Papacy

PAPACY' (a term formed on the analogy of " abbacy" from Lat. papa, pope; cf. Fr. papaute on the analogy of royaute. Florence of Worcester, A.D. 1044, quoted by Du Cange s.v. Papa, has the Latin form papatia; the New Eng. Did. quotes Gower, Conf. i. 258, as the earliest instance of the word Papacie), the name most commonly applied to the office and position of the bishop or pope of Rome, in respect both of the ecclesiastical and temporal authority claimed by him, i.e. as successor of St Peter and Vicar of Christ, over the Catholic Church, and as sovereign of the former papal states. (See Pope and [[Roman Catholic Church.) I]]. - From the Origins to 1087. The Christian community at Rome, founded, apparently, in the time of the emperor Claudius (41-54),), at once assumed great importance, as is clearly attested by the Epistle to the Romans (58). It received later the visit of Paul while a prisoner, and, according to a tradition which is now but little disputed, that of the apostle Peter. Peter died there, in 64, without doubt, among the Christians whom Nero had put to death as guilty of the burning of Rome. Paul's career was also terminated at Rome by martyrdom. Other places had been honoured by the presence and preaching of these great leaders of new-born Christianity; but it is at Rome that they had borne witness to the Gospel by the shedding of their blood; there they were buried, and their tombs were known and honoured. These facts rendered the Roman Church in the highest degree sacred. About the time that Peter and Paul died in Rome the primitive centre of Christianity - that is to say, Jerusalem - was disappearing amidst the disaster of the war of the Roman Empire with the Jews. Moreover, the Church of Jerusalem, narrowed by Jewish Christian particularism, was hardly qualified to remain the metropolis of Christianity, which was gradually gaining ground in the Graeco-Roman world. The true centre of this world was the capital of the Empire; the transference was consequently accepted as natural at an early ' This article is a general history in outline of the papacy itself. Special periods, or aspects are dealt with in fuller detail elsewhere, e.g. in the biographical notices of the various popes, or in such articles as Church History; Roman Catholic Church; Investitures; Canon Law; Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction; Ultramontanism; or the articles on the various ecclesiastical councils.

date. The idea that the Roman Church is at the head of the other Churches, and has towards them certain duties consequent on this position, is expressed in various ways, with more or less clearness, in writings such as those of Clemens Romanus, Ignatius of Antioch and Hermas. In the 2nd century all Christendom flocked to Rome; there was a constant stream of people - bishops from distant parts, apologists or heresiarchs. All that was done or taught in Rome was immediately echoed through all the other Churches; Irenaeus and Tertullian constantly lay stress upon the tradition of the Roman Church, which in those very early days was almost without rivals, save in Asia, where there were a number of flourishing Churches, also apostolic in origin, forming a compact group and conscious of their dignity. The great reception given to Polycarp on his visit to Rome in A.D. 155 and the attitude of St Irenaeus show that on the whole the traditions of Rome and of Asia harmonized quite well. They came into conflict, however (c. A.D. 190), on the question of the celebration of the festival of Easter. The bishop of Rome, Victor, desired his colleagues in the various parts of the Empire to form themselves into councils to inquire into this matter. Early The invitation was accepted by all; and, the consultation resulting in favour of the Roman usage, Victor thought fit to exclude the recalcitrant Churches of Asia from the Catholic communion. His conduct in this dispute, though its severity may have been open to criticism,' indicates a very definite conception on his part of his authority over the universal Church. In the 3rd century the same position was maintained, and the heads of the Roman Church continued to speak with the greatest authority. We find cases of their intervention in the ecclesiastical affairs of Alexandria, of the East, of Africa, Gaul and Spain. Though the manner in which they wielded their authority sometimes meets with criticism (Irenaeus, Cyprian, Firmilianus), the principle of it is never questioned. However, as time went on, certain Churches became powerful centres of Christianity, and even when they did not come into conflict with her, their very existence tended to diminish the prestige of the Roman Church.

After the period of the persecutions had passed by, the great ecclesiastical capitals Carthage, Alexandria, Antioch and Constantinople, as secondary centres of organization and administration, drew to themselves and kept in their hands a share in ecclesiastical affairs. It was only under quite exceptional circumstances that any need was felt for oecumenical decisions. Further, the direction of affairs, both ordinary and extraordinary, tended to pass from the bishops to the state, which was now christianized. The Eastern Church had soon de facto as its head the Eastern emperors. Henceforth it receded more and more from the influence of the Roman Church, and this centrifugal movement was greatly helped by the fact that the Roman Church, having ceased to know the Greek language, found herself practically excluded from the world of Greek Christianity.

In the West also centrifugal forces made themselves felt. After Cyprian the African episcopate, in proportion as it perfected its organization, seemed to feel less and less the need for close relations with the apostolic see. In the 4th century the Donatist party was in open schism; the orthodox party had the upper hand in the time of Aurelius and Augustine; the regular meeting of the councils further increased the corporate cohesion of the African Episcopal body. From them sprang a code of ecclesiastical laws and a whole judicial organization. With this organization, under the popes Zosimus, Boniface and Celestine the Roman Church came into conflict on somewhat trivial grounds, and was, on the whole, being worsted in the struggle, when the Vandal invasion of Africa took place, and for nearly a century to come the Catholic communities were subjected to very hard treatment. The revival which took place under Byzantine rule (6th and 7th centuries) was of little importance; Victor's conduct in this matter was not approved by a number of bishops (including Irenaeus), who protested against it (&vrt1rapaKEXd,ovrau) in the interests of peace and Christian love (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. v. 24). - [ED.] Church. but the autonomy which had been denied them under Aurelius was maintained to the end, that is to say, up till the Mahommedan conquest.

During the 4th century it is to be noticed that, generally speaking, the Roman Church played a comparatively insignificant Part in the West. From the time of popes Damasus Church in and Siricius various affairs were referred to Rome from Africa, Spain or Gaul. The popes were asked to give decisions, and in answer to those demands drew up their first decretals. However, side by side with the Roman see was that of Milan, which was also the capital of the Western Empire. From time to time it seemed as if Milan would become to Rome what Constantinople was to Alexandria. However, any danger that menaced the prestige of Rome disappeared when the emperor Honorius removed the imperial residence to Ravenna, and still more so when the Western emperors were replaced in the north of Italy by barbarian sovereigns, who were Arians.

In Spain, Gaul, Brittany and the provinces of the Danube, similar political changes took place. When orthodox Christianity had Pyrenees, the episcopate of those countries grouped sovereigns. In Spain was produced a fairly strong itself, as it had done in the East, around the religious centralization around the Visigothic king and the metropolitan of Toledo. In Gaul there was no chief metropolitan; but the king's court became, even sooner than that of Spain, the centre of episcopal affairs. The Britons and Irish, whose remoteness made them free from restriction, developed still more decided individuality. In short, the workings of all the Western episcopates, from Africa to the ocean, the Rhine and the Danube, lay outside the ordinary influence of the Roman see. All of them, even down to the metropolitan sees of Milan and Aquileia, practised a certain degree of autonomy, and in the 6th century this developed into what is called the Schism of the Three Chapters. With the exception of this schism, these episcopates were by no means in opposition to the Holy See. They always kept up relations of some kind, especially by means of pilgrimages, and it was admitted that in any disputes which might arise with the Eastern Church the pope had the right to speak as representative of the whole of the Western Church. He was, moreover, the only bishop of a great see - for Carthage had practically ceased to count - who was at that time a subject of the Roman emperor.

This was the situation when St Gregory was elected pope in 590. We may add that in peninsular Italy, which was most clearly under his ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the Lombards had spread havoc and ruin; so that nearly ninety bishoprics had been suppressed, either temporarily or definitively. The pope could act directly only on the bishoprics of the coast districts or the islands. Beyond this limited circle he had to act [by means of diplomatic channels, through the governments of the Lombards, Franks and Visigoths. On the Byzantine side his hands were less tied; but here he had to reckon with the theory of the five patriarchates which had been a force since Justinian. According to Byzantine ideas, the Church was governed - under the supreme authority, of course, of the emperor - by the five patriarchs of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. Rome had for a long time opposed this division, but, since some kind of division was necessary, had put forward the idea of the three sees of St Peter - Rome, Alexandria and Antioch - those of Constantinople and Jerusalem being set aside, as resulting from later usurpations. But the last named were just the most important; in fact the only ones which counted at all, since the monophysite secession had reduced the number of the orthodox in Syria and Egypt practically to nothing. This dissidence Islam was to complete, and by actually suppressing the patriarchate of Jerusalem to reduce Byzantine Christendom to the two patriarchates of Rome and Constantinople.

There was no comparison between the two from the point of view of the East. The new Rome, where the emperor reigned, prevailed over the old, which was practically abandoned to the barbarians. She was still by courtesy given the precedence, but that was all; the council in Trullo (692) even claimed to impose reforms on her. When Rome, abandoned by the distant emperors, was placed under the protection of the Franks (754), relations between her and the Greek tinopie. Church became gradually more rare, the chief occasions being the question of the images in the 8th century, the quarrel between Photius and Ignatius in the 9th, the affairs of the four marriages of the emperor Leo VI. and of the patriarch Theophylact in the loth. On these different occasions the pope, ignored in ordinary times, was made use of by the Byzantine government to ratify measures which it had found necessary to adopt in opposition to the opinion of the Greek episcopate.

These relations were obviously very different from those which had been observed originally, and it would be an injustice to the Roman Church to take them as typical of her relations with other Christian bodies. She had done all she could to defend her former position. Towards the end of the 4th century, when southern Illyricum (Macedonia, Greece, Crete) was passing under the authority of the Eastern emperor, she tried to keep him within her ecclesiastical obedience by creating the vicariate of Thessalonica. Pope Zosimus (417) made trial of a similar organization in the hope of attaching the churches of the Gauls more closely to himself. It was also he who began the struggle against the autonomy of Africa. But it was all without effect. From the 6th century onwards the apostolic vicars of Arles and Thessalonica were merely the titular holders of pontifical honours, with no real authority over those who were nominally under their jurisdiction.

