# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Papacy

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​PAPACY (a term formed on the analogy of “abbacy” from Lat. papa, pope; cf. Fr. papauté on the analogy of royauté. Florence of Worcester, A.D. 1044, quoted by Du Cange s.v. Papa, has the Latin form papatia; the New Eng. Dict. 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. The Primitive Roman Church. 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 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 Authority of the Roman Bishops. 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 Centrifugal Forces in the Catholic Church. 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; ​ 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 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 The Roman Church in the 4th Century. 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 gained the upper hand beyond the Alps and the Pyrenees, the episcopate of those countries grouped itself, as it had done in the East, around the sovereigns. In Spain was produced a fairly strong The Church in the Teutonic Kingdoms. Restriction of the Papal Authority. 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 Rome and Constan­tinople. distant emperors, was placed under the protection of the Franks (754), relations between her and the Greek 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 10th. 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 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 Gregory the Great, 590–604. Roman in origin, and, above all, spirit and tendency. In it the traditions of old culture 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 The False Decretals. 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 ​ 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 had inspired them. There was no lack of opportunities for intervening in the affairs not only of the Western but of the Eastern Church, and he seized uponNicholas I., 858–867. 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 11th 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 met by the combined opposition of the imperial authority, which was still preponderant in the Byzantine Church, and the authority of the patriarchate of Constantinople, around which centred all thatSchism of East and West. 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, as officiating in these holiest of all sanctuaries, as guardian of the tombs of St Peter and St Paul and the inheritor of their rank, their rights, andGeneral Position of the Papacy in Theory. 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, his 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. Save in its own metropolitan province, it took no part in the nomination of bishops; the provincial or regional councils were held without its authorization;Practical Applications of the Theory. 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, as far afield as Cappadocia and Arabia. Her real property, confiscated under Diocletian, was restored by Constantine, and since then had been continually Territorial Possessions of the Holy See. increased by gifts and bequests. In the 4th and 5th centuries, ​ 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 government of the city and province of Rome, defending her peacefully and with difficulty against the advancing Lombard conquests, saw that he was forced, short of the protection of the GreekBeginnings of the Temporal Power. 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 were represented in the most essential functions of 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 latterElection of the Popes. 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 way which he impelled his predecessors to follow even before following it himself. All good Christians calling for reform; bishops, princes, and monks were inThe Hildebrandine Reform. 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. (1045–1054) 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. ​ 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 promise that the struggle against abuses would be conducted successfully. All that now remained was to go on following wisely and firmly the way that had already been opened. But this attitude was not likelyGregory VII., 1053–1085. 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 Monte-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. To reform the Church in every grade and purge the priesthood in order to shield it from feudal influences and from the domination of lay sovereignties; toThe Work of Gregory VII. 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 Callixtus 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 was, indeed, the indispensable condition of its internal and external progress. The great figure of this period isUrban II., 1088–1099. 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. DistrustingReform of the Church. the secular clergy, who were wholly sunk in the world, he looked to the regular clergy for support, 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 from the Christians dwelling in Jerusalem and The First Crusade. from the pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre, but it is 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 three successors of Urban II.; but with them it of the assumed a different character, and a tendency arose to terminate it by other means. The violence and disorders provoked by the struggle brought about a Settlement of the Investiture Quarrel. 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, but was surpassed by him in ardour and rigidity of conduct. Altered circumstances and tendencies of opinion called for a policy of conciliation. In France, Paschal II., 1099–1118. 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 with France. and Louis the Fat, at the Council of Troyes (1107), an alliance which was for more than a century the 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 ​ 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 signed with the Emperor Henry V. in 1122, the investiture was divided between the ecclesiasticalCalixtus II., 1119–1124. 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 Ivo 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 11th 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 supreme director of the expedition. At its inception the Latin kingdom of the Holy Land was within aEffect of the Latin Conquest of Jerusalem. 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 St Peter, for it struck an irremediable blow atSubordination of the Episcopate to the Papal Monarchy. 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. (1124–1108).—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 tranquillity, years even of unbroken peace and alliance with the Germanic power. Under Honorius II. the empire,The Papacy and the German Emperors. Honorius II., 1124–1130. represented by Lothair III. of Supplinburg, yielded to the papacy, and Lothair, who was elected by the clergy and protected by the legates, begged the pope to 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 monarch, whose championship of the papacy brought not the smallest advantage, not even that of being crowned emperor with the habitual Innocent II., 1130–1143.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 Barbarossa was elected German king. He notified Eugenius III., 1145–1153.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 summoned the German to Rome (1154). Frederick, however, was determined to keep the seat of the Empire for himself, to dispute Italy with theAnastasius IV., 1153–1154. Adrian IV., 1154–1159. Alexander III., 1159–1181. 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., resolutely sustained the struggle, the latter for nearly 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 Barbarossa, Alexander III., one of the greatest of medieval popes, displayed extraordinary courage, address and 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 and nations that were tending to aggrandize themselves by transcending the religious limits of the medieval theocracy took place on another theatre. The affair of Thomas Becket (q.v.) involved the Alexander III. and Henry II. of England. 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 imperialism. Never were the leaders of the Church in such jeopardy as during the reign of Barbarossa’s son, Henry VI. This vigorous despot, whose ambitionsThe Papacy and the Emperor Henry VI. 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 11th 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 spread of their temporal power in the peninsula, but it frequently acted in concert with the pope’sThe Papacy and the Norman Kingdom in South Italy. enemies and thwarted the papal policy. The 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 alia, 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 municipal autonomy and, indeed, the whole of the European middle classes, who wished to shake offThe Papacy and the Commune of Rome. Arnold of Brescia. 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 Brescia (q.v.), whose theories arrived at an opportune 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 ​ 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 to 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 Christian world, their monarchy did not cease to gain in authority, solidity and prestige, and the work of centralization, which was gradually making them Development of the Centralised Organization. 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 well-informed 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 opinion. St Bernard completed the reformation, Influence of Bernard of Clairvaux. 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 appeals to Rome, while others complained of the exactions of the legates, or, like John of Salisbury, Resistance to the Papal Exactions and Encroach­ments. 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 of the bishops, who were displeased at the spectacle of their authority waning day by day. It was at this period that the Catholic edifice of the middle ages began to be shaken by the boldness of philosophical speculationGrowth of Heretical Sects. 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 IV. (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 was due in great measure to Innocent III. himself. Between Innocent III., 1198–1216. 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-establishment in the ecclesiastical body of order, peace and respect for the hierarchy. This was one of the principal The Fourth Lateran Council, 1215. 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 The Albigensian Crusades. 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 Papal Imperialism under Innocent III. 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 religiousInnocent III. and John of England. 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; butInnocent III., Rome and Italy. the victory finally rested with him, since the Roman people could not 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 conflict between pope and emperor which continued throughoutInnocent III. and the Empire. 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 Franco-Venetian expedition of 1202. Europe refused to take any direct action against the Mussulman, but Latin feudalism,Latin Conquest of Constantinople. at Venice, diverted the crusade by an act 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 The Friars and the Universities. 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 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. Culmination of the Papal Power. 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 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 the temporal supremacy and religious power of the papacy, certain historical facts of great importance contributed to the fatal diminution of their extent. The first of these was the preponderance of the French monarchy Influence of the Power of France. 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 the great Capetian house, which, like all his predecessors, he at first countenanced. In spite of his instincts for dominion and the ardourBoniface VIII. 1294–1303. 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 Subjection to the Papacy to France. 9 months’ pontificate of Benedict XI., the See of St Peter recovered neither its normal equilibrium nor its traditional character. The accession of the 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 Council of Lyons, 1274. Relations with the Eastern Church. 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 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 was his intention to seize the Byzantine Empire and substitute himself for the Palaeologi. Almost all the successors of Urban IV. were compelled to exert their diplomacy against the aggrandizing aims of the man they had themselves installed in southern Italy, and to protect the Greek emperor, with whom they were negotiating the religious question. On several occasions between the years 1271 and 1273 the Angevins of Naples, who had great influence in Achaea and Albania and were solidly supported by their allies in the Balkan Peninsula, nearly carried out their project; and in 1274 the opposition of Charles of Anjou came near to compromising the operations of the council of Lyons and ruining the work of Gregory X. The papacy, however, held its ground, and Nicholas III., the worthy continuer of Gregory, succeeded in preserving the union and triumphing over the Angevin power. The Angevins took their revenge under Martin IV., who was a stanch supporter of the French. Three weeks after his coronation Martin excommunicated the Greek emperor and all his subjects, and allied himself with Charles of Anjou and the Venetians to compass his downfall. In this case, too, the Sicilian Vespers was the rock on which the hopes and pretensions of the sovereign of Naples suffered shipwreck. After Martin's death the last popes of the 13th century, and notably Boniface VIII., in vain thought to find in another Capetian, Charles of Valois, the man who was to re-establish the Latin dominion at Byzantium. But the East was lost; the union of 1274 was quickly dissolved; and the reconciliation of the two Churches again entered into the category of chimeras.
During this period the papal institution, considered in its internal development, already showed symptoms of decadence. The diminution of religious faith and sacerdotal prestige shook it to its very foundations. The growth of the lay spirit continued to manifest itself among the burgesses of the towns as well as among the feudal Decay of the Papacy. princes and sovereigns. The social factors of communism and nationalism, against which Innocent III. and his successors had struggled, became more powerful and more hostile to theocratic domination. That a sovereign like St Louis should be able to associate himself officially with the feudalism of his realm to repress abuses of church jurisdiction; that a contemporary of Philip the Fair, the lawyer Pierre Dubois, should dare to suggest the secularization of ecclesiastical property and the conversion of the clergy into a class of functionaries paid out of the royal treasury; and that Philip the Fair, the adversary of Boniface VIII., should be able to rely in his conflict with the leader of the Church on the popular consent obtained at a meeting of the Three Estates of France—all point to a singular demoralization of the sentiments and principles on which were based the whole power of the pontiff of Rome and the entire organization of medieval Catholicism. Both by its attitude and by its governmental acts, the papacy of the later 13th century itself contributed to increase the discredit and disaffection from which it suffered. Under Urban IV. and his successors the great moral and religious sovereignty of former times became a purely bureaucratic monarchy, in which the main preoccupation of the governors appeared to be the financial exploitation of Christendom. In the registers of these popes, which are now being actively investigated and published, dispensations (licences to violate the laws of the Church); indulgences; imposts levied with increasing regularity on universal Christendom and, in particular, on the clerks; the ​ settlement of questions relating to church debts; the granting of lucrative benefices to Roman functionaries; the divers processes by which the Curia acquired the immediate disposal of monastic, capitulary and episcopal revenues—in short, all financial matters are of the first importance. It was in the 14th century more especially that the Apostolic Chamber spread the net of its fiscal administration wider and wider over Christian Europe; but at the close of the 13th century all the preliminary measures had been taken to procure for the papal treasury its enormous and permanent resources. The continued efforts of the popes to drain Christian gold to Rome were limited only by the fiscal pretensions of the lay sovereigns, and it was this financial rivalry that gave rise to the inevitable conflict between Boniface VIII. and Philip the Fair.
By thus devoting itself to material interests, the papacy contemporary with the last Capetians lost its moral greatness and fell in the opinion of the peoples; and it did itself no less injury by the abnormal extension of the bounds of its absolutism. By its exaggerated methods of centralization the papal monarchy had absorbed Abuse of the Papal Power. within itself all the living forces of the religious world and suppressed all the liberties in which the Church of old had lived. The subjection of the secular clergy was complete, while the episcopate retained no shadow of its independence. The decree of Clement IV. (1266), empowering the papacy to dispose of all vacant bishoprics at the court of Rome, merely sanctioned a usage that had long been established. But the control exercised by the Roman Curia over the episcopate had been realized by many other means. It was seldom that an episcopal election took, place without a division in the chapter, in which resided the electoral right. In such an event, the competitors appealed to the Holy See and abdicated their right, either voluntarily or under coercion, in manibus papae, while the pope took possession of the vacant see. Nominations directly made by the court of Rome, especially in the case of dioceses long vacant, became increasingly numerous. The principle of election by canons was repeatedly violated, and threatened to disappear; and at the end of the 13th century the spectacle was common of prelates, whether nominated or confirmed by the pope, entitling themselves “bishops by the grace of the Holy See.” The custom in force required bishops established by papal authority to take an oath of fidelity to the pope and the Roman Church, and this oath bound them in a particular fashion to the Curia. Those bishops, however, who had been elected under normal conditions, conformably to the old law, were deprived of the essential parts of their legitimate authority. They lost, for example, their jurisdiction, which they were seldom able to exercise in their own names, but in almost every case as commissaries delegated by the apostolic authority.
The regular clergy, who were almost wholly sheltered from the power of the diocesan bishops, found themselves, even more than the secular priesthood, in a state of complete dependence on the Curia. The papacy of this period continually intervened in the internal affairs of the monasteries. Not only did the monks continue to seek from the papacy the confirmation of their privileges and property, but they also referred almost all their disputes to the arbitration of the pope. Their elections gave rise to innumerable lawsuits, which all terminated at the court of Rome, and in most cases it was the pope himself who designated the monks to fill vacant posts in the abbeys. Thus the pope became the great ecclesiastical elector as well as the universal judge and supreme legislator. On this extreme concentration of the Christian power was employed throughout Europe an army of official agents or officious adherents of the Holy See, who were animated by an irrepressible zeal for the aggrandizement of the papacy. These officials originally consisted of an obedient and devoted militia of mendicant friars, both Franciscans and Dominicans, who took their orders from Rome alone, and whose efforts the papacy stimulated by lavishing exemptions, privileges, and full sacerdotal powers. Subsequently they were represented by the apostolic notaries, who were charged to exercise throughout Christendom the gracious jurisdiction of the leaders of the Church and to preside over the most important acts in the private lives of the faithful. These tools of Rome, both clerks and laymen, continued to increase in every diocese. They were not invested with their office until they had been examined by a papal chaplain, or sometimes even by the vice-chancellor of the Curia.
