and returned it. The Chancellor then rose and read aloud as follows:

sinner triumph at the recovery of a great and noble people.'

"He moved to rise; Mary and Philip, seeing that the crisis was approaching, fell on their knees, and the assembly dropped at their example; while, in dead silence, across the dimly lighted hall came the low, awful words of the absolution:

"Our Lord Jesus Christ, which with his most precious blood hath redeemed us and washed us from all our sins and iniquities, that he might purchase unto himself a glorious spouse without spot or wrinkle, whom the Father hath appointed head over all his Churchhe by his mercy absolves you, and we, by apostolic authority given unto us by the most holy Lord Pope Julius the Third, his vicegerent on earth, do absolve and deliver you, and every of you, with this whole realm and the dominions thereof, from all heresy and schism, and from all and every judgment, censure, and pain for that cause incurred; and we do restore you again into the unity of our Mother the holy Church, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.'

"We, the Lords spiritual and temporal, and the Commons of the present Parliament assembled, representing the whole body of the realm of England, and dominions of the same, in our own names particularly, and also of the said body universally, in this our supplication directed to your Majesties with most humble suit that it may by your gracious intercession and means be exhibited to the most reverend father in God the Lord Cardinal Pole, legate, sent specially hither from our most holy father Pope Julius the Third and the See Apostolic of Rome do declare ourselves very sorry and repentant for the schism and disobedience committed in this realm and dominions of the same against the said See Apostolic, either by making, agreeing, or executing any laws, ordinances, or commandments against the supremacy of the said See, or otherwise doing or speaking what might impugn the same; offering ourselves, and promising by this our supplication that, for a token and knowledge of our said repentance, we be, and shall be always, ready, under and with the authority of your Majesties, "Amidst the hushed breathing every tone was to do that which shall be in us for the abroga- audible, and at the pauses were heard the tion and repealing of the said laws and ordi-smothered sobs of the Queen. Amen, amen,' nances in this present parliament, as well for rose in answer from many voices. Some were ourselves as for the whole body whom we repre- really affected; some were caught for the mosent. Whereupon we most humbly beseech ment with a contagion which it was hard to reyour Majesties, as persons undefiled in the of sist; some threw themselves weeping in each fenses of this body towards the Holy See other's arms. King, Queen, and Parliament, riswhich nevertheless God by his providence hathing from their knees, went immediately-the lemade subject to your Majesties-so to set forth this our most humble suit that we may obtain from the See Apostolic, by the said most reverend father, as well particularly as universally, absolution, release, and discharge from all danger of such censures and sentences as by the laws of the Church we be fallen in; and that we may, as children repentant, be received into the bosom and unity of Christ's Church; so as this noble realm, with all the members thereof, may, in unity and perfect obedience to the See Apostolic and Pope for the time being, serve God and your Majesties, to the furtherance and advancement of his honor and glory.'

"Having completed the reading, the Chancellor again presented the petition. The King and Queen went through the forms of intercession, and a secretary read aloud, first, the legate's original commission, and, next, the all-important extended form of it.

"Pole's share of the ceremony was now to

begin.

"He first spoke a few words from his seat. Much indeed,' he said, 'the English nation had to thank the Almighty for recalling them to his fold. Once again God had given a token of his special favor to the realm; for as this nation, in the time of the Primitive Church, was the first to be called out of the darkness of heathenism, so now they were the first to whom God had given grace to repent of their schism; and if their repentance was sincere, how would the angels, who rejoice at the conversion of a single

gate leading into the chapel of the palace. where the choir, with the rolling organ, sang Te Deum; and Pole closed the scene with a benediction from the altar.'"

From the apostles of the triumphant Roman Church we must turn again to the fallen Church of Henry and Edward, degraded now to the condition of a seditious heresy. As we have said, the Reformation appeared for the first time in its true and pure color in the fiery trials of Smithfield. We had now the reality of Protestantism face to face in its strength with undisguised Romanism. No royal patronage, no baneful worldly prosperity, lowered the character and obscured the merits of the reformed faith. Latimer, Ridley, and even Cranmer stood forward in a strength of dignified courage which man alone could not give. Of Cranmer we have hinted our less favorable appreciation than that given by Mr. Froude. There is something, to our apprehension, which is more than amiable sensitiveness in the manner in which on several occasions he shrank from the call of duty. There is too much of the flattery of a courtier in his subserviency to the wishes of Henry; there is too much of personal