It was Gregory I. who, though with no premeditated intention, was the first to break this circle of autonomous or dissident Churches which was restricting the influences of the Gregory apostolic see. As the result of the missions sent to England by him and his successors there arose a church which, in spite of certain Irish elements, was and remained Roman in origin, and, above all, spirit and tendency. In it the traditions of old cutlure and religious learning imported from Rome, where they had almost ceased to bear any fruit, found a new soil, in which they flourished. Theodore, Wilfrid, Benedict Biscop, Bede, Boniface, Ecgbert, Alcuin, revived the fire of learning, which was almost extinct, and by their aid enlightenment was carried to the Continent, to decadent Gaul and barbarian Germany. The Churches of England and Germany, founded, far from all traditions of autonomy, by Roman legates, tendered their obedience voluntarily. In Gaul there was no hostility to the Holy See, but on the contrary a profound veneration for the great Christian sanctuary of the West. The Carolingian princes, when Boniface pointed them towards Rome, followed him without their clergy offering any resistance on grounds of principle. The question of reform having arisen, from the apostolic see alone could its fulfilment be expected, since in it, with the succession of St Peter, were preserved the most august traditions of Christianity.

The surprising thing is that, although Rome was then included within the empire of the Franks, so that the popes were afforded special opportunities for activity, they showed for the most part no eagerness to strengthen their authority over the clergy beyond the Alps. Appeals and other matters of detail were referred to them more often than under the Merovingians. They gave answers to such questions as were submitted to them; the machinery moved when set in motion from outside; but the popes did not attempt to interfere on their own initiative. The Frankish Church was directed, in fact, by the government of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious. When this failed, as happened during the wars and partitions which followed the death of Louis, the fate of this Church, with no effective head and under no regular direction, was very uncertain. It was then that a clerk who saw that there was but an uncertain prospect of help from the pope of his time, conceived the shrewd idea of appealing to the popes of the past, so as to exhort the contemporary generation through the mouth of former popes, from Clement to Gregory. This design was gained the upper hand beyond the Alps and the realized in the celebrated forgery known as the " False Decretals " (see Decretals).

Hardly were they in circulation throughout the Frankish Empire when it happened that a pope, Nicholas I., was elected who was animated by the same spirit as that which tunities for intervening in the affairs not only of the Western but of the Eastern Church, and he seized upon them with great decision. He staunchly supported the patriarch Ignatius against his rival, Photius, at Constantinople; he upheld the rights of Teutberga, who had been repudiated by her husband, Lothair II. of Lorraine, against that prince and his brother, the emperor Louis II.; and he combated Hincmar, the powerful metropolitan of Reims. It was in the course of this last dispute that the False Decretals found their way to Rome. Nicholas received them with some reserve; he refrained from giving them his sanction, and only borrowed from them what they had already borrowed from authentic texts, but in general he took up the same attitude as the forger had ascribed to his remote predecessors. The language of his successors, Andrian II. and John VIII., still shows some trace of the energy and pride of Nicholas. But the circumstances were becoming difficult. Europe was being split up under the influence of feudalism; Christendom was assailed by the barbarians, Norsemen, Saracens and Huns; at Rome the papacy was passing into the power of the local aristocracy, with whom after Otto I. it was disputed from time to time by the sovereigns of Germany. It was still being held in strict subjection by the latter when, towards the end of the i ith century, Hildebrand (Gregory VII.) undertook its enfranchisement and began the war of the investitures (q.v.), from which the papacy was to issue with such an extraordinary renewal of its vitality.

In Eastern Christendom the papacy was at this period an almost forgotten institution, whose pretensions were always Schism of met by the combined opposition of the imperial East and authority, which was still preponderant in the West. Byzantine Church, and the authority of the patriarchate of Constantinople, around which centred all that survived of Christianity in those regions. To complete the situation, a formal rupture had occurred in 1054 between the patriarch Michael Cerularius and Pope Leo IX.

In the West, Rome and her sanctuaries had always been held in the highest veneration, and the pilgrimage to Rome was still the most important in the West. The pope, General Position of as officiating in these holiest of all sanctuaries, the Papacy as guardian of the tombs of St Peter and St Paul in Theory. and the inheritor of their rank, their rights, and their traditions, was the greatest ecclesiastical figure and the highest religious authority in the West. The greatest princes bowed before him; it was he who consecrated the emperor. In virtue of the spurious donation of Constantine, forged at Rome in the time of Charlemagne, which was at first circulated in obscurity, but ended by gaining universal credit, it was believed that the first Christian emperor, in withdrawing to Constantinople, had bestowed on the pope all the provinces of the Western Empire, and that in consequence all sovereignty in the West, even that of the emperor, was derived from pontifical concessions. From all points of view, both religious and political, the pope was thus the greatest man of the West, the ideal head of all Christendom. When it was necessary to account for this position, theologians quoted the text of the Gospels, where St Peter is represented as the rock on which the Church is built, the pastor of the sheep and lambs of the Lord, the doorkeeper of the kingdom of heaven. The statements made in the New Testament about St Peter were applied without hesitation to all the popes, considered as his successors, the inheritors of his see (Petri sedes) and of all his prerogatives. This idea, moreover, that the bishops of Rome were the successors of St Peter was expressed very early - as far back as the 2nd century. Whatever may be said as to its historical value, it symbolizes very well the great authority of the Roman Church in the early days of Christianity; an authority which was then administered by the bishops of Rome, and came to be more and more identified with them. The councils were also quoted, and especially that of Nicaea, which does not itself mention the question, but certain texts of which contained the famous gloss: Ecclesia romana semper habuit primatum. But this proof was rather insufficient, as indeed it was felt to be, and, in any case, nothing could be deduced from it save a kind of precedence in honour, which was never contested even by the Greeks. The Gospel and unbroken tradition offered a better argument.

In his capacity as head of the church, " and president of the Christian agape," as St Ignatius of Antioch would have said, the pope was considered to be the supreme president and moderator of the oecumenical assemblies. When the episcopate met in council the bishop of Rome had to be at its head. No decisions of a general nature, whether dogmatic or disciplinary, could be made without his consent. The appeal from all patriarchal or conciliary judgments was to him; and on those occasions when he had to depose bishops of the highest standing, notably those of Alexandria and Constantinople, Ms judgments were carried into effect. During the religious struggles between the East and West he was on a few occasions condemned (by the Eastern council of Sardica, by Dioscorus, by Photius); but the sentences were not carried out, and were even, as in the case of Dioscorus, considered and punished as sacrilegious attacks. In the West the principle, " prima sedes a nemine judicatur," was always recognized and applied.

In ordinary practice this theoretically wide authority had only a limited application. The apostolic see hardly ever interfered in the government of the local Churches. Practical Save in its own metropolitan province, it took no Applica- part in the nomination of bishops; the provincial tions of the or regional councils were held without its authori- Theory, zation; their judgments and regulations were carried out without any suggestion that they should be ratified by Rome. It is only after the False Decretals that we meet with the idea that a bishop cannot be deposed and his place filled without the consent of the pope. And it should be noticed that this idea was put forward, not by the pope with the object of increasing his power, but by the opinion of the Church with a view to defending the bishops against unjust sentences, and especially those inspired by the secular authority.

It was admitted, however, throughout the whole Church that the Holy See had an appellate jurisdiction, and recourse was had to it on occasion. At the council of Sardica (343) an attempt had been made to regulate the procedure in these appeals, by recognizing as the right of the pope the reversing of judgments, and the appointment of fresh judges. In practice, appeals to the pope, when they involved the annulling of a judgment, were judged by the pope in person.

But the intervention of the Holy See in the ecclesiastical affairs of the West, which resulted from these appeals, was only of a limited, sporadic and occasional nature. Nothing could have been more removed from a centralized administration than the condition in which matters stood with regard to this point. The pope was the head of the Church, but he exercised his authority only intermittently. When he did exercise it, it was far more frequently at the request of bishops or princes, or of the faithful, than of his own initiative. Nor had any administrative body for the supreme government of the Church ever been organized. The old Roman clergy, the deacons and priests of the church at Rome (presbyteri incardinati, cardinales) formed the pope's council, and when necessary his tribunal; to them were usually added the bishops of the neighbourhood. The body of ecclesiastical notaries served as the staff of the chancery.

The Roman Church had from a very early date possessed considerable wealth. Long before Constantine we find her employing it in aid of the most distant churches, Territorial as far afield as Cappadocia and Arabia. Her real Possessions property, confiscated under Diocletian, was restored of the Holy by Constantine, and since then had 'been continually See. increased by gifts and bequests. In the 4th and 5th centuries, Nicholas had inspired them. There was no lack of o p ppor the Roman Church possessed property in all parts of the empire; but gradually, whether because the confiscations of the barbarian emperors had curtailed its extent, or because the popes had made efforts to concentrate it nearer to themselves, the property of the Holy See came to be confined almost entirely to Italy. In the time of St Gregory there subsisted only what lay in Byzantine Italy, the Lombards having confiscated the property of the Church as well as the imperial domains. During the quarrels between the papacy and the Byzantine Empire her domains in lower Italy and Sicily also disappeared as time went on, and the territorial possessions of the Roman Church were concentrated in the neighbourhood of Rome.

It was then, towards the middle of the 8th century, that the pope, who already exercised a great influence over the Beginnings government of the city and province of Rome, of the defending her peacefully and with difficulty against Temporal the advancing Lombard conquests, saw that he Power. was forced, short of the protection of the Greek Empire, to put himself under the protection of the Frankish princes. Thus there arose a kind of sovereignty, disputed, it is true, by Constantinople, but which succeeded in maintaining itself. Rome, together with such of the Byzantine territories as still subsisted in her neighbourhood, was considered as a domain sacred to the apostle Peter, and entrusted to the administration of his successor, the pope. To it were added the exarchate of Ravenna and a few other districts of central Italy, which had been recently conquered by the Lombards and retaken by the Frankish kings Pippin and Charlemagne. Such was the foundation of the papal state.

The higher places in the government were 'occupied ' ,by the clergy, who for matters of detail made use of the civil and military officials who had carried on the administration under the Byzantine rule. But these lay officials could not long be content with a subordinate position, and hence arose incessant friction, which called for constant intervention on the part of the Frankish sovereigns. In 824 a kind of protectorate was organized, and serious guarantees were conceded to the lay aristocracy.