The sovereign direction of this enormous monarchy belonged to the pope alone, who was assisted in important affairs by the advice and collaboration of the College of Cardinals, who had become the sole electors to the papacy. Towards the close of the 13th century the necessity arose for an express ruling on the question of the exercise of this electoral right. In 1274 Gregory X., completing the measures taken by Alexander III. in the 12th century, promulgated the celebrated constitution by which the cardinal-electors were shut up in conclave and, in the event of their not having designated the new pope within three days, were constrained to perform their duty by a progressive reduction of their food-allowance (see Conclave). But at the head of this vast body there existed a constant tendency which was opposed to the absorption of all the power by a single and unbridled will. In the last years of this period fresh signs appeared of a reaction that emanated from the Sacred College itself. The cardinal-electors endeavoured to derive from their electoral power a right of control over the acts of the pope elect. In 1294, and again in 1303, they laid themselves under an obligation, previously to the election, to subscribe to the political engagements which each promised rigorously to observe in the event of his becoming pope. In general, these engagements bore upon the limitation of the number of cardinals, the prohibition to nominate new ones without previous notification to the Sacred College, the sharing between the cardinals and the pope of certain revenues specified by a bull of Nicholas IV., and the obligatory consultation of the consistories for the principal acts of the temporal and spiritual government. It is conceivable that a pope of Boniface VIII.’s temperament would not submit kindly to any restriction of the discretionary power with which he was invested by tradition, and he endeavoured to make the cardinals dependent on him and even to dispense with their services as far as possible, only assembling them in consistory in cases of extreme necessity. This tendency of the Sacred College to convert the Roman Church into a constitutional monarchy, in which it should itself play the part of parliament, was a sufficiently grave symptom of the progress of the new spirit. But throughout the ecclesiastical society traditional bonds were loosened and anarchy was rife, and this at the very moment when the enemies of the priesthood and its leaders redoubled their attack. In fine, the decadence of the papal institution manifested itself in an irremediable manner when it had accomplished no more than the half of its task. The growth of national kingdoms, the anti-clerical tendencies of the emancipated middle classes, the competition of lay imperialisms, and all the other elements of resistance which had been encountered by the papacy in its progress and had at first tended only to shackle it, now presented an insurmountable barrier. The papacy was weakened by its contest with these adverse elements, and it was through its failure to triumph over them that its dream of European dominion, both temporal and spiritual, entered but very incompletely into the field of realities. (A. Lu.)
III.—Period from 1305 to 1590.
The accession of the Gascon Clement V. in 1305 marks the beginning of a new era in the history of the papacy; for this pope, formerly archbishop of Bordeaux, remained in France, without once crossing the threshold of the Eternal City. Clement’s motive for this resolution was his fear that the independence of theClement V. 1305–1314. Settlement at Avignon. ecclesiastical government might be endangered among the frightful dissensions and party conflicts by which Italy was then convulsed; while at the same time he yielded to the pressure ​ exercised on him by the French king Philip the Fair. In March 1309, Clement V. transferred his residence to Avignon, a town which at that time belonged to the king of Naples, but was surrounded by the countship of Venaissin, which as early as 1228 had passed into the possession of the Roman See. Clement V. remained at Avignon till the day of his death, so that with him begins the so-called Babylonian Exile of the popes. Through this, and his excessive subservience to Philip the Fair, his reign proved the reverse of salutary to the Church. The pope’s subservience was above all conspicuous in his attitude towards the proceedings brought against the order of the Temple, which was dissolved by the council of Vienne (see Templars). His possession of Ferrara involved Clement in a violent struggle with the republic of Venice, in which he was ultimately victorious.
His successor John XXII. a native of Cahors, was elected as the result of very stormy negotiations, after a two years’ vacancy of the see (1316). Like his predecessor he fixed his permanent residence at Avignon, where he had formerly been bishop. But while Clement V. had contented himself with the hospitality of the Dominican John XXII. 1316–1334. Character of the Avignon Papacy. monastery at Avignon, John XXII. installed himself with great state in the episcopal palace, hard by the cathedral. The essential features of this new epoch in the history of the papacy, beginning with the two popes mentioned, are intimately connected with this lasting separation from the traditional seat of the papacy, and from Italian soil in general: a separation which reduced the head of the Church to a fatal dependence on the French kings. Themselves Frenchmen, and surrounded by a College of Cardinals in which the French element predominated, the popes gave to their ecclesiastical administration a certain French character, till they stood in more and more danger of serving purely national interests, in cases where the obligations of their office demanded complete impartiality. And thus the prestige of the papacy was sensibly diminished by the view, to which the jealousy of the nations soon gave currency, that the supreme dignity of the Church was simply a convenient tool for French statecraft. The accusation might not always be supported by facts, but it tended to shake popular confidence in the head of the universal Church, and to inspire other countries with the feeling of a national opposition to an ecclesiastical regime now entirely Gallicized. The consequent loosening of the ties between the individual provinces of the Church and the Apostolic See, combined with the capricious policy of the court at Avignon, which often regarded nothing but personal and family interests, accelerated the decay of the ecclesiastical organism, and justified the most dismal forebodings for the future. To crown all, the feud between Church and Empire broke out again with unprecedented violence. The most prominent leaders of the opposition to the papacy, whether ecclesiastical or political, joined forces with the German king, Louis of Bavaria, and offered him their aid against John XXII. The clerical opposition was led by the very popular and influential Minorites who were at that time Opposition to the Papacy. engaged in a remarkably bitter controversy with the pope as to the practical interpretation of the idea of evangelical poverty. Their influence can be clearly traced in the appeal to a general council, issued by Louis in 1324 at Sachsenhausen near Frankfort-on-the-Main. This document, which confused the political problem with the theological, was bound to envenom the quarrel between emperor and pope beyond all remedy. Side by side with the Minorites, the spokesmen of the specifically political opposition to the papacy were the Parisian professors, Marsilius of Padua and John of Jandun, the composers of the “Defender of the Peace” (defensor pacis). In conjunction with the Minorites and the Ghibellines of Italy, Marsilius succeeded in enticing Louis to the fateful expedition to Rome and the revolutionary actions of 1328. The conferring of the imperial crown by the Roman populace, the deposition of the pope by the same body, and the election of an anti-pope in the person of the Minorite Pietro da Corvara, translated into acts the doctrines of the defensor pacis. The struggle, which still further aggravated the dependence of the pope on France, was waged on both sides with the utmost bitterness, and the end was not in sight when John XXII. died, full of years, on the 4th of December 1334.
Even the following pope, Benedict XII., a man of the strictest morality, failed, in spite of his mild and pacific disposition, to adjust the conflict with Louis of Bavaria and the eccentric Fraticelli. King Philip VI. and the cardinals of the French party worked energetically against the projected peace with Louis; and Benedict was Benedict XII. 1334–1342. not endowed with sufficient strength of will to carry through his designs in the teeth of their opposition. He failed, equally, to stifle the first beginnings of the war between France and England; but it is at least to his honour that he exerted his whole influence in the cause of peace.
His efforts in the direction of reform, moreover, deserve recognition. In Avignon he began to erect himself a suitable residence, which, with considerable additions by later popes, developed into the celebrated papal castle of Avignon. This enormous edifice, founded on the cathedral rock, is an extraordinary mixture of castle and convent, palace and fortress. It was Benedict XII. also who elevated the doctrine of the beatific vision of the saints into a dogma.
Benedict XII. was again succeeded, in 1342, by a Frenchman from the south, Pierre Roger de Beaufort, who was born in the castle of Maumont, in the diocese of Limoges. He assumed the title of Clement VI. In contrast with his peace-loving predecessor, and in accordance with his own more energetic character, he pursued with decision Clement VI. 1342–1352. and success the traditions of John XXII. in his dealings with Louis of Bavaria. With great dexterity he turned the feud between the houses of Luxemburg and Wittelsbach to the destruction of Louis; and the death-struggle between the two seemed about to break out, when Louis met his untimely end. To all appearances the victory of the papacy was decisive: but it was a Pyrrhic victory, as events were quickly to prove. In Rome there ensued, during the pontificate of Clement, the revolutions of the visionary Cola di Rienzo (q.v.) who restored the old republic, though not for long. By his purchase of Avignon, and the creation of numerous French cardinals, the pope consolidated the close connexion of the Roman Church with France: but the interests of that Church suffered severely through the riches and patronage which Clement lavished on his relatives, and through the princely luxury of his court. His generosity—which degenerated into prodigality—compelled him to open fresh sources of revenue; and in this he succeeded, though not without serious detriment to the interests of the Church.
It was fortunate for the Church that Clement VI. was followed by a man of an entirely different temperament—Innocent VI. This strict and upright pope appears to have taken Benedict XII. for his example. He undertook, though not with complete success, a reformation of ecclesiastical abuses; and it was he who assisted in restoring the Innocent VI. 1352–1362. Empire at last to some measure of stability. But the culminating glory of his reign was the restoration of the almost ruined papal dominion in Italy, by means of the highly-gifted Cardinal Albornoz. The restoration of the Apostolic See to its original and proper seat was now possible; and the need for such a step was the more pressing, since residence in the castle at Avignon had become extremely precarious, owing to the ever-increasing confusion of French affairs. Innocent VI., in fact, entertained the thought of visiting Rome; but age and illness prevented his doing so.
The intention of Innocent was put into execution by his successor—the learned and pious Urban V. Two events of the first magnitude make his reign one of the most memorable in the century. The first of these was the return to Rome. This was an object which the emperor Charles IV. had prosecuted with all his energies; whichUrban V. 1362–1370. alone could revive the languishing reputation of the papacy. ​ by withdrawing it from the turmoils of the Anglo-French War, and bring within the bounds of possibility the much-needed reformation in ecclesiastical affairs. In 1367 it became an accomplished fact. Turning a deaf ear to the remonstrances of the French king and the French cardinals, the pope quitted Avignon on the 13th of April 1367; and on the 16th of October he entered Rome, now completely fallen to ruin. The ensuing year, after his returnTemporary Return to Rome. to the Eternal City, witnessed the second great landmark in the reign of Urban V.—the Roman expedition of Charles IV., and the renewal of amicable relations between the Empire and the Church. Unfortunately, the pope failed to deal satisfactorily with the highly complicated situation in Italy; and the result was that, on the 27th of September 1370, he returned to Avignon, where he died on the following 19th of December.
It was the opinion of Petrarch that, had Urban remained in Rome, he would have been entitled to rank with the most distinguished men of his era; and, if we discount this single act of weakness, he must be classed as one of the noblest and best of popes. Especial credit is due to his struggles against the moral corruptions of the day, though they proved inadequate to eliminate all traces of the prevalent disorders.
Gregory XI., though equally distinguished for his erudition and pure morals, his piety, modesty and wisdom, was fated to pay dearly for the weakness of his predecessor in abandoning Rome so early. He lived to see the national spirit of Italy thoroughly aroused against a papacy turned French. The disastrous error of almost exclusively Gregory XI., 1370–1378. appointing Provençals, foreigners ignorant of both the country and the people, to the government of the Papal States, now found a terrible Nemesis: and there came a national upheaval, such as Italy had not yet witnessed. The feud between Italian and Frenchman broke out in a violent form; and it was in vain that St Catherine of Siena proffered her mediation in the bloody strife betwixt the pope and the Florentine republic. The letters that she addressed to the pontiff, on this and other occasions, are documents, which are, perhaps, unique in their kind, and of great literary beauty. It was also St Catherine who prevailed on Gregory XI. to return to Definite Return to Rome. Rome. On the 13th of September 1376 he left Avignon; on the 17th of January 1377 he made his entry into the city of St Peter. Thus ended the exile in France; but it left an evil legacy in the schism under Gregory’s successor. Gregory, the last pope whom France has given to the Church, died on the 27th of March 1378, after taking measures to ensure a speedy and unanimous election for his successor.
The conclave, which took place in Rome, for the first time for 75 years, resulted in the election of Bartolomeo Prignano (April 8, 1378), who took the name of Pope Urban VI. Canonically the election was perfectly valid; so that the only popes, to be regarded as legitimate, are the successors of Urban, It is true that his election was immediately Urban VI., 1378–1389. impugned by the cardinals on frivolous grounds; but the responsibility for this rests, partially at least, with the pope himself, whose reckless and inconsiderate zeal for reform was bound to excite a revolution among the worldly cardinals still yearning for the fleshpots of Avignon. This revolution could already be foreseen with tolerable certainty, when Urban embroiled himself even with his political friends—the queen of Naples and her husband, Duke Otto of Brunswick. Similarly, he quarrelled with Count Onorato Gaetano of Fondi. The cardinals, excited to the highest pitch of irritation, now knew where they could look for support. Thirteen of them assembled at Anagni, and thence, on the 9th of August, issued a passionate manifesto, announcing the invalidity of Urban’s election, on Election of Anti-pope Clement VII. the ground that it had been forced upon the conclave by the Roman populace. As soon as the rebellious cardinals were further assured of the protection of the French king, Charles V., they elected, with the tacit consent of the three Italian cardinals, Robert of Geneva as anti-pope (Fondi, Sept. 20). Robert assumed the style of Clement VII; and thus Christendom was brought face to face with the worst misfortune conceivable—the Great Schism (1378–1417).
The chief responsibility for this rests with the worldly College of Cardinals, who were longing to return to France, and thence drew their inspiration. This college was a creation of the Avignon period; which must therefore, in the last resort, be considered responsible for this appalling calamity. Severe censure, moreover, The Great Schism. attaches to Charles V., of France. There may be room for dispute, as to the extent to which the king’s share in the schism was due to the instigation of the revolted cardinals; there can be not the slightest doubt that his attitude was the decisive factor in perpetuating and widening the breach. The anti-pope was recognized not only by Charles of France, but by the princes of the Empire dependent on him, by Scotland and Savoy, and finally by the Spanish dominions and Portugal. On the other hand, the emperor Charles IV. and his son Wenceslaus, the greater part of the Empire, England, Hungary, Poland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, together, with the majority of the Italian states—Naples excepted—remained loyal to the pope. Urban, in fact—who meanwhile had created a new College of Cardinals with members of different nationalities—enjoyed one great advantage; his rival failed to hold his own in Italy, with which country the actual decision virtually lay. Unfortunately, in the time that followed, Urban was guilty of the grossest errors, pursuing his personal interests, and sacrificing, all too soon, that universal point of view which ought to have governed his policy. The struggle against his powerful neighbour on the frontier. Queen Joanna of Naples, rapidly became his one guiding motive; and thus he was led into a perfect labyrinth of blunders. He excommunicated the queen as a stiff-necked adherent of the French anti-pope, and in 1381 conferred Naples on the ambitious Charles of Durazzo, with whom he was soon inextricably embroiled; while, a little later, he fell out with his new College of Cardinals. On the 15th of October 1389, he died, with few to lament him.