spite in his treatment of Gardiner during sion to Rome, he had less genius for dethe reign of Edward; there is something stroying a prostrate enemy than for comtoo painfully ignominious in the circum- bating him on equal terms, or bearding stances of his recantation-however no- him in the fullness of his power. Has bly itself recanted-under the terrors of not Mr. Froude touched on the more proMary's inquisitors. But the last scenes bable authorship of these cruelties when of his life hinder us from passing any se- he describes the increasing gloom, the verer judgment on Cranmer than that he, feelings of wounded sensibility, the bitter perhaps more than any other man, suf- disappointment of the Queen herself? It fered morally from being involved in the is not necessary to picture her as a monconfused and tangled meshes of that royal ster of wickedness if we accept this soluMiddle Scheme, from the snares of which tion. She thought, doubtless, that in two successive religious revolutions res- this, as in every thing that had gone becued the English national character, and fore, she was strictly fulfilling her duty to practically established the fact that in the God. But the future looked dark for the two honest extremes, rather than in the prospects of Catholicism in England. She dishonest via media, are to be recognized felt that her own days were numbered. the true elements of England's greatness. The long-cherished hopes of a child to sucTo our previous knowledge of the royal ceed her, and to be cradled in the faith victim of the Catholic triumph under of her ancestors, had faded away. She Mary, "the Twelfth-day queen," the un- could not, she saw, prevent the succession fortunate Lady Jane Grey, Mr. Froude of Elizabeth. Elizabeth, she knew, was adds little beyond his sanction to the gen- bound over by the circumstances of her eral meed of enthusiastic praise bestowed mother's marriage to the cause of the on her noble disposition and remarkable Reformation. How could she save the attainments in learning. But the shrink- Church from this great impending daning reluctance which she displayed in ac- ger? By no long-continued policy, by cepting, and the thankful indifference with no gradual removal of the elements of which she gave up her phantom title, evil could this now be effected. The might be quite as much indications of a medicine must be sharp and immediate in mind unequal to the crisis, as of a high- its action. She might so crush the hateminded superiority to selfish ambition. ful heresy, so maim it of all its leading The manner, however, in which she suc- members, that not even the good-will of ceeded in nerving her unstable though Elizabeth would be able to infuse new viwell-meaning father to undergo his fate | tality into the shapeless body. At any with dignity, and without flinching from rate it was her duty to try; and when his religious convictions, is a clear indica- she had resolved on this, there were tion, along with her own firm though many inferior agents to stimulate her zeal, gentle bearing, of something above the and few in a superior position willing or ordinary virtues of a devoted martyr. able to stay her hand. She failed in her For her death the imperial ambassador violence even more decidedly than her seems to be primarily responsible; but father had done with his ambiguous Midwho is to bear the fearful responsibility of dle Scheme. He had at least lowered the the later persecutions which converted tone of the movement which he could not England into mere religious shambles, it altogether guide in the path he had deis not so easy to determine. Mr. Froude termined for it. She by a baptism of lays the burden on Cardinal Pole; but blood only gave it a new and nobler title his reasons are at the best but plausible to the affections of the English nation. inferences, and all his references to the Cardinal savor a little too much of the rancor of the apologist of Henry against his most violent calumniator, not to make us pause before implicitly receiving such an imputation. If we are not mistaken, there are writings of Pole in which a more moderate course is recommended; and, zealot as he was, this is not inconsistent with his character. He was an Englishman after all in many of his feelings; and England once brought into submis

Under Elizabeth, the idea of a Middle Scheme between pure Protestantism and Catholicism was partially revived, though in a modified form. This is not the occasion to speak of the merits or demerits of that "Anglican" platform; but the Puritan Revolution of the next century, and the Nonconformist disruption of the Protestant Church in England in the present day, do not say much for the wisdom, in a broader and far-sighted view, of the second via media of the Tudor princes.

From the Edinburgh Review.

THE PATRIMONY OF ST. PETER.*

States of Europe-that even an edict of taxation has gone forth from the altar, and the treasury of St. Peter is once more replenished by the pence of the faithful; in short, that whilst every thing which belongs to the temporal power of Rome is utterly effete, alike incapable of self-defense and of government, she has once more sought, by a bold assertion of her spiritual power and her spiritual rights, to rescue and to maintain her temporal possessions and authority. The doctrine on which these appeals for support and these demonstrations of sympathy rest is this: that the whole temporal power of the Roman pontiff, and every portion of his temporal dominions, partake of the inalienable and indestructible character which the Roman Catholic Church attaches to his spiritual power-that this sacred character belongs even to the diplomatic transactions or legal instruments by which successive popes, condescending to accept such human securities, have at different times determined their territorial jurisdiction-and that a dispute, which to heretical eyes assumes the vulgar form of a rupture between a deposed sovereign and a discontented people, is in reality a question of faith in the divine rights of the Vicegerent of Christ.