Shortly afterwards, in the partition of the Carolingian Empire, Italy passed under the rule of a prince of its own, Louis II., who, with the title of emperor, made his authority felt in political matters. Shortly after his death (875) fresh upheavals reduced to nothing the power of the Carolingian princes; the clergy of Rome found itself without a protector, exposed to the animosity of the lay aristocracy. The authority of the pontificate was seriously impaired by these circumstances. One of the great families of Rome, that of the vestararius Theophylact, took possession of the temporal authority, and succeeded in influencing the papal elections. After Theophylact the power passed to his daughter Marozia, a woman of the most debased character; then to her son Alberic, a serious-minded prince; and then to Alberic's son Octavius, who from " prince of the Romans " became pope (John XII.) when yet a mere boy. After Marozia and Alberic and the rest another branch of the same family, the Crescentii, exercised the temporal powers of the Holy See; and after them the same regime was continued by the counts of Tusculum, who were sprung from the same stock, which sometimes provided the Roman Church with the most unlikely and least honourable pontiffs.

The pope, like all the bishops, was chosen by means of election, in which both the clergy and the laity took part. The latter of were represented in the most essential functions Election the Popes. o f the election by the aristocracy: at first by the senate, and later by the exercitus romanus, or rather of its staff, composed of Byzantine officers. It was the latter which gave rise to the feudal aristocracy which we see appearing under the Carolingians. The new pope was chosen by the principal members of the clergy and nobles, and then set before the assembled people, who gave their decision by acclamation; and this acclamation was accepted as the vote of the assembly of the faithful. The pope-elect was then put in possession of the episcopal house, and after waiting till the next Sunday his consecration was proceeded with. This ceremony was at first celebrated in the Lateran, but from Byzantine times onwards it took place at St Peter's. It was also under the Byzantine regime that the condition was imposed that the pope should not be consecrated until the emperor had ratified his election. This had not 'been required under the old Latin emperors nor under the Gothic kings, and it disappeared of its own accord with the Byzantine regime. It was revived, however, by the emperor Louis the Pious, much to the disgust of the Romans, who resisted on several occasions. The Roman " princes " or " senators " in the 10th century went still further: it was they who actually nominated the pope. The same was the case with the Saxon emperors (Otto I., II. and III.), and in the 11th century of the lords of Tusculum, the latter nominating themselves and choosing members of their own family for the pontificate. When the emperor Henry III. (1046) put an end to this oppression it was only to substitute another. The popes of Tusculum did, at least, belong to the country, while the German kings chose bishops from the other side of the Alps. Such was the state of affairs up to the time of Hildebrand.

The entry of Hildebrand into the counsels of the papacy marks the beginning of a great change in this institution. He cannot, however, claim the honour of having opened The Hilde- the way which he impelled his predecessors to follow brandine even before following it himself. All good Christians Reform. were calling for reform; bishops, princes, and monks were in agreement on this point when they spoke or acted according to their convictions. Many of them had tried to effect something; but these isolated efforts were often countermined by incompatible aims, and had produced no serious results. It is in the supreme head of the Church that the movement ought to have found its origin and inspiration. There was no dispute as to his possessing the authority in spiritual matters necessary to impose reform and overbear the resistance which might arise; no one was better qualified than he to treat with the holders of the temporal power and obtain the support which was necessary from them. The Fathers of the Church had repeated times without number that the priesthood stands above even the supreme secular authority; the Bible was full of stories most aptly illustrating this theory; nobody questioned that, within the Church, the pope was the Vicar of Christ, and that, as such, his powers were unlimited; as proof positive could be cited councils and decretals - whether authentic or spurious; at any rate all authorized by long usage and taken as received authorities. It only remained to take possession of this incontestable power and use it with firmness and consistency. The example of Nicholas I., two centuries before, had shown the position which a pope could occupy in Christendom; but for a long time past the man had come short of the institution, the workman of his tool. Under Leo IX. (1048-1054) the pope suddenly came forward as the active and indefatigable champion of reform; simony and incontinence of the clergy were attacked by the one most qualified to purify the Church of them. Henceforth the way was open, and it became clear that, given good popes, the reform movement might be carried into effect. The choice of the pope was then subject to the pleasure of the sovereign of Germany, against whom the Roman feudal lords, devoted as they were to the old abuses, were in constant revolt. In the midst of the frequent changes of pope which went on during these years, and the political vicissitudes of Italy, Hildebrand took such measures as .enabled him to checkmate the opposition of the Roman barons by turning against them, now the armed force of the Normans, now the influence of the German king.' 1 On the 5th of April 1058, six days after the death of Pope Stephen X., John, bishop of Velletri, the nominee of the Roman nobles, was enthroned as Pope Benedict X. Hildebrand set up Gerard, bishop of Florence, as a rival candidate, won over a part of the Romans to his cause, and secured the support of the empress regent Agnes at the Diet of Augsburg in June. Gerard was elected pope at Siena (as Nicholas II., q.v.) by those cardinals who had fled from Rome on the elevation of Benedict X. A synod was held at Sutri, at which the powerful Godfrey, duke of Lorraine and Spoleto, and margrave of Tuscany, and the chancellor Wibert were present. Measures were here concerted against Pope Benedict, who was driven out of Rome in January 1059, Nicholas II. being Side by side with the general movement towards reform, he had set before himself the object of freeing the papacy, not only from its temporal oppressors but also from its protectors. He was successful at the council of 1059, the pontifical election was placed out of reach of the schemes of the local feudal lords and restored to the heads of the clergy; certain reservations were made with regard to those rights which the Holy See was considered to have conceded personally to Henry of Germany (the young king Henry IV., son of the emperor Henry III.), but nothing more. At the election of Alexander II. (1061-1073)- a rival to whom was for a long time supported by the German king - and even at the election of Hildebrand, this rule had its effect. Henceforth the elections remained entirely free from those secular influences which had hitherto been so oppressive. In 1073 Hildebrand was raised to the pontifical throne by the acclamation of the people of Rome, under the name of Gregory VII.

The work of reform was now in a good way; the freedom of the pontifical elections had been assured, which gave some Gregory promise that the struggle against abuses would be VII., conducted successfully. All that now remained 1053-1085. was to go on following wisely and firmly the way that had already been opened. But this attitude was not likely to appeal to the exuberant energy of the new pope. Hitherto he had had to reckon with obstacles more powerful than those which were now left for him to conquer, and, what was more, with the fact that his authority depended upon the will of others. But now that his hands were no longer tied, he could act freely. The choice of the pope had been almost entirely removed from the sphere of secular influence, and especially from that of the German king. Gregory claimed that the same condition should apply to bishops, and these were the grounds of the dispute about investitures - a dispute which could find no solution, for it was impossible for the Teutonic sovereigns to renounce all interest in a matter of such importance in the workings of their state. Since the time of Clovis the German sovereigns had never ceased to intervene in such matters. But this question soon fell into the background. Gregory's contention was that the secular sovereigns should be entirely in the power of the head of the Church, and that he: should be able to advance them or dispossess them at will, according to the estimate which he formed of their conduct. A terrible struggle arose between these obviously exorbitant demands and the resistance which they provoked. Its details cannot be described in this place (see Investitures); we need only say that this ill-fated quarrel was not calculated to advance the reform movement, but rather to impede it, and, further, that it ended in failure. Gregory died far away from Rome, upon which he had brought incalculable evils; and not only Rome, but the papacy itself had to pay the penalty for the want of moderation of the pope. Great indeed was the difference between the state in which he received it and that in which he left it. We must not, however, let this mislead us. This struggle between spiritual and secular powers, owing to the tremendous sensation which it created throughout Christendom, showed the nations that at the head of the Church there was a great force for justice, always able to combat iniquity and oppression, and sometimes to defeat them, however powerful the evil and the tyrants might seem. The scene at Canossa, which had at the moment a merely relative importance, remained in the memories of men as a symbol which was hateful or comforting, according to the point of view from which it was considered. As to Gregory's political pretensions, zealous theorists were quick to transform them into legal principles; and though his immediate successors, somewhat deafened by the disturbance which they had aroused, seem to have neglected them at first, they were handed on to more distant heirs and reappeared in future struggles.

Gregory himself, in his last moments, seems to have felt that it was impossible to maintain them, for Didier, abbot of Monteregularly enthroned on the 24th of the same month. A synod assembled at the Lateran in April passed the famous new regulations for the elections to the papacy. (See Conclave and [[Lateran Councils.) - [Ed]].] Cassino (Victor III., 1086-1087), whom he nominated as his successor, was well known for his moderation. It was no longer a question of continuing the policy of Gregory VII., but of saving the work of Hildebrand. (L. D.*) II. - Period from 1087 to 1305. Gregory VII. had clearly revealed to the world the broad lines of the religious and political programme of the medieval papacy, and had begun to put it into execution. The Work To reform the Church in every grade and purge of Gregory the priesthood in order to shield it from feudal VII. influences and from the domination of lay sovereignties; to convert the Church thus regenerated, spiritualized, and detached from the world, into an organism which would be submissive to the absolute authority of the papal see, and to concentrate at Rome all its energies and jurisdictions; to establish the supremacy of the Roman see over all the Christian Churches, and win over to the Roman Church the Churches of the Byzantine Empire, Africa and Asia; to establish the temporal domain of St Peter, not only by taking possession of Rome and Italy, but also by placing all the crowns of Europe under the supreme sovereignty of the popes, or even in direct vassalage to them; and, finally, to maintain unity of faith in Christendom and defend it against the attacks of unbelievers, Mussulmans, heretics and pagans - these were the main features of his scheme. The task, however, was so gigantic that after 150 years of strenuous effort, at the period which may be considered as the apogee of its power, that is, in the first half of the 13th century, the papacy had attained only incomplete results. At several points the work remained unfinished, for decadence followed close upon the moment of extreme greatness. It is more particularly in the part of this programme that relates to the internal policy of the papacy, to the subjection of the Church to the Curia, and to the intensive concentration of the ecclesiastical forces in the hands of the leader of Christendom, that Gregory went farthest in the execution of his plan and approached nearest the goal. For the rest, so formidable were the external obstacles that, without theoretically renouncing his claims, he was unable to realize them in practice in a manner satisfactory to himself.

In order to give a clear idea of the vicissitudes through which the papal institution passed between the years 1087 and 1305 and to show the measure of its success or failure at different stages in its course, it is convenient to divide this section into four periods.

