serve the many, even when it seeks what is inward, it comes home indeed, but is no more equal to itself."  Dial . i. 1.

 Such would be the bitter experience of a mind like Damiani's; and it depends on a number of minute circumstances, whether it was not as much his duty to decline the pastoral charge, as Gregory's to retain it. Mr. Bowden allows, too, that "from his retirement he continued to watch with an attentive eye the fortunes of the Church; by his epistles he still interfered with her concerns and influenced her destiny, nor was he backward, when called on, to devote himself on special occasions to active service in her cause." And we find in the after-history, of his going, in his extreme age, as Alexander's legate, to the young King Henry, and preventing him from the scandalous step of divorcing an innocent wife, against whom he had no charge except that he did not like her. Mr. Bowden notices, however, that his retirement, at a time when the Church had such need of his services in his episcopate, was never forgiven by Hildebrand; and he adds his own suspicion that some personal feelings towards Hildebrand influenced him in retiring from his post.

 Note

 [Mr. Bowden says that, before the appearance of the forgery, "the theory of papal supremacy already existed in its great, but yet unconnected, elements," though the forgery of course consolidated it; and that "the immediate effect of it was rather to make and consolidate relations already existing between the different orders in the Christian hierarchy than to introduce new ones."] Vol. i., pp. 52, 56. Vid . Note on this Essay, infra .  

 5.

 But it is time to return to Hildebrand himself, in whom all the interest of his times centres. A decree of a Lateran Council had been passed under Nicholas II., in 1059, vesting the election of Pope in the College of Cardinals; with the concurrence and ratification of the Emperor; a decree which opened the way to a still greater innovation, upon the first vacancy in the Holy See. The imperial court resisted the appointment of Alexander, who was the choice of the sacred College, and named an antipope, Cadalous; but the contest was terminated in favour of the papalists in 1067, at a Council held in Mantua, in which the Emperor gave up Cadalous and acknowledged Alexander II. Six years afterwards Alexander died. Hildebrand had already on a former occasion been put forward for the papal chair, but he had resisted the proposal, it is said, "with many tears and supplications;" now, however, the following scene took place:

 "Alexander II. had no sooner breathed his last, than his archdeacon, in concert with the other leading ecclesiastics of the city, directed that the three following days should be devoted to fasting, to deeds of charity, and to prayer; after which the proper authorities were to proceed, in the hope of the divine blessing upon their counsels, to the election of a successor. But long before the period thus prescribed had elapsed, that election was decided.

 "On the day following that of Alexander's decease, the dignified clergy of the Roman Church stood, with the archdeacon, round the bier of the departed pontiff, in the patriarchal church of the Lateran. The funeral rites were in progress, and Hildebrand, it is probable, was taking a part in the celebration of these solemn ceremonies. But suddenly, from the body of the building, which had been filled to overflowing by the lower clergy and people, burst forth the cry of 'Hildebrand.' A thousand voices instantly swelled the sound 'Hildebrand shall be Pope.' 'St. Peter chooses our Archdeacon Hildebrand.' These, and cries like these, rang wildly along the church; the ceremonies were interrupted, and the officiating clergy paused in suspense. The subject of this tumult, recovering from a momentary stupor, rushed into a pulpit, and thence, while his gestures implored silence, attempted to address the agitated assembly."

 The attempt was vain; the uproar continued, and it was not until the cardinal presbyter, Hugo Candidus, coming forward, declared Hildebrand to be the unanimous choice of the cardinals, that the multitude suffered their cries to subside.

 "Then the joyous cries of the populace arose anew. The cardinal, bishops, and clergy approached the object of their choice to lead him towards the apostolic throne. 'We choose,' they cried to the people, 'for our pastor and pontiff, a devout man; a man skilled in interpreting the Scriptures; a distinguished lover of equity and justice; a man firm in adversity, and temperate in prosperity; a man, according to the saying of the Apostle, of good behaviour, blameless, modest, sober, chaste, given to hospitality, and one that ruleth well in his own house. A man from his childhood generously brought up in the bosom of this mother Church, and for the merit of his life already raised to the archidiaconal dignity. We choose, namely, our archdeacon Hildebrand, to be Pope and successor to the Apostle, and to bear henceforward and for ever the name of Gregory.' The Pope elect, upon this, was forthwith invested by eager hands with the scarlet vestment and tiara of pontifical dignity, and placed, notwithstanding his gestures of reluctance, and even his tears, upon the throne of the Apostle. The cardinals approached him with obeisance, and the people, with shouts yet louder and more joyous than before, repeated the designation of their new pontiff, and tumultuously testified their approbation." Vol. i., pp. 314-317.

 Considering the unparalleled character, or, as we may say, the madness of the plans to which Hildebrand was pledged, and which his spirit within him told him he must attempt at all risks, it is not wonderful at all that he should both have shrunk from the pontificate beforehand, and have been overcome with the burden when it was first put upon him. Power or wealth is pleasant to us when unattended with conditions; but did they involve the necessity of losing limbs, or resigning friends, or risking popularity or good name, they would lose much of their attraction and many of their aspirants. Now Hildebrand was thus circumstanced: while he was a subordinate, he might promote the plans of others, even though short of the best and largest; but when "a dispensation of the Gospel" was committed to him, "necessity was laid on him" to go through all and leave nothing undone. Mr. Bowden tells us, that his election, at the moment unquestionably unexpected by himself, seems to have overwhelmed for a while even his intrepid spirit. In letters written from his couch, he speaks of it in terms of terror, using the language of the Psalms, "I am come into deep waters where the floods overflow me," imploring the intercessions of his friends in his behalf, and expressing a hope that their prayers, though they had not sufficed to prevent his being called to that post of danger, might nevertheless avail to defend him when placed there.

 He wrote a letter shortly after his elevation to Lanfranc, to whom he unbosomed himself more entirely than to others, and from this Mr. Bowden gives us some extracts. "The greater," he says, "the peril in which we are placed, the greater our need of the prayers of all good men. For we, if we would escape the sentence of the Divine wrath, must arise against many, and must incense them against our own soul. And thy prudence will alike see, how fearful it must be for us to abstain from opposing such persons, and how difficult for us to oppose them." Such were his feelings, and that they were replete with faith and conscientiousness there can be no doubt, or that he viewed the course which lay before him with awe. Well he might: we shall confine ourselves to two of the projects which he conceived and carried out, the chief but not the only acts of his pontificate, and amply sufficient in themselves to exemplify the force of will and fortitude of spirit, which has made his name so memorable in Church history. The first was no less than the obliging the clergy either to separate from their wives or resign their preferments. The second was the abasement of the temporal below the spiritual power. And first of his enforcement of clerical celibacy:  

 6.

 We have already noticed that simony and licentiousness were the two crying sins of the clergy; nor did their practice of taking wives at all diminish the latter. Rather it led to it; for, since they knew that in marrying they were transgressing their duty, they were easily led on, from the recklessness which follows upon the wilful violation of conscience in any matter, from a first sin to a second. The prohibitory rule was one of long standing, and Mr. Bowden, waving the discussion of its abstract propriety, has drawn up a succinct account of it from the time of Pope Nicholas I. (A.D. 858), to the date of Hildebrand, a period of two hundred years. Direct condemnations of the practice are found in Nicholas's reply to the Bulgarians, 860; in the Synod of Worms, 868; in Leo VII.'s epistle to the Gauls and Germans, 938; in the decrees of Augsburg, 952; and in Benedict VIII.'s speech, and the decrees passed at Pavia, about 1020. Hincmar of Rheims in 845, Chrodegang, bishop of Metz, in 750, Councils at Mentz and Metz in 888, and at Nantes at the end of the same century, had confirmed the rule with additional circumstances of strictness. And the association in the case of the clergy between marriage and concubinage, nay, of general laxity of morals, was unhappily so deeply seated, that neither did it occur to the reformers to question their necessary connexion; nor, had they done so, could they have overcome the popular feeling on the subject. Under the circumstances, as Mr. Bowden observes, "the battle which they undertook against their less strict contemporaries, was unquestionably that of purity against impurity, that of holiness against corruption. Seizing the means in their power, they set themselves to achieve, and did achieve, a most important reformation; and we may not think lightly, either of their principles or of their labours, because that reformation was imperfect."

 We have already stated what Gregory's proceeding was, and it was carried into effect under circumstances as shocking, as the resolve was ruthless. With a single and severe determination, putting before him the honour of Christ, and the welfare of the Church, like Ezra, the great reformer of Judah, he "said to his father and to his mother, I have not seen him; neither did he acknowledge his brethren, nor knew his own children." Ezra learned, to his deep dismay, that his people had taken to themselves wives of the heathen; "so that the holy seed had mingled themselves with the people of those lands, yea, the hand of the princes and rulers had been chief in this trespass." Upon this he tells us, that he rent his garments and mantle, and plucked off the hair of his head and of his beard, and sat down astonished. So he sat till the evening sacrifice; when he rose from his heaviness, deliberately rent his garment and mantle, fell on his knees, spread out his hands towards heaven, and confessed the sin of his people, and interceded for their forgiveness. One thing only could be done, and Shechaniah, the son of Jehiel, exhorted him to it: to make the people "put away all the wives, and such as were born of them," and added, "Arise, for this matter belongeth unto thee ; we also will be with thee; be of good courage, and do it." Such a voice seemed to sound in Gregory's ears; and, in the strength of a pure conscience, he bade those of his brethren, who against their conscience had taken wives, to make the only reparation which could be made by them for their sin.

 But it was not so easy to accomplish as to command; he had, as might be supposed, an opposition to encounter, to which no nerve but his could have been equal.

