true, though the simple historical truth is, that no one ever heard a word of these charges until the emperor had quarrelled with him, and sent his emissaries for the express purpose of "getting up a case" against him. And there is not a particle of honest, unprejudiced evidence against the Pontiff. This is the more to be lamented and deprecated, because Dollinger, speaking of the stories of the time of John X., says very truly that they may be justly suspected, as the only writer whose testimony can be given, is the credulous Luitprand, and then stigmatizes the document he cites as a satirical libel, Yet the charges against John XII. are "clenched," (so to speak,) by a story told by the continuator of Luitprand, on whom certainly the mantle" of his lying spirit may be said to have fallen. Nevertheless, having just vindicated one pontiff upon the ground that the testimony against him was not credible, he proceeds to sacrifice another, (probably afraid of not being considered sufficiently candid,) against whom not only is there less credence, but none at all; nay, as to whom there is overwhelming evidence that the accusations were malignant calumnies.

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Here is the true origin of the lying legends of our bad popes. They originated in an age of bad Catholics, and they are perpetuated by candid Catholics-Catholics too candid to be careful for truth-to say nothing of charity.

In the eleventh century, so clear was it that Sicily was a fief of the Holy See, that Nicholas II. granted it with the title of a dukedom to Robert Giuscard; and in the next century we find Innocent II. raising the dukedom into a kingdom, reserving the fealty due to the Holy See ;* as he had granted to the emperor in like manner the duchies of Parma, Mantua, and Modena. Roger, the new king, soon sought to cast off the yoke of fealty-influenced probably by the spirit which dictated the preaching of Arnold of Brescia-who taught that no ecclesiastic could hold endowments; a doctrine very favourable to sacrilege, and likely to be much encouraged by spoliators. It had, in fact, been long acted upon by lay princes-but was now for the first time proclaimed-by way of reducing sacrilege into a system, and making a theory for robbery. Ere long the Holy See was deprived of a great portion of its patrimony.

* Dollinger's History of the Church, translated by Dr. Coxe, vol. iii. p. 150. vol. iv. p. 3.

The emperors who had contests with popes about spiritual supremacy-merely for the sake of acquiring a hold on ecclesiastical property now found a shorter, if less plausible species of spoliation. No longer content with retaining in their hands the lands of bishoprics-under pretexts of patronage-openly plundered the Holy See of its possessions. They were soon imitated by the kings' of France and Spain, and a host of petty princes who originally had been tributaries of the Popes,-began by being rebels, and ended by becoming robbers.

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It was against the satellites of the infamous Frederick II., who laid waste Spoleto and Ancona with Saracen troops, and tortured the inhabitants to death, that we first find a decisive instance of a pope appealing to arms. As Dollinger truly and drily observes," the Pope's excommunication would here have been pronounced in vain—he therefore resolved to meet force with force, and by force of arms obliged the brutal and infidel invaders to fly.' "This invasion by a papal army," adds the historian, to which Gregory IX. found himself necessitated by his duty, to defend his own territories from the attacks of his enemies, was afterwards represented by Frederick as an unprovoked attempt to deprive him of his kingdom.' And writers in the interest of the emperor doubtless would represent him on that account as a bad pope. But the question is, whether the Pontiff would have been performing his duty in permitting his own subjects to be cruelly tortured to death" by infidel invaders, albeit in the pay and employ of Christians, worse than infidels. Let the question be calmly determined by the rules and principles of moral theology in the case of Gregory IX., before a "candid Catholic" comes to consider and condemn the cases of subsequent pontiffs, which we contend were perfectly parallel in this respect, although they have chiefly on this account been covered with obloquy.

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Frederick of Germany and Charles of Anjou both alike formed designs of seizing the whole of the Papal territory, and effecting the subjugation of Italy: and the result of the intrigues thus raised was, that at the close of the thirteenth century the Papacy continued vacant for upwards of two years by reason of the contentions between the houses of the Colonna and the Orsini, who had been engaged by the rival factions, and the unhappy Pontiff who shortly after succeeded Boniface VIII. died a victim to the bru

tality of a Philip le Bel with the aid of a Colonna.* Boniface figures as a" bad pope." "But who drew his portrait? Partisans of Philip and friends of his foes-the Colonna. Candid Catholics, it is true, have engraved the false portrait and circulated it: it is to be seen in the pages of Dollinger. But truth is stronger than iron or brass, and ever proves in the end too powerful even for false candour to disguise it.