1. Period from Urban II. to Calixtus II. (1087-1124). - Gregory VII.'s immediate successors accomplished the most pressing work by liberating the Church from feudal subjection, either by force or by diplomacy. This Ur ba n !!., 1088-1099. was, indeed, the indispensable condition of its internal and external progress. The great figure of this period is unquestionably the French Cluniac Urban II., who led the Hildebrandine reformation with more vehemence than Gregory himself and was the originator of the crusades. Never throughout the middle ages was pope more energetic, impetuous or uncompromising. His inflexible will informed the movement directed against the enemy within, against the simoniacal prelate and the princely usurper of the rights of the Church, and prescribed the movement against the enemy without, against the infidel who held the Holy Sepulchre. Urban set his hand to reforms from which his predecessor Gregory had recoiled. He simultaneously excommunicated several sovereigns and mercilessly persecuted the archbishops and bishops who were hostile to reform. He took no pains to temper the zeal of his legates, but incited them to the struggle, and, not content with prohibiting lay investiture and simony, expressly forbade prelates and even priests to pay homage to the civil power. Distrusting the secular clergy, who were wholly sunk in the world, he looked to the regular clergy for support, he church. and thus led the papacy into that course which it continued to pursue after his death. Henceforth the monk was to be the docile instrument of the wishes of Rome, to be opposed to the official priesthood according to Rome's needs. Urban was the first to proclaim with emphasis the necessity of a close association of the Curia with the religious orders, and this he made the essential basis of the theocratic government. As the originator of the first crusade, Urban is entitled to the honour of the idea and its execution. There is no doubt that he wished to satisfy the complaints that emanated First from the Christians dwelling in Jerusalem and The . from the pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre, but it is Crusade no less certain that he was disturbed by the fears aroused throughout the Latin world by the recrudescence of Mussulman invasions, and particularly by the victory won by the Almoravides over the Christian army at Zalaca (1086). The progress of these African Mussulmans into Spain and their incessant piracies in Italy were perhaps the occasional cause that determined Urban II. to work upon the imagination of the infidels by an expedition into Syria. The papacy of that time believed in the political unity of Islam, in a solidarity - which did not exist - among the Mussulmans of Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt and the Barbary coasts; and if it waited until the year 1095 to carry out this project, it was because the conflict with the Germanic Empire prevented the earlier realization of its dream. The essential reason of Urban II.'s action, and consequently the true cause of the crusade, was the ambition of the pope to unite with Rome and the Roman Church the Churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria and even Constantinople, which the Greek schism had rendered independent. This thought had already crossed the minds of Leo IX. and Gregory VII., but circumstances had never allowed them to put it into execution. Armed by the reformation with a moral authority which made it possible to concentrate the forces of the West under the supreme direction of the Church and its leaders, Urban II. addressed himself with his customary decision to the execution of this enormous enterprise. With him, as with all his successors, the idea of a collective expedition of Europe for the recovery of the Holy Places was always associated with the sanguine hope of extinguishing the schism at Constantinople, its very centre, by the substitution of a Latin for a Byzantine domination. Of these two objects, he was only to realize the former; but the crusade may well be said to have been his own work. He created it and preached it; he organized it, dominated it, and constantly supervised it. He was ever ready to act, either personally or through his delegates, and never ceased to be the effective leader of all the feudal soldiers he enrolled under the banner of the Holy See. He corresponded regularly with his legates and with the military leaders, who kept him accurately informed of the position of the troops and the progress of the operations. He acted as intermediary between the soldiers of Christ and their brothers who remained in Europe, announcing successes, organizing fresh expeditions,. and spurring the laggards to take the road to Jerusalem.

The vast conflict aroused by the Hildebrandine reformation, and particularly the investiture quarrel, continued under the Settlement three successors of Urban II.; but with them it of the assumed a different character, and a tendency arose Investiture to terminate it by other means. The violence and Quarrel. disorders provoked by the struggle brought about a reaction, which was organized by certain prelates who advocated a policy of conciliation, such as the Frenchman Ivo, bishop of Chartres (c. 1040-1116). These conciliatory prelates were sincere supporters of the reformation, and combated simony, the marriage or concubinage of priests, and the immorality of sovereigns with the same conviction as the most ardent followers of Gregory VII. and Urban II.; but they held that the intimate union of Church and State was indispensable to the social order, and that the rights of kings should be respected as well as the rights of priests. The text they preached was harmony between the priesthood and the state. Dividing what the irreconcilables of the Hildebrandine party considered as an indissoluble whole, they made a sharp distinction between the property of the Church and the Church itself, between the political and territorial power of the bishops and their religious authority, and between the feudal investiture which confers lands and jurisdiction and the spiritual investiture which confers ecclesiastical rights. This doctrine gradually rallied all moderate minds, and finally inspired the directors of Christendom in Rome itself. It explains the new attitude of Paschal II. and Calixtus II., who were both sincere reformers, but who sought in a policy of compromise the solution of the difficult problem of the relations of Church and State.

History has not done sufficient justice to the Italian monk Paschal II., who was the equal of Urban in private virtues, personal disinterestedness, and religious conviction, Paschal /L, but was surpassed by him in ardour and rigidity 1099-u18. of conduct. Altered circumstances and tendencies of opinion called for a policy of conciliation. In France, Paschal granted absolution to Philip I. - who had many times been anathematized by his predecessors - and reconciled him solemnly with the Church, on the sole condition that he should swear to renounce his adulterous marriage. The pope could be under no delusion as to the value of this oath, which indeed was not kept; he merely regularized formally a state of affairs which the intractable Urban II. himself had never been able to prevent. As for the French question of the investitures, it was settled apparently without any treaty being expressly drawn up between the parties. The kings of France contemporary with Paschal II. ceased to practice spiritual investiture, or even to receive feudal homage from the bishops. They did not, however, renounce all intervention or all profit in the nominations to prelacies, but their intervention was no longer exhibited under the forms which the Hildebrandine party held to be illegal. In England, Paschal II. put an end to the long quarrel between the royal government and Anselm of Canterbury by accepting the Concordat of London (1107). The crown in England also abandoned investiture by the pastoral staff and ring, but, more fortunate than in France, retained the right of receiving feudal homage from the episcopate. As for Germany, the Emperor Henry V. wrung from the pope, by a display of force at Rome, concessions which provoked the indignant clamours of the most ardent reformers in France and Italy. It must not, however, be forgotten that, in the negotiations at Sutri, Paschal had pride and independence enough to propose to the emperor the only solution of the conflict that was entirely logical and essentially Christian, namely, the renunciation by the Church of its temporal power and the renunciation by the lay lords of all intervention in elections and investitures - in other words, the absolute separation of the priesthood and the state. The idea was contrary to the whole evolution of medieval Catholicism, and the German bishops were the first to repudiate it. At all events, it is certain that Paschal II. prepared the way for the Concordat of Worms. On the other hand, with more acuteness than his predecessors, he realized that the papacy could not sustain the struggle against Germany unless it could rely upon the support of another Christian kingdom of the West; and he concluded with Philip I. of France Alliance and Louis the Fat, at the Council of Troyes (1107), with an alliance which was for more. than a century the France. salvation of the court of Rome. It is from this time that we find the popes in moments of crisis transporting themselves to Capetian territory, installing their governments and convening their councils there, and from that place of refuge fulminating with impunity against the internal and external foe. Without sacrificing the essential principles of the reformation, Paschal II. practised a policy of peace and reaction in every way contrary to that of the two preceding popes, and it was through him that the struggle was once more placed upon the religious basis. He refused to retain Hugo, bishop of Die (d. 1106), as legate; like Urban and Gregory, he gave or confirmed monastic privileges without the protection he granted to the monks assuming a character of hostility towards the episcopate; and, finally, he gave an impulse to the reformation of the chapters, and, unlike Urban II., maintained the rights of the canons against the claims of the abbots.

Guy, the archbishop of Vienne, who had been one of the investiture was divided between the ecclesiastical and the lay powers, the emperor investing with the sceptre, the pope with the pastoral staff and ring. The work did honour to the perseverance and ability of Calixtus, but it was merely the application of the ideas of Paschal II. and No of Chartres. The understanding, however, between the two contracting parties was very far from being clear and complete, as each party still sought to attain its own aim by spreading in the Christian world divergent interpretations of the concordat and widely-differing plans for reducing it to its final form. And, again, if this transaction settled the investiture question, it did not solve the problem of the reconciliation of the universal power of the popes with the claims of the emperors to the government of Europe; and the conflict subsisted - slumbering, it is true, but ever ready to awake under other forms. Nevertheless, the two great Christian agitations directed by the papacy at the end of the nth century and the beginning of the 12th - the reformation and the crusade - were of capital importance for the foundation of the immense religious monarchy that had its centre in Rome; and it is from this period that the papal monarchy actually dates.

The entry of the Christians into Jerusalem produced an extraordinary effect upon the faithful of the West. In it they saw the most manifest. sign of the divine protection and of the supernatural power of the pope, the of supreme director of the expedition. At its inception the Latin kingdom of the Holy Land was within a little of becoming an ecclesiastical principality, ruled by a patriarch under the authority of the pope. Daimbert, the first patriarch of Jerusalem, was convinced that the Roman Church alone could be sovereign of the new state, and attempted to compel Godfrey of Bouillon to hand over to him by a solemn agreement the town and citadel of Jerusalem, and also Jaffa. The clergy, indeed, received a large share; but the government of the Latin principality remained lay and military, the only form of government possible for a colony surrounded by perils and camped in a hostile country. Not only was the result of the crusade extremely favourable to the extension of the Roman power, but throughout the middle ages the papacy never ceased to derive almost incalculable political and financial advantages from the agitation produced by the preachers and the crusading expeditions. The mere fact of the crusaders being placed under the special protection of the Church and the pope, and loaded with privileges, freed them from the jurisdiction, and even, up to a certain point, from the lordship of their natural masters, to become the almost direct subjects of the papacy; and the common law was then practically suspended for the benefit of the Church and the leader who represented it.

As for the reformation, which under Urban II. and his immediate successors was aimed not only at the episcopate but also at the capitulary bodies and monastic clergy, it, too, could but tend to a considerable extension of the authority of the successors of to St Peter, for it struck an irremediable blow at the ancient Christian hierarchy. The first manifest result of the change was the weakening of the metropolitans. The visible symptom of this decadence of the archiepiscopal power was the growing frequency during the Hildebrandine conflict of episcopal confirmations and consecrations made by the popes themselves or their legates. From an active instrument of the religious society, the archiepiscopate degenerated into a purely formal power; while the episcopate itself, which the sincere reformers wished to liberate and purge in order to strengthen it, emerged from the crisis sensibly weakened as well as ameliorated. The episcopate, while it gained in intelligence and morality, lost a part of its independence. It was raised above feudalism only to be abased before the two directing forces of the reformation, the papacy and the religious orders.