 "Vehement was the indignation of the German clergy, when first the intelligence of this obnoxious enactment reached their ears, and when they found that the great moral power, which the papacy had within the last few years attained, was to be wielded in enforcing, as realities, those principles of austere reformation, which, when promulged as they had been by Gregory's predecessors, a few years before, had probably seemed like theoretical notions, based upon views unsuited to the state of things actually existing in the world. The Pope, the clergy exclaimed aloud, was a heretic, and his decree that of a madman. The execution of it was a childish, an impossible notion. Human nature being what it was, the rigour of his laws, the attempt to make men live like angels, would only plunge the clergy, by a necessary reaction, into habits more dissolute than ever. And the letter of holy Scripture, the plain teaching as well of our Lord Himself, as of His inspired Apostle, was directly at variance with this wild, this extravagant enactment. But they defied him to proceed to such an extremity as to enforce its general adoption; and protested that, sooner than resign their domestic enjoyments, they would relinquish the priesthood; and, when he had expelled them, for no other reason than that they were men, he might seek where he could for angels, to minister in the churches in their stead.

 "And long, and violently, did this tumult rage. Several bishops, among whom was Otho, of Constance, openly put themselves at the head of the clergy opposed to Gregory's authority. And prelates, who, taking a different course, attempted to promulgate the papal edict in their respective dioceses, were assailed by the refractory members of their churches with insolence and outrage. But Gregory, ever watchful of their proceedings, prevented their zeal from flagging by repeated messages of warning, exhortation, and encouragement. And most especially was he urgent with Siegfried, to assume, on the occasion, the determined tone which became him, as primate of Germany, and to enforce the observance of the mandates of the Church, with the full weight of his authority." Vol. ii., pp. 20-22.

 Siegfried was a most unworthy successor of St. Boniface. He had at an earlier date committed himself to an attempt to introduce a tithe payment among the Thuringians, which he prosecuted at all seasons, with a pertinacity not at all inferior to that of the worthy Trapbois, for his miserable piece of gold. With the hope of effecting this through the royal power, he had even consented to advocate the project of the royal divorce, and summoned a Council for that purpose in his metropolitan city; when Damiani appeared as the Pope's legate and stopped the infamous proceeding, as was mentioned above. The year following he was summoned by Alexander II. to Rome, to defend himself against a charge of simoniacal practices. Roused to a momentary remorse by the remonstrance of the Pope, he expressed a wish to resign his station, and retire to a life of penitence and seclusion. This proposal, however, was strenuously resisted by Alexander and others; and he returned to Germany, to lose his serious thoughts, and to relapse into his former secularity. At the present crisis, he gave his clergy six months to deliberate on Gregory's injunction, and then summoned a Council, in which he put before them the alternative of renouncing either their wives or those offices which they had accepted on the condition of celibacy. The clergy, after hearing his address, quitted the place of assembly, as if for the purpose of private deliberation, and then resolved at once to set out for home, without his leave. Siegfried, however, pacified them, and persuaded them to return, and then temporized with them; but it all ended in his bringing forward, before a mixed assembly of clergy and laity, the old question of his pretensions to the Thuringian tithes, which had already been settled by treaty in favour of the Thuringians. A tumult ensued; the Council was broken up in confusion, the archbishop with difficulty escaped with his life, and betaking himself to Heiligenstadt, he continued there during the remainder of the year, repeating, but in vain, on every festival, his summons to the disturbers of the Council to do penance for the crime, under pain of excommunication.

 Such were Gregory's proceedings, and such his success with the high prelacy; but he had a new and formidable and, we must add, unjustifiable weapon in his arsenal, which he now brought into the contest. The measure which he was enforcing was founded on four Canons lately passed at Rome in Council, the fourth of which was to the effect that the laity should refuse the ministrations both of simoniacal and of married or licentious clergy. This Canon seemed to oppose the advice of Nicholas I. to the newly converted Bulgarians, who, on asking whether they should receive and honour married priests, had received for answer, that such priests might be in themselves fit subjects for censure, but it was not for them as laymen to pronounce a censure which lay with their bishops only. Gregory, however, seems to have understood that the aversion to a married priesthood, which he felt himself, was shared largely by the multitude, especially as they saw marriage commonly associated with general laxity of life. Another feeling which he had on his side was of a far less defensible character the opposition to authority, and especially ecclesiastical authority, which is so congenial to human nature. He urged then this canon upon the Germans, and the consequences were dreadful:

 "By the last of the four canons above quoted, the laity were thrown into the position, if not of judges of the priesthood, at least of punishers of its irregularities. And such invitation, thus made, was of course readily and generally attended to. The occasion seemed, to the selfish, the irreverent, and the profane, to legalize the gratification of all the bad feelings with which persons of those dispositions must ever regard the Church and her ministry; and priests, whose disobedience to the papal authority furnished any excuse for such conduct, were openly beaten, abused, and insulted by their rebellious flocks. Some were forced to fly with the loss of all that they possessed, some were deprived of limbs, and some, it is even said, put to death in lingering torments. And to lengths even more horrible than these did the popular violence, thus unhappily, thus criminally sanctioned, proceed. Too many were delighted to find what they could consider a religious excuse for neglecting religion itself, for depriving their children of the inestimable gift conferred in the holy sacrament of baptism, or for making the solemn mysteries of the Church subjects for the most degrading mockery, or of the most atrocious profanation. Deeply is it to be regretted that a pontiff who desired, from the bottom of his heart, the purification of the Church; whose whole life had been devoted to that high and holy cause ... should have evoked, in furtherance of his views, a spirit of so odious a character, as was that which showed itself in these dreadful transactions. But such had been the line marked out for him by those who had gone before him." Vol. ii., pp. 25-27.

 In France the promulgation of Gregory's Canons was received by the clergy with a burst of indignation yet more vehement, if possible, than that which had followed them in Germany. A Council of Paris denounced them, and the only member of the assembly who ventured to defend them was seized, beaten, spit upon, and tumultuously dragged to prison. When the Archbishop of Rouen endeavoured to enforce them upon his clergy, he was pelted with stones and fled for his life. Mr. Bowden tells us that the system of clerical marriage had been so completely established in Normandy, that churches had become property heritable by the sons, and even by the daughters, of their possessors. This fact shows how the two canonical offences of clerical marriage and simony ran together. Indeed it seems that the French king, breaking a promise he had made to Gregory, was practising a simoniacal traffic in bishops and abbeys without remorse or shame; while the holders of dignities thus obtained were not likely to be more scrupulous, in their turn, in their nomination to such inferior benefices and offices as thus fell under their control. In Spain, again, the papal legate was assailed by the clergy with menaces and outrages, when he attempted to enforce the observance of celibacy upon them. When the ill-treated prelates complained to Gregory, they got some such consolation as the following: "Shall it not shame us," he asks, "while every soldier of the world daily hazards his life for his sovereign, if we, priests of the Lord, shrink from the battle of our King, who made all things out of nothing, who scrupled not to lay down His life for us, and who has promised us eternal rewards." In Hungary, twenty years later, the rule had not made greater way than this, that a council under Ladislaus prohibited second marriages among the clergy, but allowed to married presbyters a time of indulgence, "on account of the bond of peace and the unity of the Holy Ghost, until the paternal authority of the Apostolic See should have been consulted on the subject." England, ruled at this time by the Conqueror, Gregory did not attempt; with that judgment and discrimination which he united to vigour, he waited for the influence of the precedent which he was introducing elsewhere. Yet even a few years after this the Council of Winchester enacted that no married persons should be admitted into Orders, though it passed a decree that parish priests who had wives already might retain them; which showed what already was the silent and indirect effect of Gregory's energetic proceedings in the empire. Eventually, the Anglican Church gave its adhesion to the principle of clerical celibacy even more completely than the Church of France.

 But at the time Gregory seemed to have success in no quarter, and not the least vexatious opposition was offered him in his own city. Guibert, who in the time of Alexander had been the Imperial Chancellor of Italy, and the supporter of the intruder Cadalous, was at this time Archbishop of Ravenna, having been appointed by the mediation of the Empress Agnes, just at the close of Alexander's life. Alexander himself had seen through the insincerity of his professed repentance, and was reluctant to consecrate him; but Hildebrand, it is said, trusted him and pleaded for him. Upon this, Alexander, with a prescient spirit, said, "I indeed am about to be dissolved; the time of my departure is at hand; but thou shalt feel his bitterness." The prophecy was not long in finding its fulfilment, and he eventually became Anti-Pope in Gregory's later years. "He put himself at the head of that party in Rome," says Mr. Bowden, "who were either alarmed by Gregory's rigour, or conceived themselves aggrieved by his measures of reform; attaching to himself the relatives and friends of the married clergy, as well as those many members of the sacerdotal body who had resigned their benefices in preference to adopting a life of celibacy." And there were other classes in Rome whose enormities were confronted by the reforming pontiff. To the Church of St. Peter belonged more than sixty officers of the class called 'Mansionarii.' They were married laymen, many of dissolute habits; and it was their custom, such had been the disgraceful laxity of the times, mitred and dressed in sacerdotal vestments, to keep constant watch at all the altars of the church, excepting only the high altar itself, to proffer, as priests, their services to the simple laity, who came from distant parts of Italy, and to receive their oblations. Relieving each other, they occupied the church day and night, and, as though not content with one description of sacrilege, they disgraced the holy place during the hours of darkness by robberies and licentiousness of the most infamous kind. Nor was it without great difficulty that Gregory, even in his own city, could put an end to this portentous abuse, and replace at the altars these impious laymen by priests canonically ordained. Mr. Bowden adds that "the cardinals themselves were wont, in the same church, to disgrace their office by celebrating the Holy Eucharist at irregular hours for the sake of gain; and Gregory's interference, to put a stop to this abuse by wholesome regulations, is described as having excited against him much odium among certain classes of his flock." Vol. ii., pp. 42, 43.

