him in the administration of the Church. It is said to have been his object to make Rome the capital of religion, and empire, and civilization; and yet, when he found he could no longer place any confidence in the Roman people, he invited Robert Guiscard to execute his vengeance upon the city, with fire and sword; when, from the Lateran to the Colosseum, Rome became a mass of flames and ruins, and subjected to all the excesses of a brutal and triumphant soldiery. He had previously destroyed the spirit of the Roman barons, and weakened all that was left of the national strength. Nor was he more true to the interests of his own body, as an ecclesiastic, or to the cause of the Church. Priests and bishops found as little favour at his hands, when they opposed his schemes, as any other class; and his biographers, to account for his caprice and violence, which had probably no other source than his impetuous and imperious disposition, no other object than the consolidation of his own power, are driven to invent motives of a more profound and far-sighted policy, than there is reason to give him credit for.

There was not a bishop in the whole Catholic world, whom, if he failed in obedience, he did not reprove, threaten, suspend, or degrade; not one whom, if he obeyed, he did not invite to Rome, and make an accomplice in his enterprises. He had his monks, who flew from one corner of Europe to another, intermeddling in the councils, condemning, persecuting, and destroying priests. On this account, all the

cardinals and bishops promoted by Gregory had previously been monks ; and not unfrequently, he made monks on purpose to promote and invest them. It may frankly and correctly be said, that the papacy of Gregory was a campaign between the regular and secular clergy, for the destruction and annihilation of the latter.' p. 264.

Sir Roger Greisley elsewhere represents Hildebrand as, 'in fact, only an active instrument in the hands of the monks of 'that period, who aimed at universal dominion over the church 6 and the whole world.' Hildebrand was not a man to be made the instrument of any party; nor is it supposable that the monks had formed any definite aim of the kind. But it is true, that the policy of the Popes led them to favour and to secure the support of the regulars, their favourite ecclesiastical militia, as a check upon the hierarchy. Our Author cites high authority in pointing out how great an influence and power the monkish congregations of every denomination had acquired; and how they 'defended the rights of the Roman court, which had released them from the yoke of the bishops.

The bishoprics, the abbeys, and prebends were all at the disposal of the monks, good or bad, learned or ignorant, as they might be; and, if any secular priest wished for promotion, it was requisite for him to assume the cowl for a certain time, and conform to the monastic life. The Roman pontiff, sustained by their influence, was omnipo

tent; every monk being a faithful satellite, who traversed every region and city without suspicion of treachery. Paolo Sarpi has preceded me in this observation: " They considered (that is, the fathers of the church) that it had been the great secret of the Roman pontiffs from the oldest times to preserve the primacy given them by Christ, to separate the bishops from the archbishops, and thus to make every one bound to defend them. It is perfectly clear that, after the year 600, the primacy of the apostolic see was supported by the Benedictine monks, and by the congregations of Clugni, Certosa, and others, until God raised up the mendicant orders, by which it has ever since been sustained till this day.'

'It was for Hildebrand, rising upon the spirit of the times, to place himself at the head of the people, and proclaim its liberties against the nobles, to open the monasteries and colleges to the inexhaustible phalanx of the multitude, monks being always more serviceable than slaves, and to make the churches an asylum for malefactors.' pp. 183-185.

Hildebrand was the creature of the times: he did not create them. He was the quintessence of the spirit of the age; but he gave no new direction to the course of events. He was never at the head of the people: the multitude were never with him, except as swayed by fear or by bribery. He was not the first who insisted upon the celibacy of the priesthood: and though it formed part of the policy by which he worked, it can hardly be said with propriety, that it was his main object.' Upon this subject, the following paragraph is instructive.