To place itself in a better posture for combating the simoniacal and concubinary prelates, the court of Rome had had to multiply exemptions and accelerate the movement which impelled the monks to make themselves independent of the bishops. Even in the cities, the seats of the episcopal power, the reformation encouraged the attempts at revolt or autonomy which tended everywhere to diminish that power. The cathedral chapters took advantage of this situation to oppose their jurisdiction to that of the bishops, and to encroach on their prerogatives. When war was declared on the schismatic prelates, the reforming popes supported the canons, and, unconsciously or not, helped them to form themselves into privileged bodies living their own lives and affecting to recognize the court of Rome as their only superior authority. Other adversaries of the episcopate, the burgesses and the petty nobles dwelling in the city, also profited by these frequent changes of bishops, and the disorders that ensued. It was the monarchy of the bishops of Rome that naturally benefited by these attacks on the aristocratic principle represented by the high prelacies in the Church. By drawing to their side all the forces of the ecclesiastical body to combat feudalism, Urban II. and his successors, with their monks and legates, changed the constitution of that body, and changed it to their own advantage. The new situation of these popes and the growth of their authority were also manifested in the material organization of their administration and chancery. Under Urban II. the formulary of the papal bulls began to crystallize, and the letters amassed in the papal offices were differentiated clearly into great and little bulls, according to their style, arrangement and signs of validation. Under Paschal II. the type of the leaden seal affixed to the bulls (representing the heads of the apostles Peter and Paul) was fixed, and the use of Roman minuscule finally substituted for that of the Lombard script.

2. Period from Honorius II. to Celestine III. (1124-1198). - After the reformation and the crusade the papal monarchy existed, and the next step was to consolidate and extend it. This task fell to the popes of the 12th century. Two of them in particular - the two who had the longest reigns - viz. Innocent II. and Alexander III., achieved the widest extension of the power entrusted to them, and in many respects their pontificates may be regarded as a preparation for and adumbration of the pontificate of Innocent III. This period, however, is characterized not only by the thoroughgoing development of the authority of the Holy See, but also by the severe struggle the popes had to sustain against the hostile forces that were opposed to their conquests or to the mere exercise of what they regarded as their right.

In the secular contest, Germany and the imperialist pretensions of its leaders were invariably the principal obstacle. Until the accession of Adrian IV., however, there had been considerable periods of tran- German quillity, years even of unbroken peace and alliance E with the Germanic power. Under Honorius II. the empire, represented by Lothair III. of Supplinburg, yielded to the papacy, and Lothair, who was elected by the clergy keenest to disavow the policy of Paschal II., was obliged to continue it when he assumed the tiara under the name of Calixtus II. By the Concordat of Worms, which he s i gned with the Emperor Henry V. in 1122, the and protected by the legates, begged the pope to 1124-1130. confirm his election. Before his coronation he had renounced the right, so jealously guarded by Henry V., of assisting in the election of bishops and abbots, and he even undertook to refrain from exacting homage from the prelates and to content himself with fealty. This undertaking, however, did not prevent him from bringing all his influence to bear upon the ecclesiastical nominations. When the schism of 1130 broke out he endeavoured to procure the cancellation of the clauses of the Concordat of Worms and to recover lay investiture by way of compensation for the support he had given to Innocent II., one of the competing popes. This scheme, however, was frustrated by the firmness of Innocent and St Bernard, and Lothair had to resign himself to the zealous conservation of the privileges granted to the Empire by the terms of the concordat. The ardour he had displayed in securing the recognition of Innocent and defending him against his enemies, particularly the anti-pope Anacletus and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, involved him in a course which was not precisely favourable to the imperial rights. Innocent II. was the virtual master of this Innoce n t 11., arch whose championship of the papacy brought P P P P Y ht g not the smallest advantage, not even that of being crowned emperor with the habitual ceremonial at the place consecrated by tradition. It may even be maintained that his elevation was due solely to his personal claims. This was a victory for Rome, and it was repeated in the case of the first Hohenstaufen, Conrad III., who owed his elevation (1138) mainly to the princes of the Church and the legate of Innocent II., by whom he was crowned. He also had to submit to the consequences of his origin on the occasion of a double election not foreseen by the Concordat of Worms, when he was forced to admit the necessity of appeal to Rome and to acknowledge the supremacy of the papal decision. The situation changed Eugenius in 1152, under Eugenius III., when Frederick III.. Barbarossa was elected German king. He notified 1145-4153. his election to the pope, but did not seek the pope's approval. None the less, Eugenius III. felicitated the new sovereign on his election, and even signed the treaty of Constance with him (1153). The pope had need of Frederick to defend him against the revolted Romans and to help him to recover his temporal power, which had been gravely compromised. Anastasius IV. pursued the same policy, and Anasta- summoned the German to Rome (1154). Frederick, sius Iv., however, was determined to keep the seat of the 1153-1154. Empire for himself, to dispute Italy with the pope, and to oppose the divine right of kings to the divine right of priests. When he had taken Lombardy (1158) and had had the principles of the imperial supremacy proclaimed by his jurists at the diet of Roncaglia, the court of Rome realized that war was inevitable, and two energetic popes, Adrian IV. and Alexander III., reso twenty years. Victims of the communal claims at Rome, they constituted themselves the champions of similar claims in northern Italy, and their alliance with the Lombard communes ultimately led to success. In his duel with Barba- Alexan- rossa, Alexander III., one of the greatest of medieval der III., popes, displayed extraordinary courage, address and 1159-4181. perseverance. Although it must be admitted that the tenacity of the Lombard republics contributed powerfully to the pope's victory, and that the triumph of the Milanese at Legnano (1176) was the determining cause of Frederick's submission at Venice, yet we must not exaggerate the importance of the solemn act by which Barbarossa, kneeling before his conqueror, recognized the spiritual supremacy of the Holy See, and swore fidelity and respect to it. In its final form, the truce of Venice was not only not unfavourable secularly to the Empire, but even granted it very extensive advantages. Nor must it be forgotten that, in the eyes of contemporaries, the scene at Venice had none of that humiliating character which later historians have attributed to it.

This was not the only success gained by Alexander III. over lay sovereigns. The conflict of the priesthood with the kingdoms Alexander and nations that were tending to aggrandize them- III. and selves by transcending the religious limits of the Henry II. medieval theocracy took place on another theatre. of England. The affair of Thomas Becket involved the papacy in a quarrel with the powerful monarchy of the Angevins, whose representative, Henry II., was master of England and of the half of France. Alexander's diplomatic skill and moral authority, reinforced by the Capetian alliance and the revulsion of feeling caused by the murder of Becket, enabled him to force the despotic Henry to yield, and even to do penance at the tomb of the martyr. The Plantagenet abjured the Constitutions of Clarendon, recognized the rights of the pope over the Church of England, and augmented the privileges and domains of the archbishopric of Canterbury. Although Becket was a man of narrow sympathies and by no means of liberal views, he had died for the liberties of his caste, and the aureole that surrounded him enhanced the prestige and ascendancy of the papacy.

Unfortunately for the papacy, the successors of Alexander III. lacked vigour, and their pontificates were too brief to allow them to pursue a strong policy against the Germanic The Papacy imperialism. Never were the leaders of the Church and the in such jeopardy as during the reign of Barbarossa's Emperor son, Henry VI. This vigorous despot, whose ambi- Henry vI tions were not all chimerical, had succeeded where his predecessors, including Frederick, had failed. His marriage with the heiress of the old Norman kings had made him master of Sicily and the duchy of Apulia and Calabria, and he succeeded in conquering and retaining almost, all the remainder of the peninsula. Under Celestine III. the papal state was surrounded on every side by German soldiers, and but for the premature death of the emperor, whom Abbot Joachim of Floris called the " hammer of the world," the temporal power of the popes might perhaps have been annihilated.

The Norman kingdom, which had conquered Sicily and southern Italy at the end of the nth century, was almost as grave a source of anxiety to the popes of this period. Not only was its very existence an obstacle to .the T he Parcy a n d the spread of their temporal power in the peninsula, Norman but it frequently acted in concert with the pope 's Kingdom enemies and thwarted the papal policy. The ii a youth attempts of Honorius II. (1128) and Innocent II.

(1139) to wrest Apulia and Calabria from King Roger II., and Adrian IV.'s war with William I. (1156), were one and all unsuccessful; and the papacy had to content itself with the vassalage and tribute of the Normans, and allowed them to organize the ecclesiastical government of their domains in their own fashion, to limit the right of appeal to Rome, and to curtail the power of the Roman legates. At this period, moreover, the " Norman Question " was intimately connected with the " Eastern Question." The Norman adventurers in possession of Palermo and Naples perpetually tended to look for their aggrandizement to the Byzantine Empire. In the interests of their temporal dominion, the 12th-century popes could not suffer an Italian power to dominate on the other side of the Adriatic and instal itself at Constantinople. This contingency explains the vacillating and illogical character of the papal diplomacy with regard to the Byzantine problem, and, inter slid, the opposition of Eugenius III. in 1150 to Roger II.'s projected crusade, which was directed towards the conquest of the Greek state. The popes were under the constant sway of two contrary influences - on the one hand, the seducing prospect of subduing the Eastern Church and triumphing over the schism, and, on the other, the apprehension of seeing the Normans of Sicily, their competitors in Italy, increasing their already formidable power by successful expeditions into the Balkan Peninsula. Dread of the Normans, too, explains the singular attitude of the Curia towards the Comneni, of whom it was alternately the enemy and the protector or ally.

But, as regards its temporal aims on Italy, the most inconvenient and tenacious, if not the most dangerous, adversary of the 12th-century papacy was the Roman commune.