It will be recorded hereafter, amongst | pected champions in the other Catholic the strangest incidents of an age pregnant with momentous changes in the state of Europe, that in the middle of the nineteenth century, and at the very time when the people of Italy seem to have entered upon their lost inheritance of freedom and independence, an appeal was made by the Roman pontiff to the chivalry of France and of the Catholic world-that this appeal was answered by an accomplished general, who had served with high renown under the tricolor flag, and who only quitted the ranks of the French army because the liberty of his country was even dearer to him than her arms-that in this singular enterprise no man could distinguish how much belongs to military ambition or how much to religious zealthan a band of mercenaries and of volunteers flocked to the standard of this chief from the banks of the Danube and of the Shannon, from the mountains of Switzerland and of the Tyrol, whilst Italy arrayed herself in arms against them, and another band of free lances, under a chief of equal renown, undertook and achieved the emancipation of Sicily-that men who in other times had fought with ardor and perseverance the battle of civil and religious liberty against clerical authority, are now foremost in defending what they call the rights of the Papacy-that in proportion as these rights are assailed and shaken in Italy they meet with new and unex

We undertake to show in the following pages that a more unfounded and delusive pretension was never raised, even by the Court of Rome. We hold that pretension to be utterly at variance with the true principles of the Latin Church itself, which has ever drawn a broad distinction between the temporal rights of the Roman pontiffs, differing in no respect from the temporal rights of other princes, and their spiritual authority. As regards the provinces which the popes hold or have recently held in Central Italy, as far north as the right bank of the Po, the tenure of those possessions is too recent and the mode of acquisition too well known, to

11

The Lombards were Arians; the Ro- | Italy, and with the exception of the great mans, as we have said, vehemently Cath- Lombard duchy of Benevento, the dreadolic. The hatred between the two nations ed kingdom disappeared under the dowas intense. Liutprand, the Bishop of minion of the Franks. Cremona, a Lombard, writes:

"We despise so deeply the Roman name, that in our anger we know no greater insult for our enemy than to call him a Roman, for in this name alone we comprehend all that is ignoble, cowardly, luxurious, lying, and all the vices."

But the presence of Pepin and Charlemagne in Italy marked a greater era in the history of the Papacy even than the overthrow of the Lombards. It was under these monarchs that the ambition of the Papacy for temporal domination first disclosed itself by undeniable evidence. Up to this time their attempts at aggrandisement had been confined to the acquisition of lands, farms, and chattels; but the forged document of the donation of Constantine, as well as the false decretals of Isidore, both of which were fabricated about the end of the eighth century, prove that at that time the ambition of the bishops of Rome, for both spiritual and temporal dominion, had not only palpably declared itself, but formed a resolute conception of the policy necessary to attain these ends.*

The donation of Constantine was probably invented expressly as a precedent for Pepin, and to stimulate his generosity and his piety. This document has, from the motives it discloses, more real historical importance than the donations of Pepin and Charlemagne or the pretended one of Louis-le-Débonnaire.

On their side, the Romans were not slow to return the antipathy. In the letters of the bishops of Rome, which remain of the time of the Lombard domination, the Lombard name is never mentioned without execration. They are the fetid Lombards; the most impious Lombards. The only reproach against Charlemagne was, that he married the daughter of a fetid Lombard. Now the Lombard kingdom existed for two hundred and six years. The people showed great aptitude for civilization. The Lombard code of laws is the best collection of Gothic laws in existence. This formidable nation were Arians, and besides being Arians, they maintained in Italy a separate and exclusive existence. Unlike Theodoric and his Ostrogoths, they never amalgamated with the inhabitants. The result must have been, in time, that the Roman name, all remains of Roman institutions, and the Neither Pepin nor Charlemagne could Roman Catholic religion itself, would confer any rights which they did not have perished before them. Except the themselves possess: the donation of CharleExarchate and Rome, they already pos-magne comprised the whole of Italy, but sessed the whole of Italy: and when at last they conquered the Exarchate, the Roman pontiff, Gregory III., was convulsed with terror. In vain he wrote the most suppliant letters to Constantinople. The emperor Constantine Copronymus was, however, willing that he should apply to Pepin, king of the Franks. Pepin descended twice into Italy; the second time, at the pressing solicitation of a letter indited by St. Peter himself, in which the apostle promised him all felicity, both in this world and the next, if he would free his church and tomb from the hated Lombards. The arms of Pepin were successful. The Exarchate was wrested from the Lombards, and the keys of its cities were placed on the altar of St. Peter. Twenty years passed by. Again the Church felt the perilous neighbor. hood of the Lombards, and again its chief implored the assistance of Charlemagne. The son of Pepin likewise descended into

many parts of the Peninsula, especially the Lombard duchy of Benevento, which he had been unable to subdue, owed him no subjection at all. At all events, it would appear that the donation, so far as valid, conferred no more than a sort of feudal tenure under the emperor. For Charlemagne himself coined money, and

* The patrimony of St. Peter in the times of Gregory the Great, consisted in the estates of the churches, which were very large, chiefly in Calabria, in Sicily, in the neighborhood of Rome, Apulia, Campania, and Liguria; in Sardinia and Corsica; in the Cozian Alps; in Dalmatia and Illyricum; in Gaul; and even in Africa and the East. These were wisely and honestly administered by the great distinct from the temporal dominion of the Popes in Pontiff. But this ecclesiastical property was wholly Italy, which was entirely the creation of a later age. (See Dean Milman's Latin Christianity, vol. i. p. 441.) Even when Pepin ceded to the Pope the Italian territories conquered from the Lombards, the Papal representatives who received the homage of the authorities and the keys of the cities, continued to speak of the Republic of Rome.