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LECTURE V.

THE REV. ALGERNON SIDNEY CRAPSEY. Rector of St. Andrew's Church, Rochester, New York.

THE BABYLONIAN EXILE AND THE
PAPAL SCHISM.

I.

THE PASSING GLORY.

Gentlemen of the Church Club, before whom I have the honor to speak, and all good Christian folk here gathered together, let me tell you that the year 1300 was in more senses than one the golden year of the Roman papacy. The long conflict between the imperial and papal powers had ended in the triumph of the pope. The ruin of the house of Hohenstauffen had involved the ruin of the empire. The last of the seed of Barbarossa, the gallant Conradin, had died upon the scaffold in Naples, bequeathing his wrongs, all that was left him of the vast possessions of his fathers, to his kindred of the house of Aragon.

So low was the imperial power and dignity that

the reigning emperor, Adolph of Nassau, poorest and weakest of German princes, was rated by the pope like a school-boy for becoming the hired soldier of Edward of England.

The spiritual, if not the temporal, power of the pope was acknowledged without dispute from one end of Europe to the other. A vast and highly organized priesthood looked to him as the sole source of its authority. The regular clergy waited upon his favor for promotion; the monastic orders were, for the most part, under his immediate jurisdiction, while the mendicants of S. Francis and S. Dominic preached him in every hamlet and at every cross-road of Europe. The fear of him and the dread of him was upon all the nations of the West. His curse had ruined an empire and was withering the power of kings.

The Crusades had given into his hand the sword of the flesh as well as the sword of the Spirit. He had but to call a war holy, to grant general indulgence to his soldiers, and to bless their banners, and he was followed by devoted armies that could fight and die, if they could not fast and pray. Failing in his effort to wrest the Holy Land from the infidel, the pope had turned these, his carnal weapons, against heretics and personal enemies nearer home; he preached his crusades indifferently against the Albigenses of Provence and the Colonna of Rome.

And in the year 1300 a new device was found to attract to Rome the homage and the wealth of Europe. In some mysterious way the news went abroad that whosoever should, in that last year of the old century, visit the holy city and worship at the altars of the Apostles, would receive full indulgence and pardon for all his sin. The consequence of this rumor was a mighty movement toward Rome. On the 22d of February the pope, by special" Bull," confirmed the belief of the people, and the streets of his city were thronged with pilgrims, and the basilicas of the Apostles crowded with worshippers. The wily Romans furnished cakes and ale, bread and wine, while attendants stood in every church with rakes to draw in the offerings of the faithful, which fell in a ceaseless hail of brass and copper, gold and silver, to fill the thirsty coffers of the pope. And his pride was satisfied as well as his avarice. receive the adoration of millions of his spiritual subjects. It is estimated that as many as two hundred and fifty thousand strangers were in Rome on a given day, and more than two millions visited the city during the Jubilee.

He sat in his chair to

The reigning pope was Benedict Cajetan of the town of Anagni. If we may believe the history of his times, he came to his power by ways that were dark and tricks that were vain. His immediate predecessor was Peter Morrone, that her

mit of Abruzzi, whom the cardinals had chosen as if by inspiration, after a disgraceful struggle, which had kept the see of Rome vacant for more than two years, in the hope that the sanctity of Peter would sweeten the air of the Roman court, the worldliness of which was stinking in the nostrils of Christendom. But no sooner did the hermit take his name of Celestine V. and enter upon his high and holy office, than he found that the papacy had passed far out of the regions of piety into that of practical politics, and a saint was no more at home in the chair of S. Peter then than he would be in the City Hall of New York to-day. Frightened by his vast responsibilities, instigated by the advice, if not hurried on by the wiles of Cajetan, Celestine resigned the papacy after a reign of six months. This resignation was made in Naples, where the pope was then residing, and was accepted by the College of Cardinals, who, after a negotiation lasting for ten days, entered into conclave, and, without further delay, elected the ablest of their number, Benedict Cajetan, Cardinal Presbyter of S. Martin, to the vacant see.

In a few days the newly elected pontiff was crowned, assuming the name of Boniface VIII., and hurried away to Rome. He carried in his train Charles, King of Naples, and Charles Martel, his son, King of Hungary. As the pope neared the city, the people came forth to meet

him with banners and with music, and his entrance was like an ancient triumph. The two kings led his horse by the bridle and afterward waited on him at table.

The pope was then at the summit of earthly greatness. He was by far the most considerable personage in Europe, if not in the world; his only rival, the emperor, he had reduced to insignificance, while the kings of the West had not yet. tried their strength against him. But his was not the glory of the morning, it was the passing glory of the evening, the splendor of a sun that was going down.

When Boniface entered upon his office he found three centres of disturbance: In Rome the Colonna stood aloof, the Sicilians were in rebellion, and the King of France was sullen.

From the eleventh century the Colonna had been the strongest and wealthiest of Roman families. The Orsini were its only rivals in riches and in influence: it had its strongholds within and without the city; it allied itself by marriage to royal and imperial blood; it gave popes and cardinals to the Church. At the election of Boni. face two cardinals of the family, James, and Peter the nephew of James, had been the last to give their consent; they had even hinted that the election itself might be illegal. The resignation of Celestine was without precedent in the history

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