Since the middle of the 12th century the party of The Papacy P munici al autonomy and indeed, the whole of the and the Y European middle classes, who wished to shake off ofCommune Rome. the feudal yoke and secure independence, had been ranged against the successor of St Peter. The first symptoms of resistance were exhibited under Innocent II. (1142), who was unable to stem the growing revolution or prevent the establishment of a Roman senate sitting in the Capitol. The strength of classical reminiscence and the instinct of liberty were reinforced by the support given to communal aspirations by the popular agitator and dangerous tribune, Arnold of Arnold of Brescia, whose theories arrived at an opportune Brescia. moment to encourage the revolted commons. He denied the power of clerks to possess fiefs, and allowed them only religious authority and tithes. The successors of Innocent II. were even less successful in maintaining their supremacy in Adrian IV., lutel sustained the struggle, the latter for nearly Y gg Y Rome. Lucius II., when called upon to renounce all his regalian rights, fell mortally wounded in an attempt to drive the autonomists by force from the Capitol (1145). Under Eugenius III. the Romans sacked and destroyed the houses of the clerks and cardinals, besieged St Peter's and the Lateran, and massacred the pilgrims. The pope was forced to fly with the Sacred College, to escape the necessity of recognizing the commune, and thus left the field free to Arnold of Brescia (1145). On his return to Rome, Eugenius had to treat with his rebel subjects and to acknowledge the senate they had elected, but he was unable to procure the expulsion of the agitator. The more energetic Adrian IV. refused to truckle to the municipality, placed it under an interdict (1155), and allied himself with Frederick Barbarossa to quell an insurrection which respected the rights of emperors no more than the rights of popes. From the moment that Arnold of Brescia, absorbed in his chimerical project of reviving the ancient Roman republic, disregarded the imperial power and neglected to shelter himself behind the German in his conflict with the priesthood, his failure was certain and his fate foredoomed. He was hanged and burned, probably in pursuance of the secret agreement between the pope and the emperor; and Adrian IV. was reconciled with the Romans (1156). The commune, however, subsisted, and was on several occasions strong enough tb eject the masters who were distasteful to it. Unfortunately for Alexander III. the Roman question was complicated during his pontificate with the desperate struggle with the Empire. The populace of the Tiber welcomed and expelled him with equal enthusiasm, and when his body was brought back from exile, the mob went before the cortege and threw mud and stones upon the funeral litter. All obeyed the pontiff of Rome - save Rome itself. Lucius III., who was pope for four years (1181-1185), remained in Rome four months, while Urban III. and Gregory VIII. never entered the city. At length the two parties grew weary of this state of revolution, and a regime of conciliation, the fruit of mutual concessions, was established under Clement III. By the act of 1188, the fundamental charter of the Roman commune, the people recognized the supremacy of the pope over the senate and the town, while the pope on his part sanctioned the legal existence of the commune and of its government and assemblies. Inasmuch as Clement was compelled to make terms with this new power which had established itself against him in the very centre of his dominion, the victory may fairly be said to have rested with the commune.

Although, among other obstacles, the popes of the 12th century had experienced some difficulty in subduing the inhabitants of the city, which was the seat and centre of the of the Christian world, their monarchy did not cease to gain in authority, solidity and prestige, and the work of centralization, which was gradually making them masters of the whole ecclesiastical organism, was accomplished steadily and without serious interruption. If Rome expelled them, they always found a sure refuge in France, where Alexander III. carried on his government for several years; and the whole of Europe acknowledged their immense power. Under Honorius II. the custom prevailed of substituting legates a latere, simple priests or deacons of the Curia, for the regionary delegates, who had grown too independent; and that excellent instrument of rule, the Roman legate, carried the papal will into the remotest courts of Europe. The episcopate and the great monastic prelacies continued to lose their independence, as was shown by Honorius II. deputing a cardinal to Monte Cassino to elect an abbot of his choosing. The progress of the Roman power was especially manifested under Innocent II., who had triumphed over the schism, and was supported by the Empire and by Bernard of Clairvaux, the first moral authority of his time. He suspended an archbishop of Sens (1136) who had neglected to take into consideration the appeal to Rome, summoned an archbishop of Milan to Rome to receive the pallium from the pope's hands, lavished exemptions, and extended the right of appeal to such abnormal lengths that a Byzantine ambassador is reported to have exclaimed to Lothair III., Your Pope Innocent is not a bishop, but an emperor." When the universal Church assembled at the second Lateran Council (1139), this leader of religion declared to the bishops that he was the absolute master of Christendom. " Ye know," he said, " that Rome is the capital of the world, that ye hold your dignities of the Roman pontiff as a vassal holds his fiefs of his sovereign, and that ye cannot retain them without his assent." Under Eugenius III., a Cistercian monk who was scarcely equal to his task, the papal absolutism grew sensibly weaker, and if we may credit the testimony of the usually wellinformed German chronicler, Otto of Freising, there arose in the college of cardinals a kind of fermentation which was exceedingly disquieting for the personal power of the leader of the Church. In the case of a difference of opinion between Eugenius and the Sacred College, Otto relates that the cardinals addressed to the pope this astounding protest: " Thou must know that it is by us thou hast been raised to the supreme dignity. We are the hinges (cardines) upon which the universal Church rests and moves. It is through us that from a private person thou hast become the father of all Christians. It is, then, no longer to thyself but rather to us that thou belongest henceforth. Thou must not sacrifice to private and recent friendships the traditional affections of the papacy. Perforce thou must consult before everything the general interest of Christendom, and must consider it an obligation of thine office to respect the opinions of the highest dignitaries of the court of Rome." If we admit that the cardinals of Eugenius III. succeeded in restricting the omnipotence of their master for their own ends, it must invariably have been the Curia that dictated its wishes to the Church and to Europe. The papacy, however, recovered its ascendancy during the pontificate of Alexander III., and seemed more powerful than ever. The recently created royalties sought from the papacy the conservation of their titles and the benediction of their crowns, and placed themselves voluntarily in its vassalage. The practice of the nomination of bishops by the Curia and of papal recommendation to prebends and benefices of every kind grew daily more general, and the number of appeals to Rome and exemptions granted to abbeys and even to simple churches increased continually. The third Lateran Council (1179) was a triumph for the leader of the Church. At that council wise and urgent measures were taken against the abuses that discredited the priesthood, but the principle of appeals and exemptions and the question of the increasing abuse of the power wielded by the Roman legates remained untouched. The treatise on canon law known as the Decretum Gratiani, which was compiled towards the middle of the 12th century and had an enduring and far-reaching effect (see Canon Law), merely gave theoretical sanction to the existing situation in the Church. It propagated doctrines in favour of the power of the Holy See, established the superiority of the popes over the councils, and gave legal force to their decretals. According to its author, " they (the popes) are above all the laws of the Church, and can use them according to their wish; they alone judge and cannot be judged." It was by its constant reliance on monachism that the papacy of the 12th century had attained this result, and the popes of that period were especially fortunate in having for their champion the monk St Bernard, whose admirable qualities enabled him to dominate public q P opinion. St Bernard completed the reformation, combated heresy, and by his immense moral ascendancy gained victories by which Rome benefited. As instances of his more direct services, he put an end to the schism of 1130 and attached Italy and the world to the side of Innocent III. Although he had saved the papal institution from one of the gravest perils it had ever encountered, the cardinals, the court of Rome and Innocent himself could not easily pardon him for being what he had become - a private person more powerful in the Church than the pope and the bishops, and holding that power by his personal prestige. He incurred their special reproaches by his condemnation of the irresistible evolution which impelled Rome to desire exclusive dominion over Catholic Europe and to devote her attention to earthly things. He did not condemn the temporal power of the popes in plain terms, but both his writings and his conduct proved that that power was in his opinion difficult to reconcile with the spiritual mission of the papacy, and was, moreover, a menace to the future of the institution. (See Bernard, Saint.) At the very moment when the papacy thus attained omnipotence, symptoms of discontent and opposition arose. The bishops resisted centralization. Archbishop Hildebert of Tours protested to Honorius II. against the of g appeals to Rome, while others complained of the exactions of the legates, or, like John of Salisbury, animadverted upon the excessive powers of the bureaucracy at the Lateran. In the councils strange speeches were heard from the mouths of laymen, who were beginning to carry to extreme lengths the spirit of independence with regard to Rome. When a question arose at Toulouse in 1160 as to the best means of settling the papal schism, this audacious statement was made before the kings of France and England: " That the best course was to side with neither of the two popes; that the apostolic see had been ever a burden to the princes; that advantage must be taken of the schism to throw off the yoke; and that, while awaiting the death of one of the competitors, the authority of the bishops was sufficient in France and England alike for the government of the churches." The ecclesiastics themselves, however, were the first to denounce the abuses at Rome. The treatises of Gerhoh of Reichersberg (1093-1169) abound in trenchant attacks upon the greed and venality of the Curia, the arrogance and extortion of the legates, the abuse of exemptions and appeals, and the German policy of Adrian IV. and Alexander III. In his efforts to make the papal institution entirely worthy of its mission St Bernard himself did not shrink from presenting to the papacy " the mirror in which it could recognize its deformities." In common with all enlightened opinion, he complained bitterly of the excessive multiplication of exemptions, of the exaggerated extension of appeals to Rome, of the luxury of the Roman court, of the venality of the cardinals, and of the injury done to the traditional hierarchy by the very extent of the papal power, which was calculated to turn the strongest head. In St Bernard's treatise De consideratione, addressed to Pope Eugenius III., the papacy receives as many reprimands and attacks as it does marks of affection and friendly counsel. To warn Eugenius against pride, Bernard reminds him in biblical terms that an insensate sovereign on a throne resembles " an ape upon a housetop," and that the dignity with which he is invested does not prevent him from being a man, that is, " a being, naked,! poor, miserable, made for toil and not for honours." To his thinking, poison and the dagger were less to be feared by the pope than the lust of power. Ambition and cupidity were the source of the most deplorable abuses in the Roman Church. The cardinals, said Bernard, were satraps who put pomp before the truth. He was at a loss to justify the unheard-of luxury of the Roman court. " I do not find," he said, " that St Peter ever appeared in public loaded with gold and jewels, clad in silk, mounted on a white mule, surrounded by soldiers and followed by a brilliant retinue. In the glitter that environs thee, rather wouldst thou be taken for the successor of Constantine than for the successor of Peter." Rome, however, had greater dangers to cope with than the indignant reproofs of her friends the monks, and the opposition Growth of of the bishops, who were displeased at the spectacle of their authority waning day by day. It was at Sects. this period that the Catholic edifice of the middle ages began to be shaken by the boldness of philosophical speculation as applied to theological studies and also by the growth of heresy. Hitherto more tolerant of heresy than the local authorities, the papacy now felt compelled to take defensive measures against it, and especially against Albigensianism, which had made great strides in the south of France since the middle of the 12th century. Innocent II., Eugenius III. and Alexander III. excommunicated the sectaries of Languedoc and their abettors, Alexander even sending armed missions to hunt them down and punish them. But the preaching of the papal legates, even when supported by military demonstrations, had no effect; and the Albigensian question, together with other questions vital for the future of the papacy, remained unsettled and more formidable than ever when Innocent III. was elected.