After the death of Urban VI., fourteen cardinals of his obedience assembled, and after long negotiations elected the scion of a noble Neapolitan family, Cardinal Pietro Tomacelli (Nov. 2, 1389). The title which he took was that of Boniface IX. The new pope—a man of high moral character, great sagacity, eloquence, and of a Boniface IX., 1389–1404. kindly disposition—at once instituted an entirely different policy from that pursued by his predecessor. This was especially the case in his treatment of Naples. In May 1390 Ladislaus, the son of Charles of Durazzo, who had been assassinated in the February of 1386, received the royal crown at the hands of a papal legate. To his cause Boniface IX. closely attached himself; and his support of the king against the Angevins cost him enormous sums, without which Ladislaus could not have secured his victory over the French claimant. By these means, the schism was averted from Italy, and Naples won for the Roman obedience. The situation in the papal state, which Boniface found in the greatest confusion, was at the outset far more difficult to deal with. But here also he attained in time a considerable measure of success, although the methods employed were scarcely above criticism. His greatest success, however, was gained in the Eternal City itself; for he contrived, after many vicissitudes, to induce the Romans to annul their republican constitution and acknowledge the papal supremacy, even in municipal matters.
To give this supremacy a firmer basis, Boniface fortified the Vatican and the Capitol, and restored the castle of St Angelo—which had previously been used as a quarry—providing it with walls and battlements, and erecting a tower in the centre. This castle, indeed, yielded a safe shelter to the pope in January 1400, when the Colonnas made their attempt to surprise Rome. However, the adventure failed; and by the aid of Ladislaus, the castles of the Colonnas in the vicinity of Rome were destroyed. In 1401 this powerful family made its submission, accepting the favourable terms which the pope had had the good sense to ​ offer. Henceforward quiet prevailed, and Boniface ruled as a stern master in Rome. But he was soon confronted with an extremely dangerous enemy, in the person of Duke Gian Galeazzo Visconti of Milan, who was aiming at the sovereignty of all Italy. In July 1402 he made himself master of Bologna; and his death in September of the same year was a stroke of good fortune for the pope. Bologna was now recovered for the Church (Sept. 2, 1403), and soon afterwards Perugia also surrendered.
Thus Boniface IX., as a secular prince, occupies an important position; but as pope his activity must be unfavourably judged. Even if Dietrich of Niem frequently painted him too black, there is no question that the means which Boniface employed to fill the papal treasury seriously impaired the prestige of the highest spiritual office and the reverence due to it. His nepotism, again, casts a dark shadow over his memory: but most regrettable of all was his indifference towards the ending of the schism. Yet it should be borne in mind, that, when Clement VII. died suddenly on the 16th of September 1394, and the Avignon cardinals immediately elected the Spaniard Pedro de Luna as anti-pope (under the title of Benedict XIII.), Boniface IX. was left face to face with an extraordinarily skilful, adroit, and unscrupulous antagonist.
On the death of Boniface (Oct. 1, 1404), the Roman cardinals once more elected a Neapolitan, Cosimo dei Migliorati, who, at the age of 65, assumed the name of Innocent VII. Innocent, who was animated by a great love for the sciences and all the arts of peace, enjoyed only a brief pontificate, but his reign is not without importance, if only Innocent VII., 1404–1406. as an example of the generous patronage which the papacy—even in its darkest days—has lavished on literature and science. Significant also is the foothold gained at this time in the Curia itself by the humanists—Poggio, Bruni and others. The appointment of these skilled humanist writers to the Chancery was a consequence of the difficult conditions of the time. The crisis which the Catholic Church underwent, during this terrible epoch, was the greatest in all her history: for while everything was thrown into the utmost confusion by the life and death struggles of the rival popes, while the ecclesiastical revenues and emoluments were used almost exclusively for the reward of partisan service, while everywhere the worldliness of the clergy had reached its highest pitch, heretical movements, by which the whole order of the Church was threatened with overthrow, were gaining strength in England, France, Italy, Germany and especially in Bohemia.
The crisis came to a head in the pontificate of Gregory XII. This pope, so distinguished in many respects, owed his election mainly to the circumstance that he was considered a zealous champion of the restoration of unity within the Church: and he displayed, in fact, during the earlier portion of his reign, an exalted enthusiasm for this great Gregory XII. 1406–1415. task. Later his attitude changed; and the protracted negotiations for a conference with Benedict XIII. remained fruitless. The result of this change in the attitude of Gregory was the formation of a strong malcontent party in the College of Cardinals; to counteract whose influence, the pope—faithless to the conditions attached to his election—resorted to the plan of creating new members. Stormy discussions at Lucca followed; but they failed to prevent Gregory from nominating four fresh cardinals (May 9, 1408). The sequel was that seven of the cardinals attached to Gregory’s Roman Curia withdrew to Pisa.
At the same period, the relations of Benedict XIII. with France suffered a significant modification. In that country, it became more and more manifest that Benedict had no genuine desire to heal the schism in the Church, in spite of the ardent zeal for union which he had displayed immediately before and after his election. Benedict XIII. and France. In May 1408 France withdrew from his obedience; and it was not long before French policy succeeded in effecting a reconciliation and understanding between the cardinals of Benedict XIII. and those who had seceded from Gregory XII. Precisely as if the Holy See were vacant the cardinals began to act as the actual rulers of the Church, and issued formal invitations to a council to be opened at Pisa on the Feast of the Annunciation (March 25) 1409. Both popes attempted to foil the disaffected cardinals by convening councils of their own; Council of Pisa.but their efforts were doomed to failure.
On the other hand, the council of the cardinals—though, by the strict rules of canonical law, its convocation was absolutely illegal—attained the utmost importance. But these rules, and, in fact, the whole Catholic doctrine of the primacy were almost entirely obscured by the schism. Scholars like Langenstein, Gerson and Zabarella, evolved a new theory as to ecumenical councils, which from the point of view of Roman Catholic principles must be described as revolutionary. At the synod of the dissident cardinals, assembled at Pisa, views of this type were in the ascendant; and, although protests were not lacking, the necessities of the time served as a pretext for ignoring all objections.
That the council was merely a tool in the hands of the ambitious and adroit Baldassare Cossa, was a fact unsuspected by its members who were animated by a fiery enthusiasm for the re-establishment of ecclesiastical unity; nor did they pause to reflect that an action against both popes could not possibly be lawful. Since whole universities and numerous scholars had pronounced in favour of the new theories, the Pisan synod dismissed all canonical scruples, and unhesitatingly laid claim to authority over both popes, one of whom was necessarily the legitimate pope. It was in vain that Carlo di Malatesta, a stanch adherent of Gregory, sought at the eleventh hour to negotiate a compromise between Gregory and the synod. It was in vain that this cultured prince, imbued with the principles of humanism, represented to the cardinals that this new path would lead quickly to the goal, but that this goal could not be unity but a triple schism. The council declared that it was canonically convened, ecumenical, and representative of the whole Catholic Church; then proceeded immediately to the trial and deposition of Benedict XIII. and Gregory XII. The synod grounded its procedure against the rival popes on a fact, ostensibly patent to all, but actually believed by none—that they were both supporters of the schism, and not merely this, but heretics in the truest and fullest sense of the word, since their attitude had impugned and subverted the article of faith concerning the one Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. On the ground of this extremely dubious declaration, designed to compensate for the absence of any authentic and firm foundation in ecclesiastical law, the Pisan assembly on the 5th of June announced the deposition of Gregory XII. and Benedict XIII.,Alexander V., 1409–1410. as manifest heretics and partisans of the schism. The next step was to elect a new pope; and on the 26th of June 1409 the choice fell on the venerable cardinal-archbishop of Milan, the Greek Petros Filargis, who assumed the title of Alexander V.
The premature and futile character of these drastic and violent proceedings at Pisa was only too speedily evident. The powerful following which Gregory enjoyed in Italy and Germany, and Benedict in Spain and Scotland, ought to have shown from the very first that a simple decree of deposition could never suffice to overthrow the two popes. Thus, as the sentence of Pisa found recognition in France and England, as well as in many parts of Germany and Italy, the synod, which was to secure the restoration of unity, proved only the cause for worse confusion—instead of two, there were now three popes.
Alexander V., the pope of the council, died on the 3rd of May 1410. The cardinals at once elected his successor—Baldassare Cossa, who took the name of John XXIII. Of all the consequences of the disastrous Pisan council, the election of this man was the most unfortunate. True, it cannot be demonstrated that all the fearful accusations John XXIII., 1410–1415. afterwards levelled at John XXIII. were based on fact: but it is certain that this cunning politician was so far infected with ​ the corruption of his age that he was not in the least degree fitted to fulfil the requirements of the supreme ecclesiastical dignity. From him the welfare of the Church had nothing to hope. All eyes were consequently turned to the energetic German king, Sigismund, who was inspired by the best motives,Council of Constance. and who succeeded in surmounting the formidable obstacles which barred the way to an ecumenical council. It was mainly due to Sigismund’s indefatigable and magnificent activity, that the council of Constance met and was so numerously attended. It is remarkable how fortune seemed to assist his efforts. The capture of Rome by King Ladislaus of Naples had compelled John XXIII. to take refuge in Florence (June 1413), where that dangerous guest received a not very friendly welcome. Since John’s most immediate need was now protection and assistance against his terrible opponent Ladislaus, he sent, towards the close of August 1413, Cardinals Chalant and Francesco Zabarella, together with the celebrated Greek Manuel Chrysoloras, to King Sigismund, and commissioned them to determine the time and place of the forthcoming council. The agreement was soon concluded. On the 9th of December John XXIII. signed the bull convening the council at Constance, and pledged his word to appear there in person. He might have hoped that his share in convening the synod would give him a certain right to regulate its proceedings, and that, by the aid of his numerous Italian prelates, he would be able to influence it more or less according to his views. But in this he was greatly deceived. So soon as he realized the true position of affairs he attempted to break up the council by his flight to Schaffhausen (March 20–21, 1415)—a project in which he would doubtless have succeeded but for the sagacity and energy of Sigismund.
In spite of everything, the excitement in Constance was unbounded. In the midst of the confusion, which reigned supreme in the council, the upper hand was gained by that party which held that the only method by which the schism could be ended and a reformation of ecclesiastical discipline ensured was a drastic limitation of the papal privileges. The limitation was to be effected by the general council: consequently, the pope must be brought under the jurisdiction of that council, and—in the opinion of many—remain under its jurisdiction for all time. Thus, in the third, fourth and fifth general sessions it was enacted, with characteristic precipitation, that an ecumenical council could not be dissolved or set aside by the pope, without its consent: the corollary to which was, that the present council, notwithstanding the flight of John XXIII., continued to exist in the full possession of its powers, and that, in matters pertaining to belief and the eradication of schism, all men—even the pope—were bound to obey the general council, whose authority extended over all Christians, including the pope himself.
By these decrees—which created as the supreme authority within the Church a power which had not been appointed as such by Christ—the members of the council of Constance sought to give their position a theoretical basis before proceeding to independent action against the pope. But these declarations as to the superiority of an ecumenical council never attained legal validity, in spite of their defence by Pierre d’Ailly and Gerson. Emanating from an assembly without a head, which could not possibly be an ecumenical council without the assent of one of the popes (of whom one was necessarily the legitimate pope)—enacted, in opposition to the cardinals, by a majority of persons for the most part unqualified, and in a fashion which Deposition of John XXIII. was thus distinctly different from that of the old councils—they can only be regarded as a coup de main, a last resort in the universal confusion. On the 29th of May the council deposed John XXIII.
The legitimate pope, Gregory XII., now consented to resign, but under strict reservation of the legality of his pontificate. By consenting to this, the synod indirectly acknowledged that its previous sessions had not possessed an ecumenical character, and also that Gregory’s predecessors, up to Urban VI., had been legitimate popes. In presence Resignation of Gregory XII. of the council, reconstituted by Gregory, Malatesta announced the resignation of the latter; and the grateful assembly appointed Gregory legatus a latere to the marches of Ancona—a dignity which he was not destined to enjoy for long, as he died on the 18th of October 1417. (See Constance, Council of.)
From the abdication of Gregory XII. to the election of Martin V., the Apostolic See was vacant; and the council, newly convened and authorized by the legitimate pope before his resignation, conducted the government of the Church. After the condemnation and burning of John Huss (q.v.), the reformation of the Church, both in its Vacancy of the Holy See. head and members, claimed the main attention of the fathers of the council. Among the many difficulties which beset the question, not the least obvious was the length of time during which the Church must remain without a ruler, if—as Sigismund and the German nation demanded—the papal election were deferred till the completion of the internal reforms. The result was decided by the policy of the cardinals, who since May 1417 had openly devoted their whole energies to the acceleration of that election; and union was preserved by means of a compromise arranged by Bishop Henry of Winchester, the uncle of the English king. The terms of the agreement were that a synodal decree should give an absolute assurance that the work of reformation would be taken in hand immediately after the election; reforms, on which all the nations were already united, were to be published before the election; and the mode of the papal election itself was to be determined by deputies. When the last-named condition had been fulfilled on the 28th of October the conclave began, on the 8th of November 1417, in the Kaufhaus of Constance; and, no later than St Martin’s day, the cardinal-deacon Oddo Colonna was elected Pope Martin V.
With the accession of Martin V. unity was at last restored to the Church, and contemporary Christendom gave way to transports of joy. Any secular power—a bitter opponent of the papacy admits—would have succumbed in the schism: but so wonderful was the organization of the spiritual empire, and so indestructible the conception Martin V., 1417–1431. of the papacy itself, that this (the deepest of all cleavages) served only to prove its indivisibility (Gregorovius, Geschichte Roms vi.). Martin V. appeared to possess every quality which could enable him to represent the universal Church with strength and dignity. In order to maintain his independence, he energetically repudiated all proposals that he should establish his residence in France or Germany, and once more took up his abode in Rome. On the 30th of September 1420 he made his entry into the almost completely ruinous town. To repair the ravages of neglect, and, more especially, to restore the decayed churches, Martin at once expended large sums; while, later, he engaged famous artists, like Gentile da Fabriano and Masaccio, and encouraged all forms of art by every means within his power. Numerous humanists were appointed to the Chancery, and the Romans were loud in their praise of the papal régime. But he was not content with laying the foundations for the renovation of the Eternal City: he was the architect who rebuilt the papal monarchy, which the schism had reduced to the verge of dissolution. To this difficult problem he brought remarkable skill and aptness, energy and ability. His temporal sovereignty he attempted to strengthen through his family connexions, and magnificent provision in general was made for the members of his house.