 Gregory was at this time about sixty years of age, and, tried by cares and by a life of rigid mortification from his boyhood, he gave way in health, and it was thought that he was dying. He recovered however; a circumstance, he says himself, "rather for sorrow than for joy. For our soul was tending towards, and with all desire panting for, that country where He, who observes our labour and our sorrow, prepares for the weary refreshment and repose. But we were yet reserved to our accustomed toils, our infinite anxieties; reserved to suffer, as it were, each hour the pangs of travail, while we feel ourselves unable to save, by any steersmanship, the Church which seems almost foundering before our eyes."

 Well might Gregory say that he was reserved for something, for he had not yet reached his celebrated struggle with Henry, which Fox the martyrologist, if no one else, has made familiar to Protestant ears, and which is the last and longest passage of his history which we propose to trace.

 7.

 In 1074 he had waged his battle with the clergy; that was enough for one year; but in the very next spring he opened his assault upon the Emperor. No wonder a mind of such incessant energy should complain of nothing but weariness and disappointment; and this seems to have been the habitual feeling under which he went to his work. "Often," he says, at this point of time, "have I implored the Lord, either to remove me from this present life, or to benefit, through me, our common Mother; and yet has He not hitherto removed me from tribulation, nor, as I had hoped, made my life profitable to her in whose chains He has bound me. Vast is the grief, wide-spreading the affliction, which encompasses me. Contemplating east, south, north, I perceive scarcely any bishops lawfully admitted to their office, and leading lives conformable to their sacred character. Nor do I find among the secular princes any who prefer God's honour to their own, or righteousness to gain. Those nations among whom I dwell, the Romans, Lombards, and Normans, I conceive, as I often declare to them, to be in some sense worse than Jews or Pagans. And turning inwards, I find myself so laden with the burden of my own doings, that no hope of salvation remains to me but in the sole mercy of Christ. Did I not trust to attain to a better life and to do service to Holy Church, I would on no account remain in Rome; in which city it has been by compulsion, God is my witness, that I have dwelt these twenty years. Whence it comes to pass, that, between this grief daily renewed in me, and the hope which, alas, is too long deferred, I live as it were in death, shaken by a thousand storms. And I await His coming who has bound me with His chains, led me back again to Rome against my will, and girt me round with countless difficulties." Such were the feelings under which he got ready for his greatest exploit.

 It is hardly to our purpose to go into the Pope's quarrel with the Emperor in its early stages; it turned principally on Henry's profligate life, his simoniacal appointments, and his cruelties and perfidies towards his subjects. Besides this, the Pope claimed the right of investiture, feeling that from its very form it was undeniably an ecclesiastical, not a secular act; and that, when exercised by laymen, it was necessarily connected with simony, and involved the principle that the Church was the creature of the State. We will but say that Alexander II., at a Council held about two months before his death, had excommunicated five of Henry's profligate favourites, and had even, as some say, sent a message to Henry himself, to appear before the chair of St. Peter and defend himself against the charge of simony and other offences. On Gregory's accession, the new Pope made friendly overtures to him, and the young king, being in great difficulties with his subjects, accepted them with much profession of humility and repentance.

 "Smitten in some degree, through God's mercy, with compunction," he said, "and returning to ourselves, we confess our past transgressions, and throw ourselves on your paternal indulgence, hoping in the Lord to obtain the boon of absolution from your apostolical authority. Criminal we have been, and unhappy, partly through the alluring instincts of youth, partly through the licence of unbridled power, partly through the seductive guidance of others. We have not only invaded the property of churches, but have sold to persons infected with the gall of simony the churches themselves; but now, unable without your authority to reform the abuses of the churches, we implore alike your counsel and your aid, in this as in all things. Your command is, in all things, of authority." Subsequently to this, Henry's mother, sent by Gregory, undertook a journey to him with the papal legate; he complied with their demands, made open confession of his simony and other offences, assisted them in degrading the simoniacal bishops, and received absolution at their hands. But, shortly afterwards, his fortunes taking a favourable turn, he was released from the necessity of keeping terms with the Pope; and, recalling the excommunicated nobles to his court, he provided himself with counsellors whose personal feelings would encourage him in courses directly opposed to the wishes and the principles of Gregory. His tone and conduct, in consequence, underwent an entire change. He appointed bishops to the churches of Fermo and Spoleto without consulting Gregory, and, in spite of his promise, to that of Milan; and the preponderance which he thus gave to the anti-papal party in northern Italy, was extended by Guibert of Ravenna into the south by a correspondence with Robert Guiscard, who happened at this time to be under papal ban. On the other hand, the Saxons, who, having been cruelly oppressed by Henry, had risen in arms and been reduced, appealed to Gregory for protection for their bishops, whom Henry had perfidiously seized, deposed, plundered, and imprisoned; and Gregory, answering to their appeal, took the strong step of not only demanding the liberation of the bishops, but, as Alexander is said to have done before him, of summoning Henry himself to appear before the apostolic tribunal, to clear himself of the charges which had been brought against him.

 "All things are double, one against another." Every power, every form of government, every influence strong as it may be, has its natural complement or match, by which it is prevented from doing all things at its will. In constitutional governments men appeal to the law; in absolute monarchies they rise; in military despotisms they assassinate. James the Second is opposed by legal forms; Louis of France by jaqueries; Paul of Russia is strangled. The only remedy for a reforming Pope was to carry him off and lodge him safe in durance. Guibert of Ravenna has the reputation of being concocter of a plot, with the privity of Henry and Robert Guiscard, which developed itself as follows: Cencius was the instrument of it, a bold and profligate man, a member of the powerful family which was in possession of the castle of St. Angelo, and which had been the main support of the anti-pope Cadalous in his struggle with Alexander.

 "The night of Christmas Eve, 1075, was gloomy and tempestuous; the torrents of rain, according to Paul of Bernreid, were such, as to present a lively image of the general deluge; and although Gregory, according to custom, celebrated the Holy Eucharist at midnight, in the church of Sta. Maria Maggiore, the building instead of being as usual thronged with worshippers, was comparatively silent and deserted; few venturing to leave their homes in weather so inclement.

 "Gregory and his clergy had partaken of the holy elements, and were engaged in distributing them to the laity, when, on a sudden, Cencius and his confederates burst in arms into the church. Interrupting the holy ceremonial, they seized the pontiff at the altar; one of the ruffians aimed a blow with a sword at his head, inflicting a serious wound on his forehead; and the rest then dragged him, amid insults and blows, from the precincts of the sanctuary. He preserved a perfect composure, lifting up his eyes to heaven, but neither struggling nor speaking, while these abandoned wretches thus vented on him their fury. They stripped him of his pallium and chasuble, and then binding him, still clad in his alb and stole, behind a ruffian on horseback, they hurried him to one of the towers, already mentioned, of Cencius; where preparations had been made for bearing him at once beyond the walls of Rome. But the latter part of this project the conspirators were not able to succeed in accomplishing ... And the first glimpse of dawn showed to the conspirators within it their enemies, provided with ladders, catapults, and every species of engine then used in assaults, and preparing for an immediate and vigorous attack. The sister of Cencius, abandoned as her brother, reviled the illustrious prisoner in the most violent terms; while one of her partizans, drawing a sword, threatened to strike off, on the instant, his head. But the scene was now to change. A lance, or dart, from without, pierced this wretch's throat, and laid him breathless on the ground and The attack was, therefore, carried on with redoubled fury. The walls of the tower soon gave way before their exertions, and Gregory, borne in triumph from amid the ruins to the church from which he had been torn, there concluded the holy service in which he had been interrupted, amid the enthusiastic rejoicings of the people. Cencius, pursued by the execrations of his countrymen, with difficulty escaped from their fury, and fled with his principal confederates to Germany." Vol. ii., pp. 81-85.

 This attempt then failed but, meanwhile, the measures of Gregory proceeded. About the same time that Cencius was playing his part in Rome, the Pope's legates appeared before Henry with his summons to appear, warning him at the same time, that, did he not, a sentence of excommunication would issue against him. Henry dismissed them with ridicule and insult; and since force had failed against their master, he resolved to attack him with his own weapons, and summoned in haste a Council of the German Church at Worms for Septuagesima Sunday, January 24, with the view of obtaining from it the condemnation and deposition of Gregory. It was attended by a numerous assemblage of bishops and abbots; and when the session was opened, Hugo Candidus, who played a conspicuous part in Gregory's election, and who had vacillated from side to side several times, stood forward as his accuser. He laid before the Council a variety of forged letters, purporting to come from different archbishops and bishops, and from the cardinals, senate, and people of Rome, filled with complaints of Gregory's conduct, and with entreaties for his deprivation, and the appointment of a successor. Then, as though in explanation of these epistles, Hugo read a document (which seems to have been subsequently the foundation of Benno's work) professing to give an account of Gregory's life, and filled with the most unfounded and incredible calumnies. It insisted on the lowness of his origin, and described his whole life, before and after his election, which was stated to have been simoniacal, as a tissue of crimes, among which were enumerated murder, necromancy, the profanation of the Holy Eucharist, and the worship of the devil. In consequence, after two days' consultation, without proposing even that Gregory should be heard in his defence, the Council decreed, by its own local act, that he was no longer Pope, and presented to each bishop the following formula for subscription: "I, N., bishop of the city of N., abjure from this hour all subjection and obedience to Hildebrand, and will never more account or style him Pope." All the bishops present seemed to have signed. Messengers were forthwith despatched into Lombardy with the news; the Lombard bishops met forthwith in council at Piacenza, and not only subscribed, but bound themselves by a solemn oath upon the Gospels, to the act of Worms. Roland, a priest of the Church of Parma, was charged with the perilous duty of bearing a copy of the acts of both Councils to Rome, where he arrived in the second week in Lent, just when the Council was assembled to which Henry had been summoned. Much as we have quoted from Mr. Bowden, we must here, as elsewhere, be allowed to prefer his vivid description to any words we could put together ourselves:

 "The Council being assembled, and the echoes of the solemn strain, 'Veni Creator Spiritus,' having scarcely died away amid the holy aisles of the Lateran, Roland suddenly stepped forward before the pontiff and his prelates (p. 95) ... Addressing his speech to Gregory, 'The king,' he said, 'and the united bishops, as well of Germany as of Italy, transmit thee this command, Descend without delay from the throne of St. Peter, and abandon the usurped government of the Roman Church, for to such honours should none aspire, unsanctioned by their general choice, and by the approval of the Emperor.' And then, ere the assembled prelates and clergy had recovered their astonishment, the audacious envoy looked round upon them, and thus addressed them collectively: 'To you, brethren, it is commanded, that you do, at the feast of Pentecost, present yourselves before the king, my master, to receive a Pope and a father from his hands. The pretended pastor before you is detected to be a ravening wolf.'