3. Period from Innocent III. to Alexander rI V. (1198-1261)

Under the pontificates of Innocent III. and his five immediate successors the Roman monarchy seemed to have reached the pinnacle of its moral prestige, religious authority and temporal power, and this;development 1216 was due in great measure to Innocent III. himself. Between the perhaps excessive admiration of Innocent's biographer, Friedrich von Hurter, and the cooler estimate of a later historian, Felix Rocquain, who, after taking into consideration Innocent's political mistakes, lack of foresight and numerous disappointments and failures, concludes that his reputation has been much exaggerated, it is possible to steer a middle course and form a judgment that is at once impartial and conformable to the historical facts. Innocent was an eminent jurist and canonist, and never ceased to use his immense power in the service of the law. Indeed, a great part of his life was passed in hearing pleadings and pronouncing judgments, and few sovereigns have ever worked so industriously or shown such solicitude for the impartial exercise of their judicial functions. It is difficult to comprehend Innocent's extraordinary activity. Over and above the weight of political affairs, he bore resolutely for eighteen years the overwhelming burden of the presidency of a tribunal before which the whole of Europe came to plead. To him, also, in his capacity of theologian, the whole of Europe submitted every obscure, delicate or controverted question, whether legal problem or case of conscience. This, undoubtedly, was the part of his task that Innocent preferred, and it was to this, as well as to his much overrated moral and theological treatises, that he owed his enormous contemporary prestige. As a statesman, he certainly committed grave faults - through excess of diplomatic subtlety, lack of forethought, and sometimes even through ingenuousness; but it must with justice be admitted that, in spite of his reputation for pugnacity and obstinacy, he never failed, either by temperament or on principle, to exhaust every peaceful expedient in settling questions. He was averse from violence, and never resorted to bellicose acts or to the employment of force save in the last extremity. If his policy miscarried in several quarters it was eminently successful in others; and if we consider the sum of his efforts to achieve the. programme of the medieval papacy, it cannot be denied that the extent of his rule and the profound influence he exerted on his times entitle him to be regarded as the most perfect type of medieval pope and one of the most powerful figures in history.

A superficial glance at Innocent's correspondence is sufficient to convince us that he was pre-eminently concerned for the reformation and moral welfare of the Church, and was animated by the best intentions for the re-estab lishment in the ecclesiastical body of order, peace and respect for the hierarchy. This was one of the prin- 1215. cipal objects of his activity, and this important side of his work received decisive sanction by the promulgation of the decrees of the fourth Lateran Council (1215). At this council almost all the questions at issue related to reform, and many give evidence of great breadth of mind, as well as of a very acute sense of contemporary necessities. Innocent's letters, however, not only reveal that superior wisdom which can take into account practical needs and relax severity of principle at the right moment, as well as that spirit of tolerance and equity which is opposed to the excess of zeal and intellectual narrowness of subordinates, but they also prove that, in the internal government of the Church, he was bent on gathering into his hands all the motive threads, and that he stretched the absolutist tradition to its furthest limits, intervening in the most trifling acts in the lives of the clergy, and regarding it as an obligation of his office to act and think for all. The heretic peril, which increased during his pontificate, forced him to take decisive measures against the Albigenses in the south of France, but before proscribing them he spent ten years (1198-1208) in endeavouring to convert the misbelievers, and history should not forget the pacific character of these early efforts. It was because they did not succeed that necessity and the violence of human passions subsequently forced him into a course of action which he had not chosen and which led him further than he wished to go. When he was compelled to decree the Albigensian crusade he endeavoured more than once to discontinue the work, which had become perverted, and to curb the crusading ardour of Simon de Montfort. Failing in his attempt to maintain the religious character of the crusade, he wished to prevent it from ending secularly in its extreme consequence and logical outcome. On several occasions he defended the cause of moderation and justice against the fanatical crusaders, but he never had the energy to make it prevail. It is very doubtful whether this was possible, and an impartial historian must take into account the insuperable difficulties encountered by the medieval popes in their efforts to stem the flood of fanaticism.

It was more particularly in the definitive constitution of the temporal and political power of the papacy, in the extension of what may be called Roman imperialism, that chance favoured his efforts and enabled him to pursue his conquests farthest. This imperialism was undoubtedly of a special nature; it rested on moral authority and political and financial power rather than on material and military strength. But it is no less certain that Innocent attempted to subject the kings of Europe by making them his tributaries and vassals. He wished to acquire the mastery of souls by unifying the faith and centralizing the priesthood, but he also aspired to possess temporal supremacy, if not as direct owner, at least as suzerain, over all the national crowns, and thus to realize the idea with which he was penetrated and which he himself expressed clearly. He wished to be at once pope and emperor, leader of religion and universal sovereign. And, in fact, he exercised or` claimed suzerain rights, together with the political and pecuniary advantages accruing, over the greater number of the lay sovereigns of his time. He was more or less effectively the supreme temporal chief of the kingdom of Sicily and Naples, Sardinia, the states of the Iberian peninsula (Castile, Leon, Navarre and Portugal), Aragon (which, under Peter II., was the type of vassal and tributary kingdom of the Roman power), the Scandinavian states, the kingdom of Hungary, the Slav states of Bohemia, Poland, Servia, Bosnia and Bulgaria, and the Christian states founded in Syria by the crusaders of the 12th century. The success of Roman imperialism was particularly remarkable in England, where Innocent was confronted by one of the principal potentates of the West, by the heir of the power that had been founded by two statesmen of the first rank, William the Conqueror and Henry II. In Richard I. and John he had exceptionally authoritative adversaries; but after one of the fiercest wars ever waged by the civil power against the Church, Innocent at length gained over John the most complete victory that has ever been won by a religious potentate over a temporal sovereign, and constrained him to make complete submission. In 1213 the pope, became not only the nominal suzerain but, de facto and de jure, the veritable sovereign of England, and during the last years of John and the first years of Henry III. he governed England effectively by his legates. This was the most striking success of Innocent's diplomacy and the culminating point of his secular work.

The papacy, however, encountered serious obstacles, at first at the very centre of the papal empire, at Rome, where the pope had to contend with the party of communal autonomy for ten years before being able to secure the mastery at Rome. His immense authority narrowly escaped destruction but a stone's-throw from the Lateran palace; but Italy the victory finally rested with him, since the Roman people could no* dispense with the Roman Church, to which it owed its existence. Reared in the nurture of the pope, the populace of the Tiber renounced its stormy liberty in 1209, and accepted the peace and order that a beneficent master gave; but when Innocent attempted to extend to the whole of Italy the regime of paternal subjection that had been so successful at Rome, the difficulties of the enterprise surpassed the powers even of a leader of religion. He succeeded in imposing his will on the nobles and communes in the patrimony of St Peter, and, as guardian of Henry VI.'s son Frederick, was for some time able to conduct the government of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, but in his claims on the rest of Italy the failure of the temporal power was manifest. He was unable, either by diplomacy or force of arms, to make Italian unity redound to the exclusive benefit of the Holy See. Nor was his failure due to lack of activity or energy, but rather to the insuperable obstacles in his path - the physical configuration of Italy, and, above all, the invincible repugnance of the Italian municipalities to submit to the mastery of a religious power.

As far as the Empire was concerned, chance at first favoured Innocent. For ten years a Germany weakened and divided by the rivalry of Philip of Swabia and Otto of Brunswick left his hands free to act in Italy, and his pontificate marks a period of comparative quiet in the ardent Empire* conflict between pope and emperor which continued throughout the middle ages. Not until 1210, when Otto of Brunswick turned against the pope to whom he owed his crown, was Innocent compelled to open hostilities; and the struggle ended in a victory for the Curia. Frederick II., the new emperor created by Innocent, began by handing over his country to Rome and sacrificing the rights of the Empire to the union of the two great authorities of the Christian world. In his dealings with Frederick, Innocent experienced grievous vicissitudes and disappointments, but finally became master of the situation. One nation only - the France of Philip Augustus - was able to remain outside the Roman vassalage. There is not a word, in the documents concerning the relations of Philip Augustus with Rome, from which we may conclude that the Capetian crown submitted, or that the papacy wished to impose upon it the effective suzerainty of the Holy See. Innocent III. had been able to encroach on France at one point only, when the Albigensian crusade had enabled him to exercise over the southern fiefs conquered by Simon de Montfort a political and secular supremacy in the form of collections of moneys. Finally, Innocent III. was more fortunate than his predecessors, and, if he did not succeed in carrying out his projected crusade and recovering the Holy Places, he at least benefited by the FrancoVenetian expedition of 1202. Europe refused to take any direct action against the Mussulman, but Latin feudalism, assembled at Venice, diverted the crusade by an act quest of conof formal disobedience, marched on Constantinople, seized the Greek Empire and founded a Latin Empire in its place; and Innocent had to accept the fait accompli. Though condemning it on principle, he turned it to the interests of the Roman Church as well as of the universal Church. With joy and pride he welcomed the Byzantine East into the circle of vassal peoples and kingdoms of Rome bound politically to the see of St Peter, and with the same emotions beheld the patriarchate of Constantinople at last recognize Roman supremacy. But from this enormous increase of territory and influence arose a whole series of new and difficult problems. The court of Rome had to substitute for the old Greek hierarchy a hierarchy of Latin bishops; to force the remaining Greek clergy to practise the beliefs and rites of the Roman religion and bow to the supremacy of the pope; to maintain in the Greco-Latin Eastern Church the necessary order, morality and subordination; to defend it against the greed and violence of the nobles and barons who had founded the Latin Empire; and to compel the leaders of the new empire to submit to the apostolic power and execute its commands. In his endeavours to carry out the whole of this programme, Innocent III. met with insuperable obstacles and many disappointments. On the one hand, the Greeks were unwilling to abandon their religion and national cult, and scarcely recognized the ecclesiastical supremacy of the papacy. On the other hand, the upstart Latin emperors, far from proving submissive and humble tools, assumed with the purple the habits and pretensions of the sovereigns they had dispossessed. Nevertheless, Innocent left his successors a much vaster and more stable political dominion than that which he had received from his predecessors, since it comprised both East and West; and his five immediate successors were able to preserve this ascendancy. They even extended the limits of Roman imperialism by converting the pagans of the Baltic to Christianity, and further reinforced the work of ecclesiastical centralization by enlisting in their service a force which had recently come into existence and was rapidly becoming popular - the mendicant orders, and notably the Dominicans and Franciscans. The Roman power was also increased by the formation of the universities - privileged corporations of masters and students, which escaped the local power of the bishop and his chancellor only to place themselves under the direction and supervision of the Holy See. Mistress of the entire Christian organism, Rome thus gained control of international education, and the mendicant monks who formed her devoted militia lost no time in monopolizing the professorial chairs. Although the ecclesiastical monarchy continued to gain strength, the successors of Innocent III. made less use than he of their immense power. Under Gregory IX. (1227-1241) and Innocent IV. (1243-1254) the conflict between the priesthood and the Empire was revived by the enigmatic Frederick II., the polyglot and lettered emperor, the friend of Saracens, the despot who, in youth styled " king of priests," in later years personified ideas that were directly opposed to the medieval theocracy; and the struggle lasted nearly thirty years. The Hohenstaufen succumbed to it, and the papacy itself received a terrible shock, which shook its vast empire to the foundations.

