gave them considerable political influence in the city of Rome, and the adjoining parts of Italy. Their exercise of it was always useful, and sometimes necessary for answering the purposes of government; and thus the popes became possessed, indirectly, of temporal power.

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Such was the situation of the popes, at the commencement of those successful expeditions of Pepin and Charlemagne into Italy, which terminated in the establishment of the western empire of the latter on the ruin of the Byzantine dynasty. To each of these monarchs in the prosecution of his views, the popes rendered essential service; and received from the former, the exarchate, the Pentapolis, and other extensive possessions in the neighbourhood of Rome; and from the latter, a confirmation and extension of this ample territory.

At a subsequent time, the pious munificence of the celebrated Matildis, countess of Tuscany. enriched the holy see with considerable possessions, By two deeds, she gave all the estates of which she was then possessed, or which she might afterwards acquire, to the holy see. The principal of them were Tuscany, Spoletto, Parma, Placentia, and a considerable territory in Lombardy.

Thus, from an humble fisherman, the Roman pontiff became a great temporal prince, and the eternal city, as Rome is often called, became the seat, as well of his temporal as of his spiritual power. Unfortunately, he soon advanced a higher claim. In virtue of an authority, which he pretended to derive from heaven, the pope asserted,

that, by divine right*, the pope was the supreme temporal lord of the universe, and that all princes and civil governors were, even in temporal concerns, subject to him. In conformity with this doctrine, they took on themselves, to try, condemn and depose sovereign princes, to absolve their subjects from their allegiance, and to grant their kingdoms to others.

That a claim so unfounded, so detrimental to religion, so hostile to the peace of the world, so extravagant, and, on the face of it, so baseless and visionary, should have been made, is strange : stranger still is the success which attended it. There scarcely is a kingdom in christian Europe, the sovereign of which did not, at some time or other, acquiesce in it, so far at least as to invoke it against his own antagonist; and, having once urged it against another, it was not always easy to deny, with consistency, the justice of it, when it was urged against himself. When the pope excommunicated Philip Augustus of France, for marrying a woman in the life-time of his first wife, he charged the pope with insolence and an abuse of his power; but, when the pope conferred the king

* Some modern writers, to veil the hideousness of these pretensions, have insinuated that the popes made their claim to temporal power, not by divine right, but by the concessions of princes. Can this be honourably urged by any person, who has read the sentence by which Gregory the seventh deposed the emperor Henry? Or the bulls Ausculta fili and Unam Sanctam of Boniface the eighth? Or even the bulls and briefs, which we are obliged to bring forward in the course of these Memoirs ?

dom of England on him and his heirs, in perpetual succession, he observed to no one, that the pope had no right to dispose of kingdoms*.

VII. 2.

Decline of the Temporal Power of the Pope.

THE beginning of the fourteenth century may be assigned for the era of the highest elevation of the Roman pontiffs; as, about that time their territorial possessions had their largest extent: they had then made their greatest progress in exempting the clergy from the civil power; and they then experienced least resistance to their general claim of divine right to temporal power. They might, therefore, at this time be thought to have secured the duration of their temporal empire :-from this period, however, it began to decline, and the causes of its decline are obvious.

On some occasions, they carried their pretensions to a length which excited the disgust, and even provoked the resistance of the most timid. The extravagant conduct and language of Innocent the third, Boniface the eighth, and Clement the sixth,

* See other instances of a similar nature in the late publication, intituled " Du Pape," 8vo. 1819: few works display greater intrepidity of assertion; but it contains many curious facts, not generally known, and many judicious remarks it is observable that the author, in the beginning of his work, falls into a great mistake by confounding the right of the pope to supreme jurisdiction in ecclesiastical causes, which no catholic denies him, with the question on his personal infallibility in matters of faith.

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in their contests with Philip Augustus, Philip the Fair, and Lewis of Bavaria, gave general offence, and led several governments of Europe to make strong declarations of the independence of their sovereigns on the see of Rome, in all temporal

concerns.

It must also be admitted, that the popes were sometimes engaged in enterprizes evidently unjust; and that the lives of some of them were confessedly dissolute.

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In the year 1309, the policy of the French king prevailed on the pope to translate his see to Avignon and for a period of seventy years, that city continued the metropolis of christendom. This exasperated the Italians to the highest degree: they lost their personal affection for the pope; they called his residence at Avignon, the captivity of Babylon, and filled Europe with invectives against him.

An event then took place, which was still more detrimental to the popes. Gregory the eleventh quitted Avignon, and established his residence at Rome; he died in 1378. The Italian cardinals chose a pope, who took the name of Urban the sixth, and fixed his seat in the city of Rome: the French cardinals chose one, who took the name of Clement the seventh, and fixed his seat at Avignon. All christendom was divided between the popes; and the schism continued from 1378 to 1417, when it was ended by the elevation of Martin the fifth. During the period of the schism, two and sometimes three rival popes were wander

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ing over christendom; dividing it by their quarrels, and scandalizing it by their mutual recriminations.

But nothing contributed so much to the decline. of the temporal power of the popes, as the discussions which took place at the councils of Constance, Basil and Pisa, and the writings of several men of learning, particularly of the Parisian school, who now began to discuss the papal pretensions to temporal power, with temper and erudition.

A rougher attack was made on them by the Waldenses, Albigenses, Wickliffites, Lollards and other heretics of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It must be admitted, on the one hand, that they maintained several doctrines irreconcileable with those of the gospel, and subversive of civil society; so that it is amazing that the reformed churches should be so anxious to prove their descent from them; but it must equally be admitted on the other, that they brought charges against some temporal usurpations of the popes, and of churchmen, to which the advocates of the latter could make no satisfactory reply.

The effect of these circumstances was, that, before the end of the period assigned to this part of our history, the justice of the pretensions of the see of Rome to temporal power, by divine right, became much suspected; the ancient canons were more attended to, and the limits of spiritual and temporal power were better understood*.

* In the foregoing succinct account of the rise and fall of the pope's temporal power, the writer has been assisted by a very learned work of Thomassin; "Traité de la Discipline Eccle