 "'Seize him!' cried John, Bishop of Oporto, a prelate of holy and exalted character, who could no longer contain his indignation. The prefect of the city rushed forward, attended by the guards and attendants of the Council. Swords were brandished, even in that holy place; and the blood of Roland would, on the moment, have expiated his temerity, had not Gregory himself forced his way into the crowd, and restrained, though with difficulty, the fury of his adherents. Having at length succeeded in obtaining comparative tranquillity, the pontiff received from the prisoner the documents which he had been commissioned to deliver; and then, imploring the continued silence of the assembly, he proceeded to read aloud, with his usual composure, the acts of the Councils of Worms and Piacenza, and the following imperial epistle:

 "'Henry, not by usurpation, but by the holy ordinance of God, king, to Hildebrand, no longer the Pope, but the false monk.

 "'A greeting like this hast thou for thy confusion deserved; thou who hast left no Order of the Church untouched, but hast brought upon each confusion, not honour, cursing, not blessing. To speak but of a few of thy most distinguished deeds, the rulers of the holy Church, the archbishops, bishops, and presbyters, thou hast not only not feared, seeing that they are the Lord's anointed, to touch; but, as though they were servants who know not what their Lord doeth, thou hast trampled them under thy feet. Thou hast obtained favour with the vulgar by their humiliation; and hast thought that they know nothing, and that thou alone knowest all things. Yet, this knowledge of thine thou hast used for the purpose, not of edification, but of destruction, insomuch that we believe the blessed Gregory, whose name thou hast assumed, to have spoken prophetically of thee, when he said, "By the abundance of subjects, the mind of him who is set over them is puffed up, for he supposes that he excels all in knowledge, when he finds that he excels all in power."'" Vol. ii., pp. 95-99.

 We wish we had room to continue this exciting scene, which ends in a majestic address of Gregory to the Council, and the enthusiastic acclamations of the prelates assembled in answer to it.

 The next day, in the presence of 110 prelates and of the Empress Agnes, whose sense of duty overcame the affections of a mother, he pronounced sentence in form upon the German and Lombard bishops, and above all upon Henry, whom he declared excommunicated from the Church and suspended from the exercise of his imperial power.

 8.

 In these transactions, we see on both sides what we must account a confusion of the rights of Church and State, the Emperor in council deposing the Pope, and the Pope deposing the Emperor. Mr. Bowden has some just remarks on the subject, and traces it to the feudalism of the day, which acknowledged but one standard of rank in the community, and forced all powers and offices to measure themselves by it. As in Russia, it is said, that men are only recognized as soldiers, and the clergy take rank as colonels or captains, so in the eleventh century Gregory was forced to place himself in direct relation to the Emperor, and take precedence either above him or beneath him, and with this alternative he put himself above him, as the nearest approximation to the truth. And in like manner, the Emperor, not the present Henry only, but his father before him, and Conrad his grandfather, not to say the Carlovingians, had placed themselves above the Church, because they were supreme in temporals, and had treated the Pope as one of their subjects, just as a naturalist of this day in despair ranks a whale among the mammalia.

 On the present occasion, Mr. Bowden considers it a cause of thankfulness that Gregory, with all the incidental defects of his theological system, was in the chair of St. Peter. He considers that the success of the Imperialists would have been the immediate triumph of simony, licentiousness, and the other crying evils of the time, and would have tended to make that triumph perpetual. On the other hand, Gregory was not only engaged in vindicating what he considered his divine authority, but also an ecclesiastical principle essential to the independence and well-being of the Church. The real question was, whether the Church was or was not a creature of the State? Whether she had or had not temporal rights was an excrescence upon the main question; and she needed a champion, such as, through God's providence, she found, who scorned either to be swayed by menaces, or to be bribed by the promise of a temporary peace, into the compromise of her essential principles.

 Thus the contest opened; Gregory had on his side many of the leading nobles of Germany, the Saxons, to a certain extent the Swabians, the great mass of the regular and a considerable portion of the secular clergy. And Henry was supported by the Rhenish provinces, by the large towns, as Worms, now rising into some degree of commercial opulence, by a certain number of the nobility, who had felt or feared the papal censures, and the vast body of anti-reforming clergy. It was a moment of extreme excitement, when each of the contending parties had defied his antagonist, and waited to see how the defiance was received by Christendom at large, with whom eventually lay the decision.

 As to Henry himself, however, he seems to have thought he had done everything when he had secured the synodal acts of Worms and Piacenza, as if they were to work their effect as a matter of course; he was astounded therefore at the intelligence that the old man, whom he was resisting, far from crouching, had vigorously smitten him in turn with the ban of the Church. For a moment the unfortunate prince seemed overpowered with agitation; then he treated the subject with apparent indifference; then he gave orders that Gregory himself should be publicly excommunicated in turn. He committed this office to Pibo, Bishop of Toul; but Pibo, together with another bishop, set off in the night and left the king to go to the cathedral by himself, where the Bishop of the place (Utrecht) pronounced the sentence. The next thing he heard was, that the German prelates, who had been denounced by Gregory together with himself, were crossing the Alps to make their peace with him; next, the secular princes, who had the charge of the Saxon nobles and bishops, whom Henry had faithlessly seized, having been already shocked at Henry's proceedings in the Council of Worms, on hearing the papal sentence against him, let go their prisoners and sent them off to Saxony. On their arrival there, the Saxons rose in arms, appeared before the strongholds, which the king, in violation of his promise, had rebuilt in their country, took them by assault or capitulation, and then proceeded to resume the lands which had been seized by the royal favourites.

 An event occurred which increased the dismay: William, Bishop of Utrecht, who has been mentioned above as excommunicating Gregory in the cathedral, repeated the sentence several times the same Easter, calling the Pope a perjurer, an adulterer, and a false apostle. A month had not passed before he was seized with a violent illness, which carried him off in a few days. In his last moments he cried out that he had forfeited life both here and hereafter, and forbade his friends to pray for him after death, as one destined to perdition. These facts were exaggerated; in addition, stories were circulated that, as he breathed his last sigh, his cathedral and his sovereign's palace were struck with lightning. Other deaths too in the king's party about the same time were interpreted in the light of William's.

 Henry appointed a diet at Worms for Whitsuntide; not one of his chief nobles attended: he postponed it to St. Peter's Day at Mentz; even then but a few obeyed the summons. Udo, the venerated Archbishop of Treves, had gone to Rome and received absolution. On his return he refused to hold any intercourse with the Archbishops of Mentz and Cologne. Henry he would only approach for the purpose of counselling; he would not sit at table with him or join in prayer. The more religious members of the king's household withdrew themselves, and withstood Henry's most urgent entreaties to return.

 Henry next led a force against the Saxons, and was repelled with loss. At Gregory's suggestion his principal nobles held a solemn Diet of the empire at Worms in the autumn; it was very numerously attended; even Siegfried of Mentz obtained papal absolution and attended; the Patriarch of Aquileia and Bishop of Padua appeared as legates from the Holy See. Henry sent the humblest messages to the Diet in vain: at last they consented to treat with him on these conditions: first, that his continuing to reign should be referred to the Pope; next, that until he could procure reconciliation, he should live as a private individual, neither entering church nor exercising any royal functions; thirdly, that he should renounce the society of all excommunicate persons; and lastly, that, if at the end of a year his own excommunication was not reversed, his right to empire should be lost for ever. A Council was appointed for the beginning of January, to meet at Augsburgh, over which Gregory himself was to preside, and then Henry was to be reconciled. Henry wished to come to Italy, but Gregory forbade him. His anxiety for a release from the anathema inflicted on him increased; he could not bear the suspense. Regardless therefore of Gregory's prohibition, of the season, which was unusually severe, and of the difficulty of crossing the Alps in the winter, he set out to find the Pope in Italy. Mr. Bowden shall set him forward on his journey:

 "The winter which closed the year 1076 was a season of unusual severity; the Rhine being frozen over from Martinmas almost to the beginning of April, 1077. The difficulties, therefore, of a journey across the Alps, at the time of Henry's expedition, must, under any circumstances, have been great; and the auspices under which the unfortunate monarch set forth were such as to render the undertaking in his case peculiarly arduous. Deprived of his friends and of his resources, it was not in his power to make any proper provision for the journey. Nor could he venture to prosecute his way along any of the more direct tracts which led from his German dominions into Italy; as Rudolf, Welf, and Berthold, who wished to retain him in Germany, sedulously watched the mountain passes of Swabia, Bavaria, and Carinthia. But Henry felt too strongly the danger of furnishing his enemies with any new pretext for setting him aside, to think of giving up the attempt, desperate as it might be, to procure a timely absolution.