'If we wish to ascertain the advantages which the Roman church derived from enforcing celibacy, we may refer to the discourse of Cardinal Rodolph Pius, in the Consistory of 1561, in presence of Paul IV., on the question of conceding to the French the use of the chalice in the Lord's Supper. "It is clear," said he, "if this point be yielded, there will be no end to the demands of the French in matters of religion. They will require matrimony for the priests, and the use of the vulgar tongue in administering the Sacrament. From the right of matrimony it will follow that, having houses, wives, and children, they will no longer depend on the pope, but on their prince ; and love for their offspring will induce them to act prejudicially to the church. They will seek to make benefices hereditary; and in a short time the Holy See will be within the limits of Rome. Before celibacy was established, the Roman see drew no fruits from the other cities or districts: by that she became the patron of so many benefices, of which matrimony would soon deprive her. From the use of the vulgar tongue, every body would suppose that he was a theologian; the authority of the priests would be degraded, and heresy would attack every one." pp. 322, 3.

Of Gregory's long contest with Henry IV., we shall not enter into the particulars, but refer our readers to the volume before us. Henry's abject humiliation was that of a fallen and desperate monarch, deserted by his own subjects; and it indicated less the

ascendancy of the Romish see, than the weakness of the divided empire. But Gregory's haughty conduct was as impolitic as it was the reverse of magnanimous; and it excited the greatest indignation among the bishops and nobles of Lombardy. It was a political error as well as an indecency, that he should

have erected his tribunal in a fort that did not belong to him, in the company of a lady who gave employment to his detractors, and resolved, under such circumstances, to annul the sentence of one hundred and ten bishops recorded in the Lateran. Had he returned to his capital, and given audience to Henry before his synod, he might have forwarded his ambitious operations more skilfully,—have humbled his opponents, encouraged his friends, and spared, perhaps, a great subsequent effusion of blood.' p. 302.

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As it was, it led to no result. The ascendancy of Gregory was on the wane, at the very time when he congratulated him'self on having achieved a triumph; and the fortress of Canossa was as fatal to his ambition, as Čannæ had before been to that ' of Hannibal.' Henry re-assumed the ensigns of royalty; and notwithstanding his subsequent excommunication and deposition by the enraged Pontiff, three years after, his cause gained supporters. He assembled a council at Brixen in the Tyrol, at which Gregory was deposed, and Guibert, Archbishop of Ravenna, elected pontiff in his stead. The Antipope was joined, on his descent into Italy, by all the Lombard bishops with an army; and a large part of the nobility took the same side. The defeat and death of Rodolph, Henry's rival in the empire, left him at liberty to unite his troops with those of Guibert. From Ravenna, they marched together upon Rome, laying waste the patrimony of St. Peter; and Gregory's dominion was once more confined to his capital. Lucca and Siena declared for Henry; and in 1083, Rome itself, besieged by the army of the Emperor, began to waver in its allegiance to Gregory. Henry had already made himself master of the Leonine city and the Vatican, when a deputation invited him peaceably to enter the gates, while Gregory shut himself up in the castle of St. Angelo. On the following day, Guibert was elected by the Roman people, and being duly consecrated, assumed the name of Clement III. In the holy "temple of the Apostle, Henry received the imperial crown and the 'title of Augustus, from the new Pontiff and the people. The Emperor then ascended the capitol, and took up his residence as in his own capital.' The approach of Robert Guiscard at the head of his Norman banditti, induced him, however, to withdraw from Rome; and the new Pope retired to Siena. Henry's conduct on this occasion has been stigmatised as pusillanimous; but we have not the means of fairly estimating his reasons. He had gained his great object, by the act which ratified his imperial title; and he was probably anxious to make the best of his way to Germany. Gregory, liberated by the Norman army, sum

moned his last council, from which, amid the ruins of the smoking city, and the curses of its inhabitants, he fulminated afresh his impotent excommunications against Henry and Guibert. then retired, under the protection of Guiscard, to Salerno. There, in melancholy exile, his mind seems to have preyed upon itself. A famine had added pestilence to the horrors of civil war; and of that pestilence Gregory was among the first victims. He closed his career of crime on the 25th of May 1085, in the twelfth year of his pontificate and the 65th or 66th of his age. On the 17th of July, his atrocious ally, Robert Guiscard, expired before Cephalonia, ridding the earth of a brigand only less execrable than the Great Monk whose career we have been retracing.