Nor was the activity of Martin V. less successful in political than in ecclesiastical reform, which latter included the combating of the Fraticelli, the amendment of the clergy, the encouragement of piety by the regulation of feast-days, the recommendation of increased devotion to the sacrament of the altar, and the strengthening of the conception of the Church ​ by the great jubilee of 1423. At the same time the crowning reward of his labours was the effacing of the last traces of the schism. He prosecuted successfully the conflict with the adherents of Benedict XIII., who, till the day of his death clung to the remnants of his usurped authority (see Benedict XIII.). An attempt on the part of Alphonso V. of Aragon to renew the schism failed; and, in 1429, the Spaniard was compelled to give up his anti-pope, Clement VIII. Count John of Armagnac, whom Martin had excommunicated as a protector of schismatics, was also driven to make submission. Martin rendered the greatest service by his admission of a whole series of distinguished men into the College of Cardinals; but he was less fortunate in his struggles against Hussitism. His death took place on the 20th of February 1431, and the inscription on his grave—still preserved in the Lateran church—styles him “the felicity of his age” (temporum suorum felicitas).
The Colonna pope was followed by the strict, moral and pious Gabriel Condulmaro, under the title of Eugenius IV. His pontificate was not altogether happy. At the very first, his violent and premature measures against the Colonna family, which had received such unbounded favour from his predecessor, embroiled him in a Eugenius IV. 1431–1447 and the Council of Basel. sanguinary feud. Far worse, however, were the conflicts which Eugenius had to support against the Council of Basel—already dissolved on the 18th of December 1431. At the beginning, indeed, a reconciliation between the pope and council was effected by Sigismund who, on the 31st of May 1433, was crowned emperor at Rome. But, as early as the 29th of May 1434 a revolution broke out in Rome, which, on the 4th of June, drove the pope in flight to Florence; where he was obliged to remain, while Giovanni Vitelleschi restored order in the papal state.
The migration of Eugenius IV. to Florence was of extreme importance; for this town was the real home of the new art, and the intellectual focus of all the humanistic movements in Italy. At Florence the pope came into closer contact with the humanists, and to this circumstance is due the gradual dominance which they attained in the Roman Curia—a dominance which, both in itself, and even more because of the frankly pagan leanings of many in that party, was bound to awaken serious misgivings.
The Italian troubles, which had entailed the exile of Eugenius IV., were still insignificant in comparison with those conjured up by the fanatics of the Council in Basel. The decrees enacted by that body made deep inroads on the rights of the Holy See; and the conflict increased in violence. On the 31st of July 1437 the fathers of Basel summoned Eugenius IV. to appear before their tribunal. The pope retorted on the 18th of September by transferring the scene of the council to Ferrara—afterwards to Florence. There, in July 1439, the union with the Greeks was effected: but it remained simply a paper agreement. On the 25th of June 1439 the synod—which had already pronounced sentence of heresy on Eugenius IV., by reason of his obstinate disobedience to the assembly of the Church—formally deposed him; and, on the 5th of November, a rival pontiff was elected in the person of the ambitious Amadeus of Savoy, who now took the title of Felix V. (See Basel, Council of, andFelix V. Anti-pope. Felix V.) Thus the assembly of Christendom at Basel had resulted, not in the reformation of the Church, but in a new schism! This, in fact, was an inevitable sequel to the attempt to overthrow the monarchical constitution of the Church. The anti-pope—the last in the history of the papacy—made no headway, although the council invested him with the power of levying annates to a greater extent than had ever been claimed by the Roman Curia.
The crime of this new schism was soon to be expiated by its perpetrators. The disinclination of sovereigns and peoples to a division, of the disastrous consequences of which the West had only lately had plentiful experiences, was so pronounced that the violent proceeding of the Basel fathers alienated from them the sympathies of nearly all who, till then, had leaned to their side. While the prestige of the schismatics waned, Eugenius IV. gained new friends; and on the 28th of September 1443 his reconciliation with Alphonso of Naples enabled him to return to Rome. In consequence of the absence of the pope, the Eternal City was once more little better than a ruin; and the work of restoration was immediately begun by Eugenius.
During the chaos of the schism, France and Germany had adopted a semi-schismatic attitude: the former by the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (June 7, 1438); the latter by a declaration of neutrality in March 1438. The efforts of Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini brought matters into a channel more favourable to the Holy See; and an understanding with Germany was reached. This consummation was soon followed by the death of Eugenius (Feb. 23, 1447). No apter estimate of his character can be found than the words of Aeneas Silvius himself: “He was a great-hearted man; but his chief error was that he was a stranger to moderation, and regulated his actions, not by his ability, but by his wishes.” From the charge of nepotism he was entirely exempt; and, to the present day, the purity of his life has never been impugned even by the voice of faction. He was a father to the poor and sick, in the highest sense of the word; and he left behind him an enduring monument in his amendment and regeneration, first of the religious orders, then of the clergy. Again, the patronage which he showed to art and artists was of the greatest importance. All that could be done in that cause, during this stormy epoch, was done by Eugenius. It was by his commission that Filarete prepared the still-extant bronzework of St Peter’s, and the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament in the Vatican was painted by Fiesole.
On the death of Eugenius IV. the situation was menacing enough, but, to the surprise and joy of all, Tomaso Parentucelli, cardinal of Bologna, was elected without disturbance, as Pope Nicholas V. With him the Christian Renaissance ascended the papal throne. He was the son of a physician from Sarzana, who was not too well Nicholas V. 1447–1455. endowed with the gifts of fortune; and the boy, with all his talents, could only prosecute his studies at great personal sacrifices. He was possessed of a deep-seated enthusiasm for science and art, of a sincerely pious and idealistic temperament, and of an ardent love for the Church. After his ordination, his great learning and stainless life led him to office after office in the Church, each higher and more influential than the last. Not only did he love the studies of the humanist, but he himself was a Christian humanist. Yet among all his far-reaching plans for the encouragement of art and science, Nicholas V. had always the well-being of the Church primarily in view; and the highest goal of his pontificate, which inaugurated the Maecenatian era of the popedom, was to ennoble that Church by the works of intellect and art. It is astonishing to contemplate how much he achieved, during his brief reign, in the cause of the Renaissance in both art and literature. True, his designs were even greater, but his term of government was too short to allow of their actual execution. A simply gigantic plan was drawn out, with the assistance of the celebrated Alberti, for the reconstruction of the Leonine City, the Vatican and St Peter’s. The rebuilding of the last-named was rendered advisable by the precarious condition of the structure, but stopped short in the early stages. In the Vatican, however, Fiesole completed the noble frescoes, from the lives of St Stephen and St Lawrence, which are still preserved to us. Nicholas, again, lent the protection and encouragement of his powerful arm to science as well as art, till the papal court became a veritable domain of the Muses. He supported all scientific enterprises with unlimited generosity, and the most famous savants of all countries flocked to Rome. Yet it is surprising—and scarcely excusable—that Nicholas, while selecting the men whom he considered necessary for his literary work, passed over much which ought to have aroused grave suspicion in his mind. Thus the active humanistic life, called into existence by the enthusiasm of the pope, was not without its dark side. Quite apart from the fact that ​ Rome became the scene of a chronique scandaleuse among these scholars, there was something unnatural in the predominance of the humanists in the Curia.
The fostering care of the science-loving pope extended also to the field of ecclesiastical literature; and the greatest importance attaches to the energy he developed as a collector of manuscripts and books. His agents travelled as far as Prussia, and even into the East. All this activity served to enrich the Vatican library, the foundation of which is for Nicholas V. an abiding title to fame. In political and ecclesiastical affairs he similarly manifested great vigour; and his extraordinarily pacific disposition did more than anything else towards diminishing the difficulties with which he had to contend on his entry upon office. An agreement was very quickly concluded with King Alphonso of Naples. In the Empire the affairs of the Church were ameliorated—though not so quickly—by the Concordat of Vienna (1448). The Council of Basel was compelled to dissolve, and the anti-pope Felix V. to abdicate: and, though even after the termination of the synod men like Jacob of Jüterbogk (q.v.) were found to champion ecclesiastical parliamentarianism and the more advanced ideas of Basel, they were confronted, on the other hand, by an array of redoubtable controversialists, who entered the lists to defend, both in speech and writing, the privileges of the Apostolic See. Among these, Torquemada, Rodericus Sancius de Arevalo, Capistrano and Piero del Monte were especially active for the restoration of the papacy. Fortunate as Nicholas was in the haute politique of the Church, he was equally so in his efforts to re-establish and maintain peace in Rome and the papal state. In Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, Bosnia and Croatia—even in Cyprus itself—he was zealous for the peace of the Church.
The long-hoped cessation of civil war within the Church had now come, and Nicholas considered that the event could not better be celebrated than by the proclamation of a universal jubilee—an announcement which evoked a thrill of joy in the whole of Christendom. A special point of attraction in this jubilee of 1450 was the canonization Jubilee of 1450. of Bernardino of Siena; and, in spite of the plague which broke out in Rome, the celebrations ran a brilliant course.
It was the wish of the pope that the jubilee should be followed by a revival of religious life in all Christian countries. To put this project into execution, the Church opened her “treasuries of grace,” connected with the jubilee dispensation, for the peculiar benefit of those nations that had suffered most from the turmoils of the last few decades, or were prevented from visiting the Eternal City. Nicholas of Cusa was nominated legate for Germany, and began the work of reformation by travelling through every province in Germany dispensing blessings. It was under Nicholas V. that the last imperial coronation was solemnized at Rome. There is a touch of tragedy in the fact that, in the following year, the pope saw his temporal sovereignty—even his life—threatened by a conspiracy hatched among the adherents of the pseudo-humanism. The prime mover in the plot, Stefano Porcaro, was executed. Nicholas had scarcely recovered from the shock, when news came of the capture of Constantinople by the Turks; and his efforts to unite the Christian powers against the Moslem failed. This darkened the evening of his life, and he died in the night of the 24–25th of March 1455. From the universal standpoint of history the significance of Nicholas’s pontificate lies in the fact that he put himself at the head of the artistic and literary Renaissance. By this means he introduced a new epoch in the history of the papacy and of civilization: Rome, the centre of ecclesiastical life, was now to become the centre of literature and art.
The short reign of the Spaniard, Alphonso de Borgia, as Pope Calixtus III., is almost completely filled by his heroic efforts to arm Christendom for the common defence against Islam. Unfortunately all the warnings and admonitions of the pope fell on deaf ears, though he himself parted with his mitre and plate in order Calixtus III., 1455–1458. to equip a fleet against the Turks. The Mahommedans, indeed, were severely punished at Belgrade (1456), and in the sea-fight of Metelino (1457): but the indolence of the European princes, who failed to push home the victory, rendered the success abortive. Bitterly disillusioned, Calixtus died on the 14th of August 1458. His memory would be stainless but for the deep shadow cast on it by the advancement which he conferred upon his relatives.
When Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini was elected pope as Pius II. the papal throne was ascended by a man whose name was famous as poet, historian, humanist and statesman, and whose far-seeing eye and exact knowledge of affairs seemed peculiarly to fit him for his position. On the other hand, the troubled and not impeccable past of Pius II., 1458–1464. the new pontiff was bound to excite some misgiving; while, at the same time, severe bodily suffering had brought old age on a man of but 53 years. In spite of his infirmity and the brief duration of his reign, Pius II. accomplished much for the restoration of the prestige and authority of the Holy See. His indefatigable activity on behalf of Western civilization, now threatened with extinction by the Ottomans, excites admiration and adds an undying lustre to his memory. If we except the Eastern question, Pius II. was principally exercised by the opposition to papal authority which was gaining ground in Germany and France. In the former country the movement was headed by the worldly archbishop-elector Diether of Mainz; in the latter by Louis XI., who played the autocrat in ecclesiastical matters. In full consciousness of his high-priestly dignity he set his face against these and all similar attempts; and his zeal and firmness in defending the authority and rights of the Holy See against the attacks of the conciliar and national parties within the Church deserve double recognition, in view of the eminently difficult circumstances of that period. Nor did he shrink from excursions in the direction of reform, now become an imperative necessity. His attempt to reunite Bohemia with the Church was destined to failure; but the one great aim of the pope during his whole reign was the organization of a gigantic crusade—a project which showed a correct appreciation of the danger with which the Church and the West in general were menaced by the Crescent. It is profoundly affecting to contemplate this man, a mere wreck from gout, shrinking from no fatigue, no labour, and no personal sacrifices; disregarding the obstacles and difficulties thrown in his way by cardinals and temporal princes, whose fatal infatuation refused to see the peril which hung above them all; recurring time after time, with all his intellect and energy, to the realization of his scheme; and finally adopting the high-hearted resolve of placing himself at the head of the crusade. Tortured by bodily, and still more by mental suffering, the old pope reached Ancona. There he was struck down by fever; and on the 15th of August 1464 death had released him from all his afflictions—a tragic close which has thrown a halo round his memory. In the sphere of art he left an enduring monument in the Renaissance town of Pienza which he built.
The humanist Pius II. was succeeded by a splendour-loving Venetian, Pietro Barbo, the nephew of Eugenius IV., who is known as Pope Paul II. With his accession the situation altered; for he no longer made the Turkish War the centre of his whole activity, as both his immediate predecessors had done. Nevertheless, he was far from Paul II., 1464–1471. indifferent to the Ottoman danger. Paul took energetic measures against the principle of the absolute supremacy of the state as maintained by the Venetians and by Louis XI. of France; while in Bohemia he ordered the deposition of George Podebrad (Dec. 1466). The widely diffused view that this pope was an enemy of science and culture is unfounded. It may be traced back to Platina, who, resenting his arrest, avenged himself by a biographical caricature. What the pope actually sought to combat by his dissolution of the Roman Academy ​ was simply the non-Christian tendency of the Renaissance, standing as it did on a purely pagan basis—“the stench of heathendom,” as Dante described it. In other respects Paul II. encouraged men of learning and the art of printing, and built the magnificent palace of San Marco, in which he established a noble collection of artistic treasures.
The long pontificate of the Franciscan Francesco della Rovere, under the title of Pope Sixtus IV., displays striking contrasts of light and shade; and with him begins the series of the so-called “political popes.” It remains a lamentable fact that Sixtus IV. frequently subordinated the Father of Christendom to the Italian prince, Sixtus IV., 1471–1484 that he passed all bounds in the preferment of his own family, and in many ways deviated into all too worldly courses. The decay of ecclesiastical discipline grew to alarming proportions under Sixtus. During his reign crying abuses continued and grew in spite of certain reforms.