 "A few days, therefore, before the Christmas which closed the year 1076, the king put himself in motion from Spires. His wife and infant child accompanied his steps, and, whatever meaner followers may have formed his escort, it appears that only one person of gentle blood and he not distinguished by rank or possessions attended the fallen sovereign ... He set forward, however, and taking his way through Burgundy, halted to observe the festival of Christmas at Besançon. And thence, passing the Jura, he proceeded to Vevay on the shore of the lake of Geneva ... Even the valleys of the Alps, when Henry began to wind his way among them, were white with snow and slippery with ice. Peasants of the country, whose services he had hired, went before him, and cleared, as best they might, a precipitous and rugged road for the advance of the royal party. As the travellers ascended towards the higher regions of the pass, the difficulties of this process increased, of course, with every step. Happily, however, no serious accident occurred: and after long toils, the monarch and his little train found themselves on the summit of a ridge, a descent from which would lead them into Italy. But this descent appeared in prospect more formidable than anything which they had previously accomplished. The whole of the precipitous mountain slope formed one sheet of ice, on which no foot, it seemed, could for a moment maintain its position. The descent, however, was necessarily attempted. Henry and the men of the party crawled carefully down on their hands and knees, placing their feet on whatever points of support they could find; and he whose footing unfortunately failed him rolled far away into the snowy depths below; from which it was often a matter of great difficulty to extricate him. The queen, her child, and her female attendants, were, by the experienced peasants, lowered down the slope enveloped in skins of cattle; and the whole party reached at length the bottom in safety; though of their horses which were either drawn down the descent with their legs tied together, or lowered on some rude kinds of machines constructed for the purpose many died, and many more were rendered unfit for further service." Vol. ii., pp. 161-164.

 Thus it was that Henry and the imperial family at last reached the plains of Lombardy.

 9.

 In Italy the report was at once spread abroad that he had come to take vengeance on the Pope. People recollected or had been told of Henry III.'s visitation of the Papal See thirty years before, when a Council was held at Sutri, and Gregory, the sixth of that name, was made to abdicate. Accordingly, nobles, prelates, and warriors thronged to greet him, and his crowded and brilliant court formed a strange contrast to the neglect, or rather aversion, which he had had to encounter on the other side of the Alps. But Henry was not so dazzled with the scenes, which now surrounded him, as to forget those which he had left. He asked where the Pope was, and finding he was at Canossa, a fortress of the Appennines, belonging to the Countess Matilda, (whither Gregory had taken refuge on the rumour of Henry's having come at the head of a formidable force,) he betook himself thither.

 Matilda goes by the name of the Great Countess. She inherited Tuscany from her mother, and was the enthusiastic friend and servant of Gregory; to him and to his principles her energies, her influence, and her treasures were dedicated. Her talents and learning were as remarkable as her rank and her devotion. Amid the various occupations which her extensive territories occasioned, she found time and opportunity to become the encourager, and, in some degree, the restorer, of ancient literature. She was acquainted with the more recent languages spoken in France and Germany, as well as in her own country. She was active and energetic in the enforcement of justice and the maintenance of her authority; nor was she unequal to the task of eliciting the military resources of her territory, and bringing well-disciplined armies into the field. She was munificently charitable to the poor; systematically kind and hospitable to the exile and to the stranger; and the foundress or benefactress of a great number of churches and conventual institutions. Throughout her eventful life she never suffered secular matters to interfere with the frequency or regularity of her exercises of devotion; and in adversity, of which she was allotted her share, she found her consolation in the society of holy men and the perusal of Holy Scripture. "Such," says Mr. Bowden, "was the Great Countess; such was she, who, too proud or too humble to recapitulate the roll of her titles, was wont to subscribe herself, 'Matilda, by the grace of God what I am;'" and at the present moment she was especially fitted to undertake the mediation between Gregory and Henry, being a relative of Henry as well as the host of Gregory.

 "Towards Canossa, then, Henry bent his steps, accompanied by his recently formed train of Italian followers. His faithful German adherents, who had, in the preceding month, set out to cross the Alps by different paths, had encountered on the journey a variety of difficulties and sufferings. Dietrich, Bishop of Verdun, was captured by Adelbert, Count of Calw, and plundered of the sums which he had, with much trouble, collected to meet the expenses of his journey. Rupert of Bamberg, being seized by Welf while traversing the Bavarian territory, was kept in strict ward from Christmas until the feast of St. Bartholomew in the following year. But the rest of Henry's excommunicated supporters, having surmounted the dangers of their journey, and made good their way into Italy, appeared before Canossa, while the king himself was yet on his way, and humbly presented themselves before the Pope as supplicants for his absolution. 'From those,' said Gregory, 'who rightly acknowledge and bewail their sin, forgiveness cannot be withheld. The petitioners must, however,' he continued, 'submit to the cauterizing process which is needful for the healing of their wounds, that they may not, by too lightly obtaining absolution, be led too lightly to regard the sin which they have committed by disobedience to apostolical authority.' Prelates and lay-nobles alike professed their readiness to undergo whatever penance their spiritual father might think proper to impose; and the former were, by his directions, confined in separate cells with scanty supplies of food, while to the latter penances were assigned of a severity proportioned to the age and strength of each individual. And when he had thus tried them for several days, Gregory summoned them again before him, and after mildly rebuking them for their past conduct, and admonishing them against such demeanour in future, declared them severally absolved, warning them at the same time, anxiously and repeatedly, against holding any communion with their imperial master until he also should have given satisfaction to the Apostolic See; till that should happen they were to be permitted to hold colloquy with him only for the purpose of inducing him, by their persuasions, to abandon the error of his ways.

 "At length the principal offender appeared in person before Canossa, and pitched his camp without the walls of the fortress." Vol. ii., pp. 167, 168.

 The humiliation to which Gregory put the king himself has always been severely animadverted upon, and has done his character much harm with posterity; but Mr. Bowden bids us recollect that severer penances were not at all uncommon at that time, and that it is very unfair to measure them by the standard of drawing-room propriety, and the judgment of an age of kid gloves and Naples soap. It was a most uncomfortable thing to be kept shivering in the cold from morning to night, and likely to cause rheumatism, of which we have no intention at all of speaking lightly; but Henry III., the king's father, would habitually, before presenting himself in royal robes upon his throne, submit in private to a self-imposed scourging. The magnificent and luxurious Boniface of Tuscany, Matilda's father, submitted on one occasion to a similar discipline before the Altar of St. Mary's at Pomposa, at the suggestion, if not at the hands, of his spiritual adviser, as a penance for some simoniacal transactions; and Godfrey of Lorraine, Matilda's stepfather, in remorse for the burning of the cathedral of Verdun in the course of his warlike operations, not only contributed largely to its rebuilding, but caused himself to be scourged in public, and as publicly took part in the work of building, in the capacity of a common labourer. In the following century took place the well-known scourging of Henry II., by the monks of Canterbury, at the shrine of St. Thomas. Such facts as these must be recollected when we read the following extraordinary scene:

 "It was on the morning of the 25th of January, 1077, while the frost reigned in all its intensity, and the ground was white with snow, that the dejected Henry, barefooted, and clad in the usual garb of penance, a garment of white linen, ascended alone to the rocky fortress of Canossa, and entered its outer gate. The place was surrounded by three walls, within the two outer of which the imperial penitent was led, while the portals of the third or inner wall of the fortress were still closed against him. Here he stood, a miserable spectacle, exposed to cold and hunger throughout the day, vainly hoping, with each succeeding hour, that Gregory would consider the penance sufficient, and his fault atoned for. The evening, however, came, and he retired, humbled and dispirited, to return to his station with the returning light.

 "On a second day, and on a third, the unhappy prince was still seen standing, starved and miserable, in the court of Canossa, from the morning until the evening. All in the castle, except the Pope, bewailed his condition, and with tears implored his forgiveness; it was said, even in Gregory's presence, that his conduct was more like wanton tyranny than apostolic severity. But the austere pontiff continued obstinately deaf to all entreaties. At length Henry's patience failed him, and, taking refuge in the adjacent chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas, he there besought, with tears, the intercession of the aged abbot of Cluni; Matilda, who was present, seconded the king's entreaty, but the abbot, turning to her, replied, 'It is thou alone who canst undertake this business.' And Henry, upon the word, fell upon his knees before his kinswoman, and besought her, in the most impassioned manner, once more to exert her potent intercession. She promised to use her utmost endeavours, and returned into the castle; and Gregory, feeling that he had now sufficiently vindicated his authority, relaxed at length his rigour, suffering the unfortunate king, still barefooted, and in his linen garment, to be brought into his presence, on the fourth day of his penance.

 "The scene, as the suppliant king approached the pontiff, must have been singularly striking. The youthful and vigorous Henry, of lofty stature and commanding features, thus humbling himself before the small, insignificant, and now probably withered, figure of Gregory VII., must have afforded a striking type of that abasement of physical before moral power, of the sword before the crosier, which the great struggle then in progress was fated to accomplish." Vol. ii., pp. 174-176.

 10.