Nevertheless, the first half of the 13th century may be regarded as the grand epoch of medieval papal history. Supreme in Europe, the papacy gathered into a body of doctrine of the decisions given in virtue of its enormous de facto power, and promulgated its collected decrees and oracula to form the immutable law of the Christian world. Innocent III., Honorius III. and Gregory IX. employed their jurists to collect the most important of their rulings, and Gregory's decrees became the definitive repository of the canon law. Besides making laws for the Christendom of the present and the future, these popes employed themselves in giving a more regular form to their principal administrative organ, the offices of the Curia. The development of the Roman chancery is also a characteristic sign of the evolution that was taking place. From the time of Innocent III. the usages of the apostolic scribes become transformed into precise rules, which for the most part remained in force until the 15th century.

4. Period from Urban IV. to Benedict XI. (1261-1305). - This period comprises 13 pontificates, all of short duration (three or four years at the most, and some only a few months), with the exception of that of Boniface VIII., who was pope for nine years. This accidental fact constitutes a prime difference in favour of the preceding period, in which there were only five pontiffs during the first sixty years of the 13th century. Towards the end of the 13th century the directors of the Christian world occupied the throne of St Peter for too short a time to be able to make their personal views prevail or to execute their political projects at leisure after ripe meditation. Whatever the merit of a Gregory X. or a Nicholas I III., the brevity of their pontificates prevented any one of these ephemeral sovereigns from being a great pope.

But other and far more important differences characterize this period. Although there was no theoretical restriction to of the temporal supremacy and religious power of the papacy, certain historical facts of great importance of France. contributed to the fatal diminution of their extent. The first of these was the preponderance of the French monarchy and nation in Europe. Founded by the conquests of Philip Augustus and Louis VIII. and legitimated and extended by the policy and moral influence of the crowned saint, Louis IX., the French monarchy enjoyed undisputed supremacy at the end of the 13th century and the beginning of the 14th; and this hegemony of France was manifested, not only by the extension of the direct power exercised by the French kings over all the neighbouring nationalities, but also by the establishment of Capetian dynasties in the kingdom of the Two Sicilies and in Hungary. From this time the sovereign of Rome, like other sovereigns, had to submit to French influence. But, whereas the pope was sometimes compelled to become the instrument of the policy of the kings of France or the adventurers of their race, he was often able to utilize this new and pervading force for the realization of his own designs, although he endeavoured from time to time, but without enduring success, to shake off the overwhelming yoke of the French. In short, it was in the sphere of French interests much more than in that of the general interests of Latin Christendom that the activities of these popes were exerted. The fact of many of the popes being of French birth and France the field of their diplomacy shows that the supreme pontificate was already becoming French in character. This change was a prelude to the more or less complete subjection of the papacy to French influence which took place in the following century at the period of the " Babylonish Captivity," the violent reaction personified by Boniface VIII. affording but a brief respite in this irresistible evolution. It was the Frenchman Urban IV. (1261-1264) who called Charles of Anjou into Italy to combat the last heirs of Frederick II. and thus paved the way for the establishment of the Angevin dynasty on the throne of Naples. Under Clement IV. (1265-1268) an agreement was concluded by which Sicily was handed over to the brother of St Louis, and the victories of Benevento (1266) and Tagliacozzo (1267) assured the triumph of the Guelph party and enabled the Angevins to plant themselves definitely on Neapolitan soil. Conradin's tragic and inevitable end closed the last act of the secular struggle between the Holy See and the Empire. Haunted by the recollection of that formidable conflict and lulled in the security of the Great Interregnum, which was to render Germany long powerless, the papacy thought merely of the support that France could give, and paid no heed to the dangers threatened by the extension of Charles of Anjou's monarchy in central and northern Italy. The Visconti Gregory X. (1271-1276) made an attempt to bring about a reaction against the tendency which had influenced his two immediate predecessors. He placed himself outside the theatre of French influence, and occupied himself solely with the task of giving to the papal monarchy that character of universality and political superiority which had made the greatness of an Alexander III. or an Innocent III. He opposed the aggrandizing projects of the Angevins, intervened in Germany with a view to terminating the Great Interregnum, and sought a necessary counterpoise to Capetian predominance in an alliance with Rudolph of Habsburg, who had become an emperor without imperilling the papacy. The Orsini Nicholas III. pursued the same policy with regard to the independence and greatness of the Roman See, but died too soon for the cause he upheld, and, at his death in 1280, the inevitable current revived with overpowering force. His successor, Martin IV. (1281-1285), a prelate of Champagne, brother of several councillors of the king of France, prebendary at Rouen and Tours, and one of the most zealous in favour of the canonization of Louis IX., ascended the papal throne under the auspices of Charles of Anjou, and undertook the government of the Church with the sole intention of furthering in every way the interests of the country of his birth. A Frenchman before everything, he abased the papal power to such an extent as to excite the indignation of his contemporaries, often slavishly subordinating it to the exigencies of the domestic and foreign policy of the Angevins at Naples and the reigning house at Paris. But he was prevented from carrying out this policy by an unforeseen blow, the Sicilian Vespers (March 1282), an event important both in itself and in its results. By rejecting the Capetian sovereign that Rome wished to thrust upon it to deliver it from the dynasty of Aragon, the little island of Sicily arrested the progress of French imperialism, ruined the vast projects of Charles of Anjou, and liberated the papacy in its own despite from a subjection that perverted and shook its power. Honorius IV. (1285-1287) and Nicholas IV. (1288-1292) were able to act with greater dignity, and independence than their predecessors. Though remaining leagued with the Angevins in southern Italy, they dared to look to Germany and Rudolph of Habsburg to help them in their efforts to add to the papal dominion a part of northern Italy and, in particular, Tuscany. But they still continued to desire the restoration of the Angevin dynasty in Sicily and to assist the designs of France on Aragon by preaching a crusade against the masters of Barcelona and Palermo. The hopes of the Curia were frustrated by the resistance of the Aragonese and Sicilians, and Charles of Valois, to whom the Curia eventually destined the crown of Aragon, had to resign it for that of Constantinople, which he also failed to secure.

Boniface VIII. himself at the beginning of his pontificate yielded to the current, and, like his predecessors, adapted his external policy to the pretensions and interests of vlll. the great Capetian house, which, like all his prede- 1294-13030 cessors, he at first countenanced. In spite of his instincts for dominion and the ardour of his temperament, he made no attempt to shake off the French yoke, and did not decide on hostilities with France until Philip the Fair and his legists attempted to change the character of the kingship, emphasized its lay tendencies, and exerted themselves to gratify the desire for political and financial independence which was shared by the French nation and many other European peoples. The war which ensued between the pope and the king of France ended in the complete defeat of the papacy, which was reduced to impotence (1303), and though the storm ceased during the nine months' pontificate of Benedict XI., the See of St Peter recovered neither its normal equilibrium Papacy nor its traditional character. The accession of the France. first Avignon pope, Clement V., marks the final subjection of the papal power to the Capetian government, the inevitable result of the European situation created in the preceding century.

In other respects the papacy of this period found itself in a very inferior situation to that which it had occupied under Innocent III. and the popes of the first half of the 13th century. The fall of the Latin Empire and the retaking of Constantinople by the Palaeologi freed a great part of the Eastern world from the political and religious direction of Rome, and this fact necessarily engaged the diplomacy of Urban IV. and his successors in an entirely different direction. To them the Eastern problem presented a less complex aspect. There could no longer be any serious question of a collective expedition of Europe for the recovery of the Holy Places. The ingenuous faith of a Louis IX. was alone capable of giving rise to two crusades organized privately and without the influence or even the approval of the pope. Although all these popes, and Gregory X. especially, never ceased theoretically to urge the Christian world to the crusade, they were actuated by the desire of remaining faithful to tradition, and more particularly by the political and financial advantages accruing to the Holy See from the preaching and the crusading expeditions. The European state of mind no longer lent itself to such enterprises, and, moreover, under such brief pontificates, the attenuated Roman power could not expect to succeed where Innocent III. himself had failed. The main preoccupation of all these popes was how best to repair the injury done to orthodox Europe and to Rome by the destruction of the Latin Empire. Several of them thought of restoring the lost empire by force, and thus giving a pendant to the fourth crusade; but the Curia finally realized the enormous difficulties of such a project, and convinced themselves that the only practical solution of the difficulty was to come to an understanding with the Palaeologi and realize pacifically the long-dreamed Church. g P Y B union of the Greek and Latin Churches. The negotiations begun by Urban IV. and continued more or less actively by his successors were at last concluded in 1274 by Gregory X.

The Council of Lyons proclaimed the union, which was destined to be effective for a few years at least and to be prolonged precariously in the midst of unfavourable circumstances. The Greek mind was opposed to the union; the acquiescence of the Byzantine emperors was but an ephemeral expedient of their foreign policy; and the peace between the Latins and Greeks settled on Byzantine soil could not endure for long. The principal obstacle, however, was the incompatibility of the popes' Byzantine and Italian policies. The popes were in favour of Charles of Anjou and his dynasty, but Charles was hostile to the union of the two Churches, since it