The nepotism in which the pope indulged is especially inexcusable. His feud with Lorenzo de’ Medici culminated in the Pazzi conspiracy, the tragic sequel to which was the assassination of Giuliano de’ Medici (April 26, 1478). That the pope himself was guiltless of any share in that atrocious deed is beyond dispute; but it is deeply to be regretted that his name plays a part in the history of this conspiracy. Sixtus was far from blind to the Turkish peril, but here also he was hampered by the indifference of the secular powers. Again, the close of his reign was marked by the wars against Ferrara and Naples, and subsequently against Venice and the Colonnas; and these drove the question of a crusade completely into the background. In the affairs of the Church he favoured the mendicant orders, and declared against the cruel and unjust proceedings of the Spanish Inquisition. His nominations to the cardinalate were not happy. The College of Cardinals, and the Curia in general, grew more and more infected with worldliness during his pontificate. On the other side, however, the pope did splendid service to art and science, while to men of letters he allowed incredible freedom. The Vatican library was enriched and thrown open for public use, Platina—the historian of the popes—receiving the post of librarian. The city of Rome was transfigured. At the papal order there arose the Ponte Sisto, the hospital of San Spirito, Santa Maria del popolo, Santa Maria della pace, and finally the Sistine Chapel, for the decoration of which the most famous Tuscan and Umbrian artists were summoned to Rome. This fresco-cycle, with its numerous allusions to contemporary history, is still preserved, and forms the noblest monument of the Rovere pope.
The reign of Innocent VIII. is mainly occupied by his troubles with the faithless Ferdinand of Naples. These sprang from his participation in the War of the Barons; but to this the pope was absolutely compelled. Innocent’s bull concerning witchcraft (Dec. 5, 1484) has brought upon him many attacks. But this bull contains no sort of dogmatic Innocent VIII., 1484–1492. decision on the nature of sorcery. The very form of the bull, which merely sums up the various items of information that had reached the pope, is enough to prove that the decree was not intended to bind anyone to belief in such things. Moreover the bull contained no essentially new regulations as to witchcraft. It is absurd to make this document responsible for the introduction of the bloody persecution of witches; for, according to the Sachsenspiegel, the civil law already punished sorcery with death. The action of Innocent VIII. was simply limited to defining the jurisdiction of the inquisitors with regard to magic. The bull merely authorized, in cases of sorcery, the procedure of the canonical inquisition, which was conducted exclusively by spiritual judges and differed entirely from that of the later witch-trials. Even if the bull encouraged the persecution of witches, in so far as it encouraged the inquisitors to take earnest action, there is still no valid ground for the accusation that Innocent VIII. introduced the trial of witches and must bear the responsibility for the terrible misery which was afterwards brought on humanity by that institution.
During the last three decades of the 15th century the Roman Curia, and the College of Cardinals in particular, became increasingly worldly. This explains how on the death of Innocent VIII. (July 25, 1492), simoniacal succeeded in procuring the election of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, a man of the most abandoned morals, Alexander VI., 1492–1503. who did not change his mode of life when he ascended the throne as Pope Alexander VI. The beginning of his reign was not unpromising; but all too soon that nepotism began which attained its height under this Spanish pope, and dominated his whole pontificate. A long series of scandals resulted. The cardinals opposed to Alexander, headed by Giuliano della Rovere, found protection and support with Charles VIII. of France, who laid claim to Naples. In prosecution of this design the king appeared in Italy in the autumn of 1494, pursued his triumphant march through Lombardy and Tuscany, and, on the 31st of December, entered Rome. Charles had the word reform perpetually on his lips; but it could deceive none who were acquainted with the man. At first he threatened Alexander with deposition: but on the 15th of January 1495 an agreement was concluded between pope and king.
While the French were marching on Naples there arose a hostile coalition which compelled them to beat a hasty retreat—the Holy League of March 1495. All their conquests were lost; and the pope now determined to chastise the Orsini family, whose treachery had thrown him into the hands of the French. The project miscarried, and on the 25th of January 1497 the papal forces were defeated.
In June occurred the mysterious assassination of the duke of Gandia, which appeared for a while to mark the turning-point in Alexander’s life. For some time he entertained serious thoughts of reformation; but the matter was first postponed and then forgotten. The last state now became worse than the first, as Alexander fell more and more under the spell of the infamous Cesare Borgia. One scandal followed hard on the other, and opposition naturally sprang up. Unfortunately, Savonarola, the head of that opposition, transgressed all bounds in his well-meant zeal. He refused to yield the pope that obedience to which he was doubly pledged as a priest and the member of an order. Even after his excommunication (May 12, 1497) he continued to exercise the functions of his office, under the shelter of the secular arm. In the end he demanded a council for the deposition of the pope. His fall soon followed, when he had lost all ground in Florence; and his execution on the 23rd of May 1498 freed Alexander from a formidable enemy (see Savonarola). From the Catholic standpoint Savonarola must certainly be condemned: mainly because he completely forgot the doctrine of the Church that the sinful and vicious life of superiors, including the pope, is not competent to abrogate their jurisdiction.
After the death of Charles VIII. Alexander entered into an agreement and alliance with his successor Louis XII. The fruits of this compact were reaped by Cesare Borgia, who resigned his cardinal’s hat, became duke of Valentinois, annihilated the minor nobles of the papal state, and made himself the true dictator of Rome. His soaring plans were destroyed by the death of Alexander VI., who met his end on the 18th of August 1503 by the Roman fever—not by poison.
The only bright pages in the dark chapter of Alexander’s popedom are his efforts on behalf of the Turkish War (1499–1502). his activity for the diffusion of Christianity in America, and his judicial awards (May 3–4, 1493) on the question of the colonial empires of Spain and Portugal, by which he avoided a bloody war. It is folly to speak of a donation of lands which did not belong to the pope, or to maintain that the freedom of the Americans was extinguished by the decision of Alexander VI. The expression “donation” simply referred to what had already been won under just title: the decree contained a deed of gift, but it was an adjustment between the powers concerned and the other European princes, not a parcelling out of the New World and its inhabitants. The monarchs on whom the privilegium was conferred received a right of priority with ​ respect to the provinces first discovered by them. Precisely as to-day inventions are guarded by patents, and literary and artistic creations by the law of copyright, so, at that period, the papal bull and the protection of the Roman Church were an effective means for ensuring that a country should reap where she had sown and should maintain the territory she had discovered and conquered by arduous efforts; while other claimants, with predatory designs, were warned back by the ecclesiastical censorship. In the Vatican the memory of Alexander VI. is still perpetuated by the Appartamenta Borgia, decorated by Pinturicchio with magnificent frescoes, and since restored by Leo XIII.
The short reign of the noble Pius III. (Sept. 22–Oct. 18, 1503) witnessed the violent end of Cesare Borgia’s dominion. As early as the 1st of November Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere was elected by the conclave as Julius II. He was one of those personalities in which everything transcends the ordinary scale. He was Pius III., 1503. Julius II., 1503–1513. endowed with great force of will, indomitable courage, extraordinary acumen, heroic constancy and a discriminating instinct for everything beautiful. A nature formed on great broad lines—a man of spontaneous impulses carrying away others as he himself was carried away, a genuine Latin in the whole of his being—he belongs to those imposing figures of the Italian Renaissance whose character is summarized in contemporary literature by the word terribile, which is best translated “extraordinary” or “magnificent.”
As cardinal Julius II. had been the adversary of Alexander VI., as pope he stood equally in diametrical opposition to his predecessor. The Borgia’s foremost thought had been for his family; Julius devoted his effort to the Church and the papacy. His chief idea was to revive the world-dominion of the popedom, but first to secure the independence and prestige of the Holy See on the basis of a firmly established and independent territorial sovereignty. Thus two problems presented themselves: the restoration of the papal state, which had been reduced to chaos by the Borgias; and the liberation of the Holy See from the onerous dependence on France—in other words, the expulsion of the French “barbarians” from Italy. His solution of the first problem entitles Julius II. to rank with Innocent III. and Cardinal Albornoz as the third founder of the papal state. His active prosecution of the second task made the Rovere pope, in the eyes of Italian patriots, the hero of the century. At the beginning of the struggle Julius had to endure many a hard blow; but his courage never failed—or, at most, but for a moment—even after the French victory at Ravenna, on Easter Sunday 1512. In the end the Swiss saved the Holy See; and, when Julius died the power of France had been broken in Italy, although the power of Spain had taken its place.
The conflict with France led to a schism in the College of Cardinals, which resulted in the conciliabulum of Pisa. Julius adroitly checkmated the cardinals by convening a general council, which was held in the Lateran. This assembly was also designed to deal with the question of reform, when the pope was summoned from this world (Feb. 20–21, 1513). Of his ecclesiastical achievements the bull against simony at papal elections deserves the most honourable mention. Again, by his restoration of the papal state, after the frightful era of the Borgias, Julius became the saviour of the papal power. But this does not exhaust his significance; he was, at the same time, the renewer of the papal Maecenate in the domain of art. It is to his lasting praise that he took into his service the three greatest artistic geniuses of the time—Bramante, Michelangelo and Raphael—and entrusted them with congenial tasks. Bramante drew out the plan for the new cathedral of St Peter and the reconstruction of the Vatican. On the 18th of April 1506 the foundation-stone of the new St Peter’s was laid; 120 years later, on the 18th of November 1626, Urban VIII. consecrated the new cathedral of the world, on which twenty popes had laboured, in conjunction with the first architects of the day, modifying in many points the grandiose original design of Bramante, and receiving the contributions of every Christian land.
St Peter’s, indeed, is a monument of the history of art, not merely within these 120 years from the zenith of the Renaissance till the transition into Baroque—from Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo, to Maderna and Bernini—but down to the 19th century, in which Canova and Thorwaldsen erected there the last great papal The new St Peter’s and the Vatican. monuments. But a still more striking period of art is represented by the Vatican, with its antique collections, the Sistine and the Stanze. Here, too, we are everywhere confronted with the name of Julius II. It was he who inaugurated the collection of ancient statues in the Belvedere, and caused the wonderful roof of the Sistine Chapel to be painted by Michelangelo (cf. Steinmann, Die sixtin. Kapelle II., 1905). Simultaneously, on the commission of the pope, Raphael decorated the Vatican with frescoes glorifying the Church and the papacy. In the Camera della Segnatura he depicted the four intellectual powers—theology, philosophy, poetry and law. In the Stanza d’Eliodoro Julius II. was visibly extolled as the Head of the Church, sure at all times of the aid of Heaven.
As so often occurs in the history of the papacy, Julius II. was followed by a man of an entirely different type—Leo X. Though not yet 37 years of age, Giovanni de’ Medici, distinguished for his generosity, mildness and courtesy, was elevated to the pontifical chair by the adroit manœuvres of the younger cardinals. His policy—though Leo X., 1513–1521. officially he declared his intention of following in the steps of his predecessor—was at first extremely reserved. His ambition was to play the rôle of peacemaker, and his conciliatory policy achieved many successes. Thus, in the very first year of his reign, he removed the schism which had broken out under Julius II. As a statesman Leo X. often walked by very crooked paths; but the reproach that he allowed his policy to be swayed exclusively by his family interests is unjustified. It may be admitted that he clung to his native Florence and to his family with warm affection; but the really decisive factor which governed his attitude throughout was his anxiety for the temporal and spiritual independence of the Holy See. The conquest of Milan by the French led to a personal interview at Bologna, where the “Concordat” with France was concluded. This document annulled the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, with its schismatic tendencies, but at the same time confirmed the preponderating influence of the king upon the Gallican Church—a concession which in spite of its many dubious aspects at least made the sovereign the natural defender of the Church and gave him the strongest motive for remaining Catholic. The war for the duchy of Urbino (1516–17) entailed disastrous consequences, as from it dates the complete disorganization of papal finance. It was, moreover, a contributing cause of the conspiracy of Cardinal Petrucci, the suppression of which was followed (July, 1517) by the creation of 31 new cardinals in one day. This—the greatest of recorded creations—turned the scale once and for all in favour of the papal authority and against the cardinals. The efforts of Leo to promote a crusade, which fall mainly in the years 1517 and 1518, deserve all recognition, but very various opinions have been held as to the attitude of the pope towards the Imperial election consequent on the death of Maximilian I. The fundamental motive for his proceedings at that period was not nepotistic tendencies—which doubtless played their part, but only a secondary one—but his anxiety for the moral and temporal independence of the Holy See. For this reason Leo, from the very first, entertained no genuine desire for the selection either of Charles V. or Francis I. of France. By playing off one against the other he succeeded in holding both in suspense, and induced them to conclude agreements safeguarding the pope and the Medici. Of the two, ​ the French king appeared the less dangerous, and the result was the Leo championed his cause with all his energies. Not till the eleventh hour, when the election of the Habsburg, to whom he was entirely opposed, was seen to be certain did he give way. He thus at least avoided an open rupture with the new emperor—a rupture which would have been all the more perilous on account of the religious revolution now imminent in Germany. There the great secession from Rome was brought about by Martin Luther; but, in spite of his striking personality, the upheaval which was destined to shatter the unity of the Western Church was not his undivided work. True, he was the most powerful agent in the destruction of the existing order; but, in reality, he merely put the match to a pile of inflammable materials which had been collecting for centuries (see Reformation). A main cause of the cleavage in Germany was the position of ecclesiastical affairs, which—though by no means hopeless—yet stood in urgent need of emendation, and, combined with this, the deeply resented financial system of the Curia. Thus Luther assumed the leadership of a national opposition, and appeared as the champion who was to undertake the much-needed reform of abuses which clamoured for redress. The occasion for the schism was given by the conflict with regard to indulgences, in the course of which Luther was not content to attack actual grievances, but assailed the Catholic doctrine itself. In June 1518 the canonical proceedings against Luther were begun in Rome; but, owing to political influences, only slow progress was made. It was not till the 15th of June 1520 that his new theology was condemned by the bull Exsurge, and Luther himself threatened with excommunication—a penalty which was only enforced owing to his refusal to submit, on the 3rd of January 1521.
The state of Germany, together with the unwise behaviour of Francis I., compelled Leo X. to side with Charles V. against the French king; and the united forces of the empire and papacy had achieved the most brilliant success in upper Italy, when Leo died unexpectedly, on the 1st of December 1521. The character of the first Medician pope shows a peculiar mixture of noble and ignoble qualities. With an insatiable love of pleasure he combined a certain external piety and a magnificent generosity in his charities. His financial administration was disastrous, and led simply to bankruptcy. On music, hunting, expensive feasts and theatrical performances money was squandered, while, with unexampled optimism the pope was blind to the deadly earnestness of the times.