 Having brought our narrative to this critical point, we must break it off abruptly. What followed upon this, what an immediate triumph to the Pope, what subsequent reverses, what eventual success to his principles after his day; how Henry lapsed again, and how Gregory was at length forced to abandon Rome and died an exile at Salerno, for these and a multitude of interesting details we must refer the reader to the work itself of which we are availing ourselves. As also for the account of the wonderfully large range of action which Gregory's labours embraced, and the multitude of Churches and States with which he held negotiation, among which were Constantinople, Hippo, Spain, England, Denmark, Russia, and Hungary. On two occasions also we find him directing the attention of the Church to the project of a crusade to the Holy Land, which was taken up in the next generation. But all this we must omit; and shall end our protracted yet incomplete narrative with Mr. Bowden's account of Gregory's death:

 "He moved, shortly after his final departure from Rome, to Salerno, where, under the efficient protection of Robert Guiscard, he was enabled to repose in security, and where, while he still kept a watchful eye upon the troublous scenes of the world around him, he sought a solace for its sorrows in assiduous devotion, and in continual meditation on the word of God. As early as in January, 1085, he perceived symptoms of the exhaustion of his powers; the natural consequence of years, and of the arduous and unremitting labours and anxieties in which he had been so long engaged. During the succeeding months his debility increased, and in May it became evident to all around him that from the sick bed, on which he was laid, he was doomed never to rise again. Aware of his approaching end, he summoned around him the cardinals and bishops, who, faithful to his cause, or rather to his principles, had attended him to Salerno. He spoke to them of the events of his past life, and, while he disclaimed any right to glory in anything which he had done, he acknowledged the satisfaction which he derived from the thought that his course had been guided by principle, by a zeal for the right, and by an abhorrence of evil. His auditors, plunged in sincere sorrow, expressed to him their melancholy anticipations of the fate of the Church when deprived of his guiding hand. 'But I,' said he, with eyes and hands upraised to heaven, 'am mounting thitherward; and with supplications the most fervent will I commend your cause to the goodness of the Almighty.'

 "Being solicited to express his opinion with respect to the choice of a successor, he mentioned the names of Desiderius, Abbot of Monte Cassino; of Otho, Bishop of Ostia; and of Hugo, Bishop of Lyons; suggesting, as a reason for giving priority to the former of the three, his presence at the moment in Italy.

 "Three days before his death, on the question being brought before him of absolving the persons whom he had excommunicated, he replied, 'With the exception of Henry, styled by his followers the king; of Guibert, the usurping claimant of the Roman See; and of whose who, by advice or assistance, favour their evil and ungodly views, I absolve and bless all men who unfeignedly believe me to possess this power, as the representative of St. Peter and St. Paul.' And then, addressing those around him for some time, in the language of warning, he thus impressively concluded: 'In the name of the Almighty God, and by the power of His holy Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, I adjure you, recognize no one as my successor in the Roman See, who shall not have been duly elected and canonically ordained by Apostolic authority.'

 "On the 25th of May, 1085, he peacefully closed his earthly career; just rallying strength, amid the exhaustion of his powers, to utter, with his departing breath, the words, 'I have loved justice and hated iniquity; and therefore I die in exile.'

 "'In exile!' said a prelate who stood by his bed, ... in exile thou canst not die! Vicar of Christ and His Apostles, thou hast received the nations for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.'" Vol. ii., pp. 322, 324.

 Gregory thought he had failed: so it is; often a cause seems to decline as its champion grows in years, and to die in his death; but this is to judge hastily; others are destined to complete what he began. No man is given to see his work through. "Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening," but the evening falls before it is done. There was One alone who began and finished and died.

 April, 1841.

 Note on Essay XIII.

 A SHORT memoir of Mr. Bowden, prefixed, under date of St. Bede's Day (May 27), 1845, to a posthumous publication, his "Thoughts on the Work of the Six Days of Creation," may be fitly appended to the foregoing Essay, as a record of one whom to have known is to have loved and to hold in perpetual remembrance.

 After stating that the small volume in question "was the occupation and solace of the last illness of its author," and, both from its subject and the character of its composition, a suitable memorial of a mind "at once active and serene, deeply interested in the histories both of nature and of man, apprehensive of the Divine Hand in all he found in them, and contemplating with an unclouded faith the tokens they exhibit, and Divine Love and Wisdom," it proceeds to say:

 "He was born in London on February 21, 1798; went to Harrow School in 1812; entered as a commoner at Trinity College, Oxford, in Lent term, 1817; and, after obtaining mathematical honours in Michaelmas Term, 1820, proceeded in due course to the degrees of B.A. and M.A.

 "In the autumn of 1826 he received the appointment of Commissioner of Stamps, which he resigned in 1840. For some years he was a member of the Geological Society of London. In June, 1828, he married.

 "In 1833, and following years, he engaged zealously in the revival which took place of the ecclesiastical principles of the seventeenth century, and was one of the earliest assistants and supports of a friend who at that time commenced the series called the Tracts for the Times . That most intimate friendship, which, begun with the first months of his residence at Oxford, showed itself also in the contributions to the Lyra Apostolica, which bear the signature of a, and in several Articles which he wrote in the British Critic between the years 1836 and 1841.

 "The Articles referred to, are those upon the 'Rise of the Papal Power,' in July, 1836; on 'Gothic Architecture,' in April, 1837; on the 'British Association,' in January, 1839; and on 'The Church in the Mediterranean,' in July, 1841.

 "In the spring of 1839, he had the first attack of the malady which ultimately proved fatal. On his apparent recovery in the autumn, he went abroad with his family for the winter, which he passed at Malta. On his return in the course of the ensuing spring, he put to press his 'Life and Pontificate of Gregory VII.,' which had been written in previous years, during his intervals of leisure from official duties.

 "His complaint returned in the summer of 1843; throughout a long illness, the gifts of clearness and equability of mind, and of a gentle, cheerful, composed spirit, with which he had ever been blessed, were mercifully increased to him. He died in the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1844, in undoubting communion with the Church of Andrewes and Laud. He was buried at Fulham, which had been the home of his childhood and youth. He lives still here, the light and comfort of many hearts, who ask no happier, holier end than his."

 The foregoing account of Mr. Bowden's History of Gregory VII. calls for no remark here, except as relates to the subject of the forged Decretals. As public attention has lately been drawn to them, I think it well to make the following extract concerning them, from the "Critique on Mr. Ffoulke's Letter, by H. I. D. Ryder, of the Oratory."

 1.

 The pseudo-decretals, A.D. 859, "were but indications of a current that had long been setting steadily in one direction. What claims did they really put forward on the Pope's behalf, that had not been made before? Two points in particular have been marked as innovations: 1. The reservation, independently of appeal, of all the criminal causes of all bishops to the Holy See. 2. The assertion of the nullity of any synod, convened without the authority of the Holy See.

 "1. As to the first, within the western Patriarchate, at least, it was no new claim; see Pope Xystus III., [A.D. 432-440,] Ep. 10, who reserves all such causes to himself or to his vicar, Anastasius of Thessalonica. For the reservation of the causes of Metropolitans, see Greg. Magn. Ep. ad Episcopos Sardiniæ, and St. Leo I., Ep. 84.

 "As regards the Oriental Bishops, there was a prescriptive reservation to the Pope of the criminal causes of Patriarchs and Exarchs, as being autocephalous: see the Epistle of Julius [A.D. 337-352] ad Euseb .; also the Epistle of the Council of Ephesus [A.D. 481], which speaks of the reservation of the Pope of the cause of John of Antioch. Again, as to the criminal causes of common Bishops, Pope Julius in the same Epistle, although he is speaking particularly of the case of Alexandria, insinuates that it is fitting that these causes also should come before him; and Gelasius [A.D. 492-496], Ep. ad Orient, speaks of an ancient custom to this effect.

 "For the reservation of the 'causæ majores' to the Vicar of the Holy See, see Xystus III., Ep . 8 ad Syn. Thessalonic . and Innocent I. [A.D. 402-417], Ep. ad Victric . Boniface I. [A.D. 418-422], Ep . 15, insists upon the invariable custom in the Eastern Church of submitting their 'magna negotia' to the Pope ...

 "2. As to the second, so far as it establishes the nullity of a diocesan or provincial synod unsupported by the authority of the Pope, it is undoubtedly an innovation. But it is certain, says Blascus ( Comment. in Pseud-Isid ., ch. 9), that the popes never applied it, even within their own patriarchate, to any synod but such as pretended to be general, or to deal with the reserved causes of bishops. No writer, says the same authority, before the twelfth century applies this prohibition to synods generally; and the Roman correctors of Gratian, Adnot. ad Can . 4, Hist . 17, limit it expressly to General Synods.

 "3. Two other points have been sometimes regarded as novelties: the extension of the right of appeal to clerics generally, and the anticipation of judgment by an appeal to Rome, instead of appealing from the sentence, when pronounced. As regards the former, Dr. Döllinger remarks, (Church Hist., vol. iii., § 7,) that the appeal of simple priests to Rome was by no means uncommon, previous to the pseudo-decretals. As regards the latter, it is sufficient to observe that Hincmar, in his controversy with Nicholas I. concerning Rothad, Bishop of Soissons, whom he had deposed, justifies himself solely on the ground that Rothad had withdrawn the appeal, by which he had at first attempted to bar the proceedings of his judges. I think after this we may very contentedly acquiesce in Ballerini's moderate and judicial summing-up, when he says, in his Essay on the Canons, part iii., cap. 6, § 3, that, when these decretals appeared, they represented a discipline, which was already forming, particularly in those parts where they had their birth.

 "This judgment of Ballerini's is so amply borne out by two non-Catholic writers of different nationalities and different schools of thought, but like one another, at least, in their learning and their candour, that I cannot forbear quoting them. The first is Neander (Church History, vol. vi., p. 7, ed. Bohn). He says, 'He, the pseudo-Isidore, was at all events but the organ of a tendency of the religious and ecclesiastical spirit which prevailed with the great masses of the men amongst whom he lived. He had no idea of introducing a new code; but only of presenting, in a connected form, the principles which must be recognized by every one as correct, and on which depended the well-being of the Church ... In truth, even what had been said by Leo the Great [A.D. 440-461] concerning the Pope's primacy over the whole Church, involves the principle of all that is to be found in the decretals; though Leo could not bring into effect, in his own age, those outlines of the ideal of a papacy which floated before his mind.'

 "The second is Mr. Bowden, who speaks thus in the Introduction to his Life of Gregory VII., p. 56: 'The immediate effect of the forgery was rather to sanction and consolidate relations already existing between the different orders of the Christian hierarchy, than to introduce new ones; and, though the work, having once been received, undoubtedly did much towards handing down in its completeness the system of Papal monarchy to subsequent ages, it derived its own weight at the epoch of its origin, from the tendency which already existed in that system to perfect and extend itself.'