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Half a century afterwards Innocent VI., the zealous and the virtuous," as the candid Dollinger calls him, found the states of the Church divided into small provinces under tyrants, and upon the point of being lost to the Papacy. The Pontiff therefore sent a small army of mercenaries who in a short time restored the power of the Pope throughout the greater part of his dominions, with the connivance and assistance of the celebrated Rienzi, the idol of the Roman people; a sufficient proof that the measure, upon the part of the Pope, was one of which they firmly approved. Indeed, how could it be otherwise, as we find the misery of Rome (and the Roman States) carried to the highest degree by the wild lawlessness and the endless feuds of the families of the rude nobles, the Colonnas, the Orsini, and the Savelli, whose bands of retainers plundered and murdered even the pilgrims"-who will pretend that it was not the duty of the Pope to repress these disorders by force of arms? Certainly, the people thought so, and her sway was restored by the great exertions of the popular tribune and the papal vicar. Yet who doubts that the partizans of the Orsini or the Colonnas represented Innocent as a "bad pope?" and if printing had been invented, it would probably have branded him for centuries as such.

Well, Urban V. found himself compelled to ask Charles IV. to subdue the atrocious Bernabo Visconti, the tyrant of Milan, who oppressed Bologna, and was subjecting to himself the territories of the Pope. Yet Urban was devout and meek: a humble and holy monk.

In the times of his successor, Gregory XI., there was a general revolt of the States of the Church, fomented by

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Colonniensium domus auxia domesticis, molesta vicinis. manorum Reip. impugnatrix, Sanctæ ecclesiæ Romanæ rebellis urbis et patriæ perturbatrix consortis impatiens, ingrata beneficiis, subesse nolens, præesse nesciens, humilitatis ignara, plena furoribus, Deum non metuens nec volens homines revereri, habens de urbis et orbis turbatione pruritum. Bull of Boniface VIII. 10 May, 1297.

the Florentines, towards the latter part of the fourteenth century.

We may say, in the language of Schlegel, that the real point of transition, in Italian history, from good to evil, from those Christian principles which were ever predominant in the earlier period, to the unappeasable contests of the Guelphs and Ghibellines in the later middle age, must be fixed in the reign of the Emperor Frederick the First. With unrelenting severity, (says the illustrious writer,) and with atrocious cruelty, this Ghibelline emperor destroyed the confederate cities of Lombardy, and crushed the fair plant of Italian civilization, just then beginning to bloom. Ignorant and prejudiced writers often talk of the Papacy as having, by its influence, "blighted" Italy; indeed, this is one of the cries of the age. Let them mark such striking testimonies as those of Schlegel and Guizot. Our subject has a close connection with that interesting question: who can be considered responsible for the obstruction or destruction of civilization during the dark turbulent times to which we refer? Not Popes, but Emperors; not the spiritual power, but the temporal, "crushed the fair plant of Italian civilization." Guizot shows how the Church was the parent of civilization. Schlegel shows how it was crushed by the enemies of the Church. And our subject will illustrate the fact. Although," says Schlegel, "the last Ghibelline Emperor, Frederick the Second, had been educated by Pope Innocent III., a Pontiff distinguished by his enlarged views and great intellectual endowments, yet the old dispute broke out again, under this monarch, with more violence and implacable animosity than ever. The quarrel was nevermore appeased, at least during the sway of Frederick II. and his family; and it terminated only with the downfall of the Hohenstaufen. Yet the Ghibelline name, heretofore stamped in characters of blood upon the earth, subsisted for a long while; and for ages after the Ghibelline spirit continued to be the prevailing one in Europe. The later princes of the Swabian family all resembled each other in unbending sternness of character. Henry VI. perpetrated the most enormous cruelties at Naples. The blood shed by Ezzelin, while governor of Lombardy under Frederick the Second, left behind him so fearful a recollection, that the last of the family, Conradin, was an innocent victim of the public hatred borne to his ances

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