Leo's name is generally associated with the idea of the Medicean era as a golden age of science and art. This conception is only partially justified. The reputation of a greater Maecenas—ascribed to him by his eulogists—dwindles before a sober, critical contemplation, and his undeniable merits are by no means equal to those which fame has assigned to him. The love of science and literature, which animated the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, frequently took the shape of literary dilettantism. In many respects the brilliance of this long and often vaunted Maecenate of Leo X. is more apparent than real. There are times when it irresistibly conveys the impression of dazzling fireworks of which nothing remains but the memory. The genuine significance of Leo lies rather in the stimulus which he gave. From this point of view his deserts are undoubtedly great; and for that reason he possesses an indefeasible right to a certain share in the renown of the papacy as a civilizing agent of the highest rank.
As a patron of art Leo occupies a more exalted plane. In this domain the first place must be assigned to the splendid achievements of Raphael, whom the pope entrusted with new and comprehensive commissions—the Stanza dell’ incendio, the Logge, and the tapestry-cartoons, the originals of the last named being now in London. But, though illuminated by the rays of art, and loaded with the exuberant panegyrics of humanists and poets, the reign of the first Medicean pontiff, by its unbounded devotion to purely secular tendencies and its comparative neglect of the Church herself proved disastrous for the See of St Peter.
By a wonderful dispensation the successor to this scion of the Medici was Adrian VI.—a man who saw his noblest task, not in an artistic Maecenate, nor in the prosecution of political designs, but in the reform of the Church in all its members. Careless of the glories of Renaissance art, a stranger to all worldly instincts, the earnest Adrian VII., 1522–1523. Netherlander inscribed on his banner the healing of the moral ulcers, the restoration of unity to the Church—especially in Germany—and the preservation of the West from the Turkish danger. How clearly he read the causes of religious decadence, how deeply he himself was convinced of the need of trenchant reform, is best shown by his instructions to Chieregati, his nuncio to Germany, in which he laid the axe to the root of the tree with unheard-of freedom. Unfortunately, it was all in vain. Luther and his adherents overwhelmed the noble pope with unmeasured abuse. The two great rivals, Francis I. and Charles V., were deaf to his admonitions to make common cause against the Turks. The intrigues of Cardinal Soderini led to a breach with France and drove Adrian into the arms of the Imperial league. Soon afterwards, on the 14th of September 1523, he died. Long misunderstood and slandered, Adrian VI., the last German pope, is now by all parties ranked among the most revered and most worthy of the popes. No one now denies that he was one of those exceptional men, who without self-seeking spend their lives in the service of a cause and fight bravely against the stream of corruption. Even though, in his all too brief pontificate, he failed to attain any definite results, he at least fulfilled the first condition of any cure by laying bare the seat of disease, gave an important impetus to the cause of the reform of the Church, and laid down the principles on which this was afterwards carried through. His activity, in fact, will always remain one of the brightest chapters in the history of the papacy.
Under Leo X. Cardinal Giulio de’ Medeci, the cousin of that pope, had already exercised a decisive influence upon Catholic policy; and the tiara now fell to his lot. Clement VII.—so the new pontiff styled himself—was soon discover the weight of the crown which he had gained. The international situation was the most difficult imaginable, Clement VII., 1523–1534. and altogether beyond the powers of the timorous, vacillating and irresolute Medician pope. His determination to stand aloof from the great duel between Francis I. and Charles V. failed him at the first trial. He had not enough courage and perspicacity to await in patience the result of the race between France and Germany for the duchy of Milan—a contest which was decided at Pavia (Feb. 24, 1525). The haughty victors found Clement on the side of their opponent, and he was forced into an alliance with the emperor (April 1, 1525). The overweening arrogance of the Spaniards soon drove the pope back into the ranks of their enemies. On the 22nd of May 1526 Clement acceded to the League of Cognac, and joined the Italians in their struggle against the Spanish supremacy. This step he was destined bitterly to repent. The tempest descended on the pope and on Rome with a violence which cannot be paralleled, even in the days of Alaric and Genseric, or of the Norman Robert Guiscard. On the 6th of May 1527 the Eternal City was stormed by the Imperial troops and subjected to appalling devastation in the famous sack. Clement was detained for seven months a prisoner in the castle of St Angelo. He then went into exile at Orvieto and Viterbo, and only on the 6th of October 1528 returned to his desolate residence. After the fall of the French dominion in Italy he made his peace with the emperor at Barcelona (June 29, 1529); in return for which he received the assistance of Charles in re-establishing the rule of the Medici in Florence. During the Italian turmoil the schism in Germany had made such alarming progress that it now proved impossible to bridge the chasm. With regard to the question of a council the pope was so obsessed by doubts and fears that he was unable to advance a single step; nor. till the day of his death could he break off his pitiful vacillation between Charles V. and Francis I. While large portions of Germany were lost to the Church the revolt from Rome proceeded apace in Switzerland ​ and the Scandinavian countries. To add to the disasters, the divorce of Henry VIII. led to the English schism. Whether another head of the Church could have prevented the defection of England is of course an idle question. But Clement VII. was far from possessing the qualities which would have enabled him to show a bold front to the ambitious Cardinal Wolsey and the masterful and passionate Henry VIII. At the death of Clement (Sept. 25, 1534), the complete disruption of the Church seemed inevitable.
When all seemed lost salvation was near. Even in the reign of the two Medici popes the way which was to lead to better things had been silently paved within the Church. Under Leo X. himself there had been formed in Rome, in the Oratory of the Divine Love, a body of excellent men of strictly Catholic sentiments. It was by members of this Oratory—especially St Gaetano di Tiene, Carafa (later Paul IV.), and the great bishop of Verona, Giberti—that the foundations of the Catholic reformation were laid. Under Clement VII. the establishment of new religious orders—Theatines, Somascians, Barnabites and Capuchins—had sown the seeds of a new life in the ancient Church. The harvest was reaped during the long pontificate of the Farnese pope, Paul III. With his accession Paul III., 1534–1549. devotion to religion and the Church began to regain their old mastery. True, Paul III. was not a representative of the Catholic reformation, in the full sense of the words. In many points, especially his great nepotism—witness the promotion of the worthless Pier Luigi Farnese—he remained, even as pope, a true child of the Renaissance period in which he had risen to greatness. Nevertheless he possessed the necessary adaptability and acumen to enable him to do justice to the demands of the new age, which imperatively demanded that the interests of the Church should be the first consideration. Thus, in the course of his long reign he did valuable work in the cause of the Catholic reformation and prepared the way for the Catholic restoration. It was he who regenerated the College of Cardinals by leavening it with men of ability, who took in hand the reform of the Curia, confirmed the Jesuit Order, and finally brought the Council of Trent into existence (Sessions I.–X. of the council, first period, 1545–1540). In order to check the progress of Protestantism in Italy Paul III. founded the Congregation of the Inquisition (1542). Political differences, and the transference of the council to Bologna in 1547, brought the pope into sharp collision with the emperor, who now attempted by means of the Interim to regulate the religious affairs of Germany according to his wishes—but in vain. The disobedience of his favourite Ottavio hastened the death of the old pope (Nov. 10, 1540).
Under the Farnese pope art enjoyed an Indian summer. The most important work for which he was responsible is the “Last Judgment” of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. In 1547 Michelangelo was further entrusted with the superintendence of the reconstruction of St Peter’s. He utilized his power by rejecting the innovations of Antonio da Sangallo, saved the plan of Bramante, and left behind him sufficient drawings to serve the completion of the famous cupola. Titian painted Paul's portrait, and Guglielmo della Porta cast the bronze statue which now adorns his grave in St Peter’s.
After a protracted conclave Giovanni Maria del Monte was elected, on the 7th of February 1550, as Pope Julius III. He submitted to the emperor’s demands and again convened the council (Sessions XI.–XVI. second period), but was obliged to suspend it on the 22nd of April 1552, in consequence of the war between Charles V. and Julius III., 1500–1555. Maurice of Saxony. From this time onwards the pope failed to exhibit requisite energy. In his beautiful villa before the Porta del Popolo he sought to banish political and ecclesiastical anxieties from his mind. Yet even now he was not wholly inactive. The religious affairs of England especially engaged his attention; and the nomination of Cardinal Pole as his legate to that country, on the death of Edward VI. (1553), was an extremely adroit step. That the measure was fruitless was not the fault of Julius III., who died on the 23rd of March 1555.
The feeble régime of Julius had made it evident that a pope of another type was necessary if the papal see were to preserve the moral and political influence which it had regained under Paul III. On the 10th of April 1555, after a conclave which lasted five days, the reform party secured the election of the distinguished Marcellus II. Unfortunately, on the 1st of May, an attack of apoplexy cut short the life of this pope, who seemed peculiarly adapted for the reformation of the Church.
On the 23rd of May 1555 Gian Pietro Carafa, the strictest of the strict, was elected as his successor, under the title of Paul IV. Though already 79 years of age, he was animated by the fiery zeal of youth, and he employed the most drastic methods for executing the necessary reforms and combating the advance of Protestantism. Always an opponent of the Spaniards, Paul IV., in the most violent and impolitic fashion, declared against the Habsburgs. The conflict with the Colonna was soon followed by the war with Spain, which, in spite of the French alliance, ended so disastrously, in 1557, that the pope henceforward devoted himself exclusively to ecclesiastical affairs. The sequel was the end of the nepotism and the relentless prosecution of reform within the Church. Protestantism was successfully eradicated in Italy; but the pope failed to prevent the secession of England. After his death the rigour of the Inquisition gave rise to an insurrection in Rome. The Venetian ambassador says of Paul IV. that, although all feared his strictness, all venerated his learning and wisdom.
The reaction against the iron administration of Paul IV. explains the fact that, after his decease, a more worldly-minded pope was again elected in the person of Cardinal Giovanni Angelo de’ Medici—Pius IV. In striking contrast to his predecessor he favoured the Habsburgs. A suit was instituted against the Carafa, Pius IV., 1559–1565. and Cardinal Carafa was even executed. To his own relatives, however, Pius IV. accorded no great influence, the advancement of his distinguished nephew, Carlo Borromeo (q.v.) being singularly fortunate for the Church. The most important act of his reign was the reassembling of the Council of Trent (Sessions XVII.–XXV., third period, 1562–1563). It was an impressive moment, when, on the 4th of December 1563, the great ecumenical synod of the Church came to a close. Till the last it was obliged to contend with the most formidable difficulties: yet it succeeded in effecting many notable reforms and in illuminating and crystallizing the distinctive doctrines of Catholicism. The breach with the Protestant Reformation was now final, and all Catholics felt themselves once more united and brought into intimate connexion with the centre of unity at Rome (see Trent, Council of).
The three great successors of Pius IV. inaugurate the heroic age of the Catholic reformation and restoration. All three were of humble extraction, and sprang from the people in the full sense of the phrase. Pius V., formerly Michele Ghisleri and a member of the Dominican Order observed even as pope the strictest rules of Pius V., 1566–1572. the brotherhood, and was already regarded as a saint by his contemporaries. For Rome, in especial, he completed the task of reform. The Curia, once so corrupt, was completely metamorphosed, and once more became a rallying point for men of stainless character, so that it produced a profound impression even on non-Catholics; while the original methods of St Philip Neri had a profound influence on the reform of popular morals. In the rest of Italy also Pius V. put into execution the reformatory decrees of Trent. In 1566 he gave publicity to the Tridentine catechism; in 1568 he introduced the amended Roman breviary; everywhere he insisted on strict monastic discipline, and the compulsory residence of bishops within their sees. At the same period Carlo Borromeo made his diocese of Milan the model of a reformed bishopric. The pope supported Mary Stuart with money; his troops assisted Charles IX. of France against the Huguenots; and he lent his aid to Philip II. against the Calvinists of the Netherlands. But his greatest joy was that he succeeded where Pius II. had failed, despite all his efforts, ​ by bringing to a head an enterprise against the Turks—then masters of the Mediterranean. He negotiated an alliance between the Venetians and Spaniards, contributed ships and soldiers, and secured the election of Don John of Austria to the supreme command. He was privileged to survive the victory of the Christians at Lepanto; but on the 1st of May in the following year he died, as piously as he had lived. The last pope to be canonized, his pontificate marks the zenith of the Catholic reformation.
The renewed vigour which this internal reformation had infused into the Church was now manifest in its external effects; and Pius V., the pope of reform, was followed by the popes of the Catholic restoration. These, without intermitting the work of reformation, endeavoured by every means to further the outward expansion of Catholicism. On the one hand missions were despatched to America, India, China and Japan: on the other, a strenuous attempt was made to reannex the conquests of Protestantism. In a word, the age of the Catholic restoration was beginning—a movement which has been misnamed the counter Reformation. In this period, the newly created religious orders were the right arm of the papacy, especially the Jesuits and the Capuchins. In place of the earlier supineness, the battle was now joined all along the line. Everywhere, in Germany and France, in Switzerland and the Low Countries, in Poland and Hungary, efforts were made to check the current of Protestantism and to re-establish the orthodox faith. This activity extended to wider and wider areas, and enterprises were even set on foot to regain England, Sweden and Russia for the Church. This universal outburst of energy for the restoration of Catholicism, which only came to a standstill in the middle of the 17th century, found one of its Gregory XIII., 1572–1585. most zealous promotors in Ugo Boncompagni—Pope Gregory XIII. Though not of an ascetic nature, he followed unswervingly in the path of his predecessors by consecrating his energies to the translation of the reformatory decrees into practice. At the same time he showed himself anxious to further the cause of ecclesiastical instruction and Catholic science. He created a special Congregation to deal with episcopal affairs, and organized the Congregation of the Index, instituted by Pius V. On behalf of the diffusion of Catholicism throughout the world he spared no efforts; and wherever he was able he supported the great restoration. He was especially active in the erection and encouragement of educational institutions. In Rome he founded the splendid College of the Jesuits; and he patronized the Collegium Germanicum of St Ignatius; while, at the same time, he found means for the endowment of English and Irish colleges. In fact, his generosity for the cause of education was so unbounded that he found himself in financial difficulties. Gregory did good service, moreover, by his reform of the calendar which bears his name, by his emended edition of the Corpus juris canonici and by the creation of nunciatures. That he celebrated the night of St Bartholomew was due to the fact that, according to his information, the step was a last resort to ensure the preservation of the royal family and the Catholic religion from the attacks of the revolutionary Huguenots. In his political enterprises he was less fortunate. He proved unable to devise a common plan of action on the part of the Catholic princes against Elizabeth of England and the Turks; while he was also powerless to check the spread of brigandage in the papal state.