 "Even Dean Milman, in spite of a decided anti-papal bias, is obliged to admit (Latin Christ., vol. ii., p. 307) that it cannot be proved that the pseudo-decretals contain anything absolutely new, anything that had not been said before.

 "If ... the Papal Monarchy be a usurpation, and destructive of that economy which Christ meant should reign throughout His Church, at least it is undeniable that the Church from the beginning bore and fostered the germ within her. To the Bishop of Rome all may appeal, and from him none. He is the judge of all, whom none may judge. Every corner of the vineyard is open to him, who is its guardian, whenever the faith or peace of the Church is in danger. No canon avails without his sanction; and it is for him to interpret the canons according to the exigencies of time and circumstance. What the ancient Church does not claim for the Pope, she allows him to claim for himself. Restrictive laws seem to have been made for others, not for him. Patriarchs, the most ancient and the most august, are keenly criticized and sharply rebuked, if they speak proud things, or interfere with even the humblest of their neighbours; the Bishop of Rome alone, it seems, cannot exalt himself above his rightful place, or intrude where he is not due. If he is rebuked, it is by heretics like the Eusebians, whom he detects and punishes; or if a Saint says a sharp word, the Church lets it fall to the ground, as if it knew not what he said ... "

 Here I interrupt the course of Mr. Ryder's argument to refer to my own Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, in which I have been led to enumerate such testimonies in behalf of the authority of the Holy See, and the Roman Church, as occur in the first three centuries, and do not fall within the range of his survey of the history. "Faint they may be one by one," I say, "but at least they are various, and are drawn from many times and countries, and thereby serve to illustrate each other, and form a body of proof." For instance, to St. Clement, one of the first successors of St. Peter, the Corinthians have recourse in their domestic dissensions, and he, in the name of his Church, writes to them a letter of exhortation and advice; while St. Ignatius, his contemporary, who gives his counsels freely to various churches of Asia, utters not one word of admonition in writing to the Roman Church, and calls it "the church which has the first seat" in its place. Again St. Polycarp of Smyrna, in the next generation, betakes himself to the Bishop of Rome on the question of Easter; the heretic Marcion, excommunicated in Pontus, goes off to Rome; and we read of Soter, as observing the custom of his church, when he sent alms to the churches of the empire, and as "affectionately exhorting those who came to Rome," in the words of Eusebius, "as a father his children." To Rome the Montanists came from Phrygia to gain the countenance of its bishop; and Praxeas, also, in order to expose them; Pope Victor pronounces the Asian churches excommunicate, and Irenæus, in his interposition, questions, not his right but the charity of his act. The same Saint speaks of Rome as the church in which the churches from every side centre, and as being pre-eminently the "principal" church. He says it was founded by St. Peter and St. Paul, and he prefers its tradition to that of other churches; Tertullian, too, says that the Apostles poured out into it their whole doctrine; and, after he was a Montanist, acknowledges, while he complains, that the Pope acted as a Pontifex Maximus and Bishop of bishops. Pope Dionysius entertains the accusation brought by Alexandrian priests against their Bishop in a matter of doctrine; and forthwith asks of him an explanation, which the latter grants without any protest. Cyprian speaks of Rome as "the See of Peter and the principal church;" and, when he and Firmilian withstood Pope Stephen who maintained the validity of heretical baptism, the Pope carries his point against the churches of Africa, Egypt, and Asia Minor. Basilides, deposed in Spain, betakes himself to Pope Stephen. Fortunatus and Felix, deposed by Cyprian, have recourse to Pope Cornelius. So much in the first three centuries.

 In the fourth, Pope Julius [A.D. 337-351], as we learn from Athanasius, remonstrates with the Arian party for "proceeding on their own authority," "for what we have received from the blessed Apostle Peter, that I signify to you." "Julius wrote back," says Socrates, "that they acted against the canons, because they had not called him to a Council, the ecclesiastical canon commanding that the Churches ought not to make canons beside the judgment of the Bishop of Rome." Sozomen says, "It was a sacerdotal law, to declare invalid whatever was transacted beside the judgment of the Bishop of the Romans." The Arians themselves, whom the Pope was withstanding, were forced to confess that Rome was "the school of the Apostles, and the Metropolis of orthodoxy from the beginning." Pope Damasus [A.D. 366-386] calls the Eastern bishops his "sons": "In that your charity pays the due reverence to the Apostolic See," he says, "ye profit most yourselves, most honoured sons;" and he speaks of himself as "placed in the See of that holy Church, in which the holy Apostle taught how becomingly to direct the helm to which we have succeeded."  "I speak," says St. Jerome to the same Pope, "with the successor of the Fisherman and the disciple of the Cross. I, following no one as my chief but Christ, am associated in communion with thy blessedness, that is, with the See of Peter. Whoso gathers not with thee, scatters." St. Basil entreats the same Pope to send persons to settle the troubles of Asia Minor; "we are asking nothing new," he says, "for we know from tradition of our fathers, and from writings preserved among us, that Dionysius," a Pope of the third century, "sent letters of visitation to our church of Cæsarea, and of consolation, with ransomers of our brethren from captivity."

 Pope Siricius [A.D. 386-398] says: "We bear the burden of all who are laden, yea, rather the blessed Apostle Peter beareth them in us, who, as we trust, in all things protects and defends us, the heirs of his government." "Diligently and congruously do ye consult the arcana of Apostolical dignity," says Pope Innocent [A.D. 402-417] to the African Bishops, "the dignity of him on whom, besides those things which are without, falls the care of all the churches, following the form of the ancient rule, which you know, as well as I, has been preserved always by the whole world." And Pope Celestine to the Bishops of Illyria [A.D. 422-432], "About all men we especially have anxiety, we, on whom, in the holy Apostle Peter, Christ conferred the necessity of making all men our concern, when He gave him the keys of opening and shutting." [n.] Mr. Ryder continues:

 "Boniface I. (an. 422) Ep. xiv. 'To the Bishops of Thessaly,' ap. Coust. Ep. Rom. Pont . p. 1037. 'The institution of the Universal Church began in the honour granted to St. Peter, in whom the supremacy ( regimen et summa ) was established. As religion prospered, from him as from its source, ecclesiastical discipline flowed throughout all the churches. Nor do the canons of Nicæa testify otherwise; inasmuch as they do not venture to add aught to him, seeing that nothing could be given above his deserts, and knowing that all things had been given him by the words of Christ. It is certain, then, that this See stands, in relation to the churches spread throughout the world, as the head to its members; from whom, if any divide himself, he becomes an outcast from the religion of Christ, since he is external to its organization.' And Ep. xv., l. c ., p. 1042: 'None ever raised his hand against that apostolic height whose judgment it is not lawful to retract; none has shown himself a rebel towards it, unless he would bring judgment upon himself.'

 "Xystus III. (an. 435) to the Synod of Thessalonica, l. c ., p. 1263: 'Let the Metropolitans of each province enjoy the rank which is their due, saving the privilege of him (the Papal Vicar) whom the most honourable might honour. Let them have the right of ordaining in their provinces, but let no one venture to ordain without his knowledge and goodwill, whom, in all cases of ordination ( i.e . of bishops) we would have consulted.'

 "Gelasius ( circa an . 480) to Faustus (Labbe, tom. v., p. 297): 'The canons have decided that no one whatever shall appeal from this See; and so provide that it shall judge the whole Church, and itself be judged of none ... Timothy of Alexandria, Peter of Antioch, Peter, Paul, John, not one, but many, bearing the episcopal name, by the authority of this Apostolic See alone, were cast down ... Therefore we are in no fear lest the Apostolic judgment be reversed, to which the voice of Christ, tradition, and the canons, have given the decision of controversy throughout the whole Church.'

 2.

 "The second count ... takes the form of a reflection upon the honesty of the Holy See. But if there is a point in the whole subject, upon which there is a consensus of writers, Protestant and Catholic, it is precisely this, that the Pope had nothing to do with the forgery of the pseudo-decretals; and moreover that they were not forged in his interest. They were forged in Gaul, not in Rome; and their immediate object was to relieve the bishops and the inferior clergy from the tyranny of the Metropolitans, who were but too frequently the tools of the secular power ... When they exalt the Pope, it is only to pull themselves out of the mire; and it has been observed (see Blascus, l. c ., c. 10, seq .), that these decretals, where the interests of the episcopate are not at stake, do not concern themselves to uphold even the well-established privileges of the Holy See, and in some cases (whether wittingly or not is uncertain) actually contravene them ... '

 "But ... 'if the Pope [St. Nicholas I.] be not the coiner, he is at least the conscious utterer of this false coin; he had duplicates of all the genuine letters of his predecessors in his portfolio; and, if he did not actually discover that these were forgeries, it was because he felt they were, and would not look.' and This assumption is simply false. On the contrary, I maintain that the fact of the duplicate of a papal letter not being found in the Roman archives, not only did not prove it spurious, but in very many instances could not create any fair presumption against it. It is true that the Popes, like other bishops, were in the way of laying up by their archives copies of the letters they wrote, and of the more important letters which they received. We have frequent references and appeals, in the letters to and from the Holy See, to the contents of the Roman archives; but it is impossible not to be struck with the short periods of time which these appeals cover. I think I am right in saying, that, with one exception, they do not extend beyond a century, and that most fall far short of it. I know of only one exception, and that was when, in 531, Theodore of Thessalonica produced from his archives Papal letters from Damasus downwards, a space of about 150 years, all extant and all genuine, and asked Boniface II. to verify them from the Roman scrinia. Curiously enough, we do not know how far the Roman scrinia stood the trial, for the document (see Labbe, tom. v., p. 843) is imperfect.