And now where shall we look for the temporal sovereignty of the Popes, for the Papal monarchy of which Gregory is represented to have been the founder? It cannot be said to have died with him, for it had melted away in his hands. Rome still acknowledged as its sovereign the German Cæsar, who received the crown of Italy at the hands of the Roman bishop, not in virtue of his pretended power to bestow crowns at his pleasure, but as ratifying the election of the Roman people, which was still deemed a requisite formality. As monarch of Germany and Lombardy, the title of the emperor was previously complete; but he was not the legitimate sovereign of the Roman empire, till he had been crowned by the primate in the old metropolis of the world. On this rested the Papal supremacy. But the temporal sovereignty of the Popes was not at this period established in Rome itself. Six and thirty of Gregory's successors, Gibbon tells us, maintained an unequal contest with the Romans: their age ⚫ and dignity were often violated; and the churches, in the solemn ' rites of religion, were polluted with sedition and murder. The ⚫ vanity of sacerdotal ambition is revealed in the involuntary con6 fession, that one emperor was more tolerable than twenty." Nor was even the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Roman bishop at this time universally admitted. The clergy of Milan, who had for two centuries contested the supremacy of Italy with the Roman pontiff and the archbishop of Ravenna, still maintained their independence; and in England, and even France, the papal supremacy was of a very equivocal description. William the Conqueror, although he invaded this country with the sanction of Pope Alexander and Hildebrand, peremptorily refused to let any of his bishops obey the summons to attend a synod at Rome, and openly contemned the papal decrees. The following is given as a letter which he addressed to the Pontiff *.

* This letter, Mosheim refers to as extant in the Miscellanea of Baluzius, and given by Collier, in the documents of his Ecclesiastical History.

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"To the most excellent Pastor of the Church, the King of the Angles and Duke of Normandy sends greeting.-Hubert, thy legate, O religious father! on thy behalf, has admonished me to remain faithful, not only to thyself, but thy successors, and to think better about the money which my predecessors used to pay to St. Peter. I have granted the second, but not the first. I have never sworn allegiance, nor will I; because I do not find that my predecessors ever promised it. The money was negligently collected, whilst I was three years in France; and now that I am returned to my kingdom, I send it you : the rest will be communicated to you by Lanfranc, through your legates. Pray for us, and for our kingdom; for we have loved your predecessors, and we love you above all love, and desire to obey you." This letter was far from being satisfactory to Gregory, who cared less for money than for homage.' pp. 328-9.

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With regard to the famous Dictates of Hildebrand,' which are supposed to exhibit the universal authority and supremacy of the Popes at this period, they may have been substantially the pretensions which Gregory put forth at the height of his power and in the intoxication of apparent success; but nothing can be more absurd than to suppose them ever to have been received by the Romish Church, or to regard them as an authentic exposition of the sentiments of the times. For instance, the XIth, There ' is only one power in the world,—that of the pope,' could never have been propounded by Hildebrand himself as true in any sense; and that the Pope alone could ordain a clerk of any Church,' is a maxim too ridiculous to have been put forth by any one. The whole bears the marks of being either an ignorant misrepresentation of Hildebrand's pretensions, or a stupid forgery of after times. That the matter of the greater part of these sentences may be found, as Mosheim remarks, in Gregory's epistles, is saying nothing in favour of their authenticity; since every fiction of the kind must have some portion of truth to give it plausibility; but, as an historical document, it has no pretensions to genuineness, and receives a sufficient confutation from subsequent history.

Protestants, as well as Romanists, from opposite motives, have prodigiously magnified the power of the Popes, estimating it by the wild and inordinate pretensions of some two or three individual pontiffs, rather than by any historic evidence of their actual supremacy. This was at no time completely established in the Latin world, and was always rejected by the kingdoms of the Eastern Church. What is it now? Sacerdotal power, by whomsoever exercised, is an intolerable and degrading tyranny, for it assumes to domineer over the consciences of men. But priests have not always been tyrants and persecutors; and on the other hand, the blood of martyrs has not been shed by Papists alone. The Court of Rome never claimed more or other power than did the English Star Chamber; nor did the crusade against the