On the death of Gregory XIII., Felice Peretti, cardinal of Montalto, a member of the Franciscan order, ascended the Apostolic throne as Sixtus V. (April 1585–August 1590). His first task was the extirpation of the bandits and the restoration of order within the papal state. In the course of a year the drastic measures of this Sixtus V., 1585–1590. born ruler made this state the safest country in Europe. He introduced a strictly ordered administration, encouraged the sciences, and enlarged the Vatican library, housing it in a splendid building erected for the purpose in the Vatican itself. He was an active patron of agriculture and commerce: he even interested himself in the draining of the Pontine marshes. The financial system he almost completely reorganized. With a boldness worthy of Julius II., he devised the most gigantic schemes for the annihilation of the Turkish Empire and the conquest of Egypt and Palestine. Elizabeth of England he wished to restore to the Roman obedience either by conversion or by force; but these projects were shattered by the destruction of the Spanish Armada. Down to his death the pope kept a vigilant eye on the troubles in France. Here his great object was to save France for the Catholic religion, and, as far as possible, to secure her position as a power of the first rank. To this fundamental axiom of his policy he remained faithful throughout all vicissitudes.
In Rome itself Sixtus displayed extraordinary activity. The Pincian, the Esquiline, and the south-easterly part of the Caelian hills received essentially their present form by the creation of the Via Sistina, Felice, delle Quattro Fontane, di Sta Croce in Gerusalemme, &c.; by the buildings at Sta Maria Maggiore, the Villa Montalto, the reconstruction of the Lateran, and the aqueduct of the Felice, which partially utilized the Alexandrina and cost upwards of 300,000 scudi. The erection of the obelisks of the Vatican, the Lateran, the Piazza del Popolo and the square behind the tribune of Sta Maria Maggiore lent a lustre to Rome which no other city in the world could rival. The columns of Trajan and Antoninus were restored and bedecked with gilded statues of the Apostles; nor was this the only case in which the high-minded pope made the monuments of antiquity subservient to Christian ideas. His principal architect was Domenico Fontana, who, in conjunction with Guglielmo della Porta, completed the uniquely beautiful cupola of St Peter’s which had already been designed by Michelangelo in a detailed model. In Santa Maria Maggiore the pope erected the noble Sistine Chapel, in which he was laid to rest. Indeed, the monumental character of Rome dates from this era. The organizing activity of Sixtus V. was not, however, restricted to the Eternal City, but extended to the whole administration of the Church. The number of cardinals was fixed at seventy—six bishops, fifty priests and fourteen deacons. In 1588 followed the new regulations with respect to the Roman Congregations, which henceforth were to be fifteen in number. Thus the pope laid the foundations of that wonderful and silent engine of universal government by which Rome still rules the Catholics of every land on the face of the globe.
When we reflect that all this was achieved in a single pontificate of but five years’ duration, the energy of Sixtus V. appears simply astounding. He was, without doubt, by far the most important of the post-Tridentine popes, and his latest biographer might well say that he died overweighted with services to the Church and to humanity. (L. v. P.)
IV.—Period from 1590 to 1870.
The history of the papacy from 1590 to 1870 falls into four main periods: (1) 1590–1648; territorial expansion, definitely checked by the peace of Westphalia; (2) 1648–1789; waning prestige, financial embarrassments, futile reforms; (3) 1789–1814; revolution and Napoleonic reorganization; (4) 1814–1870; restoration and centralization.
1. 1590–1648. The keynote of the counter Reformation had been struck by the popes who immediately preceded this period. They sought to reconquer Europe for the Roman Catholic Church. In the overthrow of the Spanish Armada they had already received a great defeat; with the Peace of Westphalia the Catholic advance was baffled. Sixtus V. was succeeded in rapid succession by three popes: Urban VII., who died on the 27th of September 1590, after a papacy of only 12 days; Gregory XIV. (Dec. 1590 to Oct. 1591); Innocent IX. (Oct. to Dec. 1591).
The first noteworthy pontiff of the period was Clement VIII., who gained a vast advantage by allying the papacy with the rising power of France. Since 1559 the popes had been without exception in favour of Spain, which, firmly possessed of Milan on the north and of NaplesClement VIII., 1592–1605. ​ on the south, held the States of the Church as in a vice, and thereby dominated the politics of the peninsula. After Henry IV. had taken Paris at the price of a mass, it became possible for the popes to play off the Bourbons against the Habsburgs; but the transfer of favour was made so gradually that the opposition of the papacy to Spain did not become open till just before Clement VIII. passed off the stage. His successor, Leo XI., undisguisedly French in sympathy, reigned but Leo XI., 1605. twenty-seven days—a sorry return for the 300,000 ducats which his election is rumoured to have cost Henry IV. Under Paul V. Rome was successful in some minor negotiations with Savoy, Genoa, Tuscany and Naples; but Venice, under the leadership of Paolo Sarpi (q.v.), proved unbending under ban and interdict: the state defiantly upheld its sovereign rights, kept most of the clergy at their posts, and expelled the recalcitrant Paul V., 1605–1621. Jesuits. When peace was arranged through French mediation in 1607 the papacy had lost greatly in prestige: it was evident that the once terrible interdict was antiquated, wherefore it has never since been employed against the entire territory of a state.
During the second and third decades of the 17th century the most coveted bit of Italian soil was the Valtelline. If Spain could gain this Alpine valley her territories would touch those of Austria, so that the Habsburgs north of the Alps could send troops to the aid of their Spanish cousins against Venice, and Spain in turn could help to subdue the Protestant princes of Germany in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). From the Grisons, who favoured France and Venice, Spain seized the Valtelline in 1620, incidentally uprooting heresy there by the massacre of six hundred Protestants. Paul V. repeatedly lamented that he was unable to oppose such Spanish aggressions without extending protection to heretics. This scruple was, however, not Gregory XV., 1621–1623. shared by his successor, Gregory XV., who secured the consent of the powers to the occupation of the Valtelline by papal troops, a diplomatic victory destined, however, to lead ere long to humiliation. Gregory’s brief but notable pontificate marks nevertheless the high-tide of the counter Reformation. Not for generations had the prospects for the ultimate annihilation of Protestantism been brighter. In the Empire the collapse of the Bohemian revolt led ultimately to the merciless repression of the Evangelicals in Bohemia (1627), and in the hereditary lands of The Counter-Reformation. Austria (1628), as well as to the transference of the electoral dignity from the Calvinistic elector of the Palatinate to the staunchly Catholic Maximilian of Bavaria. In France the Huguenots were shorn of almost all their military power, a process completed by the fall of La Rochelle in 1628. In Holland the expiration of the Twelve Years’ Truce in 1621 forced the Dutch Protestants once more to gird on the sword. England, meanwhile, was isolated from her co-religionists. King James I., who had coquetted twenty years previously with Clement VIII., and then had avenged the Gunpowder Plot (1605) by the most stringent regulation of his Roman Catholic subjects, was now dazzled by the project of the Spanish marriage. The royal dupe was the last man in the world to check the advance of the papacy. That service to Protestantism was performed by Catholic powers jealous of the preponderance of the Habsburgs. In view of these antipathies the treaty of 1627 between France, Spain and the pope is but an episode: instructive, however, in that the project, originated apparently by the pope, provided that England should be dismembered, and that Ireland should be treated as a papal fief. The true tendency of affairs manifested itself in 1629, when the emperor Ferdinand II. (1619–1637), at the zenith of his fortunes, forced the Protestant princes of Germany to restore to the Roman hierarchy all the ecclesiastical territories they had secularized during the past seventy-four years. Then France, freed from the fear of domestic enemies, arose to help the heretics to harry the house of Habsburg. Arranging a truce between Poland and Sweden, she unleashed Gustavus Adolphus. Thus by diplomacy as well as by force of arms Catholic France made possible the continued existence of a Protestant Germany, and helped to create the balance of power between Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed within the Empire, that, crystallized in the Peace of Westphalia, fixed the religious boundaries of central Europe for upwards of two centuries.
If it was Richelieu and not the pope who was the real arbiter of destinies from 1624 to 1642, Urban VIII. was usually content. In Italy he supported France against Spain in the controversy over the succession to Mantua (1627–1631). In the Empire he manifested his antipathy to the overshadowing Habsburgs by plotting for a time to carry Urban VIII., 1623–1644. the next imperial election in favour of Bavaria. He is said to have rejoiced privately over Swedish victories, and certainly it was unerring instinct which told him that the great European conflict was no longer religious but dynastic. Anti-Spanish to the core, he became the greatest papal militarist since Julius II.; but Tuscany, Modena and Venice checkmated him in his ambitious attempt to conquer the duchy of Parma. Like most of the papal armies of the last three centuries, Urban’s troops distinguished themselves by wretched strategy, cowardice in rank and file, and a Fabian avoidance of fighting which, discreet as it may be in the field of diplomacy, has invariably failed to save Rome on the field of battle.
The States of the Church were enlarged during this period by the reversion of two important fiefs—namely, Ferrara (1598) and Urbino (1631). Increase of territory, so far from filling the papal treasury, but postponed for the moment the progressive pauperization of the people. After annexation, the city of Ferrara sank rapidly The Papal States. from her perhaps artificial prosperity to the dead level, losing two-thirds of her population in the process. The financial difficulties of Italy were due to many causes, notably to a shifting of trade routes; but those of the papal states seem caused chiefly by misgovernment. Militarism may account for much of the tremendous deficit under Urban VIII.; but the real cancer was nepotism. The disease was inherent in the body politic. Each pope, confronted by the spectre of feudal anarchy, felt he could rely truly only on those utterly dependent on himself; consequently he raised his own Nepotism. relations to wealth and influence. This method had helped the House of Valois to consolidate its power; but what was tonic for a dynasty was death to a state whose headship was elective. The relations of one pope became the enemies of the next; and each pontiff governed at the expense of his successors. Under Clement VIII. the Aldobrandini, more splendidly under Paul V. the Borghesi, with canny haste under the short-lived Gregory XV. the Lodovisi, with unparalleled rapacity Urban’s Barberini enriched themselves from a chronically depleted treasury. To raise money offices were systematically sold, and issue after issue of the two kinds of monti-securities, which may be roughly described as government bonds and as life annuities, was marketed at ruinous rates. More than a score of years after the Barberini had dropped the reins of power Alexander VII. said they alone had burdened the state with the payment of 483,000 scudi of annual interest, a tremendous item in a budget where the income was perhaps but 2,000,000. For a while interest charges consumed 85% of the income of the government. Skilful refunding postponed the day of evil, but cash on hand was too often a temptation to plunder. The financial woes of the next period, which is one of decline, were largely the legacy of this age of glory.
The common people, as always, had to pay. The farming of exorbitant taxes, coupled as it was too often with dishonest concessions to the tax farmer, made the over-burdened peasantry drink the doubly bitter cup of exploitation and injustice. Economic distress increased the number of highway robberies, these in turn lamed commercial intercourse.
The tale of these glories, with their attendant woes, does not exhaust the history of the papacy. Not as diplomatists, not as governors, but as successive heads of a spiritual kingdom, did the popes win their grandest triumphs. At a time when the non-Catholic theologians were chiefly small fry, bent on ​ petty or sulphurous polemics, great Jesuit teachers like Bellarmine (d. 1621) laid siege to the very foundations of the Controversial and Missionary Triumphs. Protestant citadel. These thinkers performed for the unity of the faith in France and in the Catholic states of Germany services of transcendent merit, exceeding far in importance those of their flourishing allies, the Inquisitions of Spain, Italy, and of the Spanish Netherlands (see Inquisition). But the most fundamental spiritual progress of the papacy was made by its devoted missionaries. While the majority of Protestant leaders left the conversion of the heathen to some remote and inscrutable interposition of Providence, the Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans and kindred orders were busily engaged in making Roman Catholics of the nations brought by Oriental commerce or American colonial enterprise into contact with Spain, Portugal and France. Though many of the spectacular triumphs of the cross in Asia and Africa proved to be evanescent, nevertheless South America stands the impressive memorial of the greatest forward movement in the history of the papacy: a solidly Roman continent.
2. 1648–1789. From the close of the Thirty Years’ War to the outbreak of the French Revolution the papacy suffered abroad waning political prestige; at home, progressive financial embarrassment accompanied by a series of inadequate governmental reforms; and in the world at large, gradual diminution of reverence for spiritual authority. From slow beginnings these factors kept gaining momentum until they compassed the overthrow of the mighty order of the Jesuits, and culminated in the revolutionary spoliation of the Church.
At the election of Innocent X. (1644–1655) the favour of the Curia was transferred from France, where it had rested for over forty years, to the House of Habsburg, where it remained, save for the brief reign of Clement IX. (1667–1669), for half a century. The era of tension with France coincides with the earlier years of Louis XIV. Foreign Relations. (1643–1715); its main causes were the Jansenist and the Gallican controversies (see Jansenism and Gallicanism). The French crown was willing to sacrifice the Jansenists, who disturbed that dead level of uniformity so grateful to autocrats; but Gallicanism touched its very prerogatives, and was a point of honour which could never be abandoned outright. The regalia controversy, which broke out in 1673, led up to the classic declaration of the Gallican clergy of 1682; and, when aggravated by a conflict over the immunity of the palace of the French ambassador at Jansenism and Gallicanism. Rome, resulted in 1688 in the suspension of diplomatic relations with Innocent XI., the imprisonment of the papal nuncio, and the seizure of Avignon and the Venaissin. So pronounced an enemy of French preponderance did Innocent become that he approved the League of Augsburg, and was not sorry to see the Catholic James II., whom he considered a tool of Louis, thrust from the throne of England by the Protestant William of Orange. Fear of the coalition, however, led the Grand Monarch to make peace with Innocent XII. (1691–1700). The good relations with France were but a truce, for the Bourbon powers became so mighty in the 18th century that they practically ignored the territorial interests of the papacy. Thus Clement XI. (1700–1721), who espoused the losing Habsburg side in the War of the Spanish Succession, saw his nuncio excluded from the negotiations leading to the Peace of Utrecht, while the lay signatories disposed of Sicily in defiance of his alleged overlordship. Similarly Clement XII. (1730–1740) looked on impotently when the sudden Bourbon conquest of Naples in the War of the Polish Succession set at nought his claims to feudal sovereignty, and established Tannucci as minister of justice, a position in which for forty-three years he regulated the relations of church and state after a method most repugnant to Rome. No better fared Clement’s medieval rights to Parma; nor could the sagacious and popular Benedict XIV. (1740–1758), who refused to press obsolete claims, either keep the foreign armies in the War of the Austrian Succession from trespassing on the States of the Church or prevent the ignoring at the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle of the papal overlordship over Parma and Piacenza. In fact, since the doctrinaire protest of Innocent X. against the Peace of Westphalia, at almost every important settlement of European boundaries the popes had been ignored or otherwise snubbed. Not for two centuries had the political prestige of the papacy been lower. Moreover, a feeling of revulsion against the Jesuits was sweeping over western Europe: they were accused of being the incarnation of the most baneful principles, political, intellectual, moral; and though Clement XIII. (1758–1769) protected them against the pressure of the Bourbon courts, his successor Clement XIV.Suppression of the Jesuits. (1769–1774) was forced in 1773 to disband the army of the Black Pope (see Jesuits). The sacrifice of these trusted soldiers failed however to sate the thirst of the new age. Pius VI. (1775–1799), was treated with scant respect by his neighbours. Naples refused him tribute; Joseph II. of Austria politely but resolutely introduced fundamental Gallican reforms (“Josephism”); in 1786 at the Synod of Pistoia (q.v.) Joseph’s brother Leopold urged similar principles on Tuscany, while in Germany the very archbishops were conspiring by the Punctation of Ems to aggrandize themselves like true Febronians, at the expense of the pope (see Febronianism). These aggressions of monarchy and the episcopate were rendered vain, outside the Habsburg dominions, by the revolution; and to the Habsburg dominions the clerical revolution of 1790 caused the loss of what is to-day Belgium. However, the deluge which shattered the opposition to Rome in the great national churches submerged for a time the papacy itself.