 "1. Mabillon ( de re Diplom. Supp . p. 5), enumerates the many dangers that beset the ancient archives. They were, moreover, peculiarly liable both to be neglected, and tampered with, owing to the fact that the notarii and scriniarii, who were alone capable of reading, transcribing, and classifying the manuscripts, were a small, and consequently irresponsible class. This was so much felt to be the case, but we find that, from time to time, custodes were appointed to watch over the honesty of the notarii, and keep them to their duty. The irresponsibility of the notarii was, of course, in direct ratio to the want of culture of their time and country; thus, in Italy, we may presume they had things very much their own way during the latter half of the fifth and throughout the seventh and eighth centuries. So deplorable was the state of knowledge in Italy, and particularly in Rome, in the seventh century, owing to the repeated wars of barbarians that had swept over the face of the country, that we find Pope Agatho [A.D. 678-682], in his letter to the Emperor Constantine, thus excusing the rudeness of his legates Labbe, tom. vii., p. 655: "Among us, planted as we are in the midst of the Gentiles, and winning our daily bread most precariously by bodily toil, how should literary knowledge in its fulness be found, more than that we preserve, in simplicity of heart and undoubtingly, what has been canonically defined by our holy predecessors in the Apostolical See, and by the five Holy Councils, of the faith delivered to us by our fathers?" And again, in his Synodical Letter to the same Emperor, loc. cit ., p. 707: 'As regards secular knowledge, I think there are not any in our times, who may boast of having reached its summit; since, in our land, the wrath of contrary nations rages, fighting, overrunning, and ravaging; and ... the ancient revenue of the Church has gradually, under diverse misfortunes, melted away. But our faith remains our one support, with which to live is our glory, and for which to die is our eternal recompense.'

 "Under such circumstances, nothing is more natural than that the Roman archives should have sustained vast and frequent losses, and we are not surprised when Baronius (tom. v., an. 381, xxxi) points out to us that the Roman archives had evidently suffered a loss between the times of Damasus and Gregory I. [A.D. 366 and 590]. He quotes St. Gregory, lib. vi., Ep. 15 (ed. Ben. lib. vii., Ep. 34) to the effect that the Roman Church knew nothing of the condemnation of the Eudoxians, except from doubtful or corrupt sources, and remarks that, seeing that several of the ancient Fathers speak of Eudoxius as accused and convicted of frightful heresy, St. Gregory's words clearly show, 'jacturam passa esse Romana archivia.' I may observe that the letter of Liberius to Constantius (see Coustant ., p. 423,) speaks of Eudoxius as having refused to condemn Arius, and being therefore excommunicate; and this letter must have been originally in the Roman archives.

 In this same letter Liberius testifies that he has got the letter of Alexander of Alexandria to Pope Silvester, concerning the Arian controversy, 'manent literæ;' and Coustant remarks that, of course, there were numbers of letters to and from Silvester on the same subject, though none have come down to us.

 "In the eighth century, St. Boniface of Mayence, Ep. 15, tells Nothelm of Canterbury that, as regarded the famous letter of St. Gregory to Augustine, the Roman scriniarii had looked in the archives of the Roman Church, and could not find it.

 "In 743, the Germans rested their right to marry 'in quartâ generatione,' upon an indult of Pope Gregory II., which could not be discovered in the Roman archives; but Pope Zachary did not on that account reject it as spurious ... 'Although we cannot find the document, we do not hesitate to believe it genuine' (see Blascus, l. c ., cap. iv.)

 "We have only to look through Coustant's volume, to see that numbers of the Papal letters do not come from the Roman archives, but from those of other Sees, particularly Vercellæ, and the famous Gallic Sees of Arles and Vienne. And the editor of the 'Bullarium Romanum, Rome 1739,' in his preface, after noticing the losses which the Roman archives had sustained, particularly in Papal letters, from Leo I. to Innocent III. [A.D. 440 to 1198], observes, that numbers of these autographs, 'of which no longer any mention or trace remains in the Roman archives,' have been found intact in the archives of other cathedral towns and monasteries.

 "It has been said, that the fact that so many of the pseudo-decretals profess to be the letters of Popes of the times of persecution, should have awaked the Pope's suspicions. But it must be remembered, first, that there is great reason for supposing that St. Nicholas never saw more than certain portions of these decretals, with which he shows an acquaintance, although he nowhere formally quotes them; secondly, that it is well known that the Popes, in the times of persecution, did write, and write frequently, witness the genuine fragments of their writings in Eusebius, Hilary, and elsewhere. Moreover, the Fathers testify an acquaintance with other documents which are wholly lost. St. Augustine, for instance, Ep. 43 (olim 162) n. 16, shows that he knew, in extenso, the decree of Pope Melchiades [A.D. 310-314] condemning Donatus; and St. Jerome speaks of the four letters written by St. Cornelius [A.D. 250-252] to Fabius, as extant in his time.

 "There was nothing, then, in these relics of the times of persecution, in that age, to awaken suspicion; whilst there was much to attract devotion. Men naturally welcomed their discovery with the same devotion, and certainly with no greater surprise, than they did the kindred discovery of the martyrs' bodies. St. Nicholas, in his letter to the Bishop of Gaul (Labbe, tom. x., p. 282), shows what idea was uppermost in his mind, when he refers to those decrees, of which he had seen something, and heard more, as the decrees of those 'quorum videmus Deo auctore Sanctam Ecclesiam aut roseo cruore floridam, aut rorifluis sudoribus et salubribus eloquiis adornatam.'

 "Again, it must be remembered that the Holy See received these decretals from the Gallic Church, upon whose learning it had been taught to depend in its controversies with the civil power and Greek heresy.

 "We find a remarkable instance of this dependence recorded by Paschasius Radbert, in his Life of Wala (ap. Mabillon Oct. S. Ord. Ben., sæc. iv., part i., p. 511). He relates that he and Wala (an. 833) showed Gregory IV. then in France, engaged in the difficult and dangerous task of reconciling the king and his sons, 'sundry documents, confirmed by the authority of the holy Fathers and his own predecessors, against which none might deny that he had the power (forsooth God's, the blessed Apostle Peter's, and his own,) to go and send unto all nations for the faith of Christ the peace of the Churches, the preaching of the Gospel, and the assertion of the truth; and that in him resided the supreme authority and living powers of blessed Peter; in virtue of which he might judge all, and himself be judged of none. Which documents he graciously received, and was exceedingly comforted.'

 "Some writers have thought that in this they discovered evidence of the pseudo-decretals; but the idea is very generally abandoned. One strong argument against it appears to me to be the fact, that Agobard, who belonged to the same party as Wala and Radbert, in his letter to the king, which exactly coincides in time with his friends' mission to Gregory, and in which he has the same object in view with them, viz., the exaltation of papal prerogative, grounds his argument exclusively on genuine documents. However this may be, the whole story is a curious illustration of the influence of the French Church upon the Holy See.

 "But, not only did the Pope receive these documents from the French Bishops, but they themselves furnished him with what he might well regard as a crucial test of their genuineness. For, even when Hincmar, in his controversy with St. Nicholas, does his utmost to disprove their cogency as law, he never so much as suggests a doubt of their genuineness. It is true that, in his subsequent controversy with Adrian II., Hincmar uses rather different language; but even then he hints at nothing worse than that they have been garbled and interpolated by his own nephew and others, to serve their private ends.

 "In the letter to the Bishops of Gaul, quoted above, the Pope clearly seems to indicate other sources of authentic decretals besides the archives; when, in meeting Hincmar's attempt to restrict the legal cogency of decretals to those contained in the Codex of Adrian, he says, 'God forbid that we should not embrace the decretals, which the Roman Church, 'penes se in suis archivis et vetustis rite monumentis recondita venerantur.' The 'vetusta monumenta' no doubt included all such well-authorized collections as the pseudo-Isidorian professed to be.

 2. "Besides the fact of the frequent losses which the Roman archives had sustained, rendering their contents at any given time an unsafe criterion of genuineness, it was exceedingly difficult to make out what they did contain. For, as I have observed, only a very small class, the scriniarii, were competent to engage in such a search. These were put upon their oath that they had produced all that they could find regarding the cause in hand, as we read in the Acts of the Sixth Council. And, for these experts, the search was doubtless exceedingly difficult, when covering any considerable length of time, and when documents were wanted, that had not been previously arranged for controversial purposes. Often, indeed, it could have been little else than a wild hunt among boxes of manuscripts in various stages of decay, when the subject of any successful discovery might well be described as 'Deo revelante reperta' (see Nicholas' Letter to Herard, Labbe, tom. x., p. 298).

 "Ballerini (St. Leo, tom. i., p. 511), after remarking upon the number of St. Leo's letters that were lost, thus accounts for these and other losses: 'After the general collections of the Canons and Papal letters, originally compiled by private persons for private use, had got so generally into circulation that the Popes themselves took their predecessors' letters oftener from these private collections than from the Apostolic scrinia, it came about that the autographs of these same letters, which were in the Apostolic scrinia, gradually falling into neglect, as time went on, perished.'

 "This, then, is St. Nicholas' position. He is presented with portions of documents, for we have no proof that they were more, which accurately represent the ecclesiastical spirit of the day, a recommendation, rather than a difficulty, in an uncritical age. Their genuineness is attested by the Church of Gaul, a church incomparably more learned than his own; and attested, moreover, even against that church's interests. The genuineness of these documents was in no sense upon its trial; it was undisputed. The presumption was strongly in favour of the genuineness of documents, containing doctrine so orthodox and so apposite; if any heresy had cropped up in them, then, indeed, it would have been another matter. But more than this, the Pope, even if a doubt of these had crossed his mind, which is in the highest degree impossible, had not, in the Roman archives, any satisfactory test of their genuineness."

 Note

 Vid. "Development of Doctrine" [ed. 1878, pp. 157, etc.].