In the States of the Church, during the first part of the period the outstanding feature in the history of the Temporal Power is the overthrow of nepotism; in the second, a dull conflict with debt. The chief enemies of nepotism were Alexander VII. (1655–1667), who dignified the secretaryship of state and gave it its present The States of the Church. pre-eminence by refusing to deliver it up to one of his relations; and Innocent XII. (1691–1700), whose bull Romanum decet pontificem ordered that no pope should make more than one nephew cardinal, and should not grant him an income over twelve thousand scudi. Thus by 1700 nepotistic plunder had practically ceased, and with the exception of the magnificent peculations of Cardinal Coscia under Benedict XIII. (1724–1730), the central administration of finance has been usually considered honest. Nepotism, however, still left its scars upon the body politic, shown in the progressive decay of agriculture in the Campagna, causing Rome to starve in the midst of fertile but untilled nepotistic latifundia. The fight against the legacy of debt was slower and more dreary. One pope. Innocent XI. (1676–1789), threatened at first with bankruptcy, managed to leave a surplus; but this condition, the product of severe economy and oppressive taxation, could not be maintained. In the 18th century it became necessary to resort to fiscal measures which were often harmful. Thus Clement XI., at war with Austria in 1708, debased the currency; Clement XII. (1730–1740) issued paper money and set up a government lottery, excommunicating all subjects who put their money into the lotteries of Genoa or Naples; Benedict XIV. (1740–1758) found stamped paper a failure; and Clement XIII. (1758–1769) made a forced loan. The stoppage of payments from Bourbon countries during the Jesuit struggle brought the annual deficit to nearly 500,000 scudi. Under Pius VI. (1775–1799) the emission of paper money, followed by an unsuccessful attempt to market government securities, produced a panic. By 1783 the taxes had been farmed for years in advance and the treasury was in desperate straits. Retrenchment often cut to the bone; wise reforms shattered on the inexperience or corruption of officials. Grand attempts to increase the national wealth usually cost the government more in fixed charges of interest than they yielded in rentals or taxes. The States of the Church, like France, were on the brink of bankruptcy. From this disgrace they were saved by a more imminent catastrophe—the Revolution.
​ The revolt against spiritual authority belongs rather to the history of modern thought than to that of the papacy. The Renaissance and Protestantism had their effect in producing that Enlightenment which swept over western Europe in the 18th century. Although Descartes died in 1650 in the communion of the Intellectual Movement against the Papacy. Church, his philosophy contained seeds of revolt; and the sensualism of Locke, popularized in Italy by Genovesi, prepared the way for revolution. In an age when Voltaire preached toleration and the great penologist Beccaria attacked the death-penalty and torture, in the States of the Church heretics were still liable to torture, the relapsed to capital punishment; and in a backward country like Spain the single reign of Philip V. (1700–1746) had witnessed the burning of over a thousand heretics. If ecclesiastical authority fostered what was commonly regarded as intolerant obscurantism, to be enlightened meant to be prepared in spirit for that reform which soon developed into the Revolution.
3. 1789–1814. In the decade previous to the outbreak of the French Revolution the foreign policy of Pius VI. had been directed chiefly against decentralization, while his chief aim at home was to avoid bankruptcy by increasing his income. From 1789 on the French situation absorbed his attention. France, like the States of The Papacy and the Revolution. the Church, was facing financial ruin; but France did what the government of priests could not: namely, saved the day by the confiscation and sale of ecclesiastical property. It was not the aim of the Constituent Assembly to pauperize or annihilate the Church; it purposed to reorganize it on a juster basis. These reforms, embodied in the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, were part of the new Fundamental Law of the Kingdom. The majority of the priests and bishops refused to swear assent to what they held to be an invasion of the divine right of the hierarchy, and after some months of unfortunate indecision Pius VI. (1775–1799) formally condemned it. Thenceforward France treated the papacy as an inimical power. The sullen toleration of the non-juring priests changed into sanguinary persecution. The harrying was halted in 1795; and soon after the directory had been succeeded by the consulate, the Catholic religion was re-established by the concordat of 1801. From 1790 on, however, the rising power of France had been directed against Rome. In September 1791 France annexed Avignon and the Venaissin, thus removing for ever that territorial pawn with whose threatened loss the French monarchs had for centuries disciplined their popes. In 1793 Hugon de Bassville (q.v.), a diplomatic agent of France, was murdered at Rome, a deed not avenged until the Italian victories of Bonaparte. In the peace of Tolentino (Feb. 1797) the pope surrendered his claims to Avignon, the Venaissin, Bologna, Ferrara and the Romagna; he also promised to disband his worthless army, to yield up certain treasures of art, and to pay a large indemnity. Bonaparte believed that after these losses the temporal power would collapse of its own weight; but so peaceful a solution was not to be. During republican agitation at Rome the French general Duphot was killed, a French army advanced on the city, and carried the aged pontiff a prisoner of war to Valence in Pius VII., 1800–1823. Concordat of 1801. Dauphiné, where he died on the 29th of August 1799. His successor Pius VII., elected at Venice on the 14th of the following March, soon entered Rome and began his reign auspiciously by appointing as secretary of state Ercole Consalvi (q.v.), the greatest papal diplomatist of the 19th century. The political juncture was favourable for a reconciliation with France. In the concordat of 1801 the papacy recognized the validity of the sales of Church property, and still further reduced the number of dioceses; it provided that the government should appoint and support the archbishops and bishops, but that the pope should confirm them; and France recognized the temporal power, though shorn of Ferrara, Bologna and the Romagna. The supplementary Organic Articles of April 1802, however, centralized the administration of the Church in the hands of the First Consul; and some of these one-sided regulations were considered by Rome to be minute and oppressive; nevertheless, the Napoleonic arrangements remained in force, with but brief exceptions, till the year 1905. The indignation of the pope and his advisers was not deep enough to prevent the ratification in 1803 of a somewhat similar concordat for the Italian Republic. In 1804 Pius consented to anoint Napoleon emperor, thus casting over a conquered crown the halo of legitimacy. The era of good feeling was, however, soon ended by friction, which arose at a number of points. At length, in 1809, Napoleon annexed the papal states; and Pius, who excommunicated the invaders of his territory, was removed to France. The captive was, however, by no means powerless; by refusing canonical institution to the French bishops he involved the ecclesiastical system of Napoleon in inextricable confusion. After the return from Moscow the emperor negotiated with his prisoner a new and more exacting concordat, but two months later the repentant pope abrogated this treaty and declared all the official acts of the new French bishops to be invalid. By this time Napoleon was tottering to his fall; shortly before the catastrophe of Elba he allowed the pope to return to the States of the Church. Pius entered Rome amid great rejoicing on the 24th of May 1814, a day which marks the beginning of a new era in the history of the papacy. In September of the same year, by the bull Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum, he reconstituted the Society of Jesus.
Though the relations with France dominated the papal policy during the revolutionary period, the affairs of Germany received no small share of attention. The peace of Lunéville (1801) established the French boundary at the Rhine; and the German princes who thereby lost lands west of the river were indemnified by the secularization of ecclesiasticalSecularizations of 1803. territories to the east. The scheme of readjustment, known as the Enactment of the Delegates of the Empire (Reichsdeputationshauptschluss) of 1803, secularized practically all the ecclesiastical states of Germany. Thus at one stroke there was broken the age-long direct political power of the hierarchy in the Holy Roman Empire; and the ultimate heir of the bulk of these lands was Protestant Prussia.
4. 1814–1870. The foreign policy of the papacy so long as conducted by Consalvi, or in his spirit, was supremely successful. From 1814 to 1830 Europe witnessed the restoration of legitimate monarchy. The once exiled dynasties conscientiously re-established the legitimate Church, and both conservative powers made common cause against The Papacy and the Restoration. revolutionary tendencies. Throughout Europe the governing classes regarded this “union of throne and altar” as axiomatic. For the pope, as eldest legitimate sovereign and protagonist against the Revolution, Consalvi obtained from the Congress of Vienna the restitution of the States of the Church in practically their full extent. By concluding concordats with all the important Catholic powers save Austria he made it possible to crush Jansenism, Febronianism and Gallicanism. By bulls of circumscription, issued after consultation with various Protestant states of Germany, he rearranged their Catholic dioceses and readjusted ecclesiastical incomes. By unfailing tact he gained the good will of Great Britain, where before him no cardinal had set foot for two centuries, and secured that friendly understanding between the British government and the Vatican which has since proved so valuable to Rome. After Consalvi’s retirement, Leo XII. (1823–1829) continued his policy and secured further advantageous concordats. In the sixteen months’ reign of Pius VIII. (1829–1830) came the achievement of Catholic emancipation in England and the Revolution of 1830; and the pope departed from the principle of legitimacy by recognizing Louis Philippe as king of the French. The pontificate of Gregory XVI. (1831–1846) was singularly infelicitous. The controversy with Prussia about the education of children of whose parents but one was Roman Catholic led to the imprisonment of Droste-Vischering, archbishop of Cologne, and later of Dunin, archbishop of Gnesen–Posen; but the accession of the royal romanticist Frederick William IV. in 1840 brought a pacific reversal of the Prussian policy, sometimes ​ judged more benevolent than wise. In France agitation was directed chiefly against the Jesuits, active in the movement to displace ancient local catechisms and liturgies by the Roman texts, to enroll the laity in Roman confraternities, and to induce the bishops to visit Rome more frequently. To check this ultramontane propaganda the government secured from the papacy in 1845 the promise to close the Jesuit houses and novitiates in France.
In Italy, however, lay the chief obstacles to the success of all papal undertakings. The revolution of 1830, though somewhat tardily felt in the States of the Church, compelled Gregory to rest his rule on foreign bayonets. In return he was obliged to lend an ear to the proposals of France, and above all to those of Austria. This meant opposition to all schemes for the unification of Italy. In 1815 the Italian peninsula had been divided into seven small states. Besides the government of the pope there were three kingdoms: Sardinia, Lombardo-Venetia and Naples; and three duchies: Parma, Modena, Tuscany. To these regions the Napoleonic régime had given a certain measure of unity; but Metternich, dominant after 1815, held Italy to be merely a geographical term. To its unification Austria was the chief obstacle; she owned Lombardo-Venetia; she controlled the three duchies, whose rulers were Austrian princes; and she upheld the autocracy of the king of Naples and that of the pope against all revolutionary movements. To the Italian patriot the papacy seemed in league with the oppressor. The pope sacrificed the national aspirations of his subjects to his international relations as head of the Church; and he sacrificed their craving for liberty to the alliance with autocracy on which rested the continued existence of the temporal power. The dual position of the pope, as supreme head of the Church on earth and as a minor Italian prince, was destined to break down through its inherent contradiction; it was the task of Pius IX. to postpone the catastrophe.
The reign of Pius IX. falls into three distinct parts. Until driven from Rome by the republican agitation of 1848 he was a popular idol, open to liberal political views. From his return in 1850 to 1870 he was the reactionary ruler of territories menaced by the movement for Italian unity, and sustained only by French bayonets; yet he Pius IX. 1846–1878. was interested primarily in pointing out to an often incredulous world that most of the vaunted, intellectual and religious progress of the 19th century was but pestilent error, properly to be condemned by himself as the infallible vicegerent of God. The third division of his career, from the loss of the temporal power to his death, inaugurates a new period for the papacy.
At the outset of his reign he faced a crisis. It was clear that he could not continue the repressive tactics of his predecessor. Italy and Europe were astir with the Liberal agitation, which in 1848 culminated in the series of revolutions by which the settlement of 1815 was destined to be profoundly modified. Liberal churchmen in Italy, The Papacy and Italian Unity. while rejecting Mazzini’s dream of a republic, had evolved projects for attaining national unity while preserving the temporal power. The exiled abbe Vincenzo Gioberti championed an Italian confederacy under the presidency of the pope; hand in hand with the unity of the nation should go the unity of the faith. In allusion to medieval partisans of the papacy this theory was dubbed Neo-Guelphism. Towards such a solution Pius IX. was at first not unfavourably inclined, but the revolution of 1848 cured him of his Liberal leanings. In November of that year he fled in disguise from his capital to Gaeta, in the kingdom of Naples, and when French arms had made feasible his restoration to Rome in April 1850 he returned in a temper of stubborn resistance to all reform; henceforth he was no longer open to the influence of men of the type of Rossi or Rosmini, but took the inspiration of his policy from Cardinal Antonelli and the Jesuits. The same pope who had signalized his accession by carrying out a certain number of Liberal reforms set his name in 1864 to the famous Syllabus, which was in effect a declaration of war by the papacy against the leading principles of modern civilization (see Syllabus).
As from 1849 to 1870 the fate of the papacy was determined not so much by domestic conditions, which, save for certain slight ameliorations, were those of the preceding reigns, as by foreign politics, it is necessary to consider the relations of Rome with each of the powers in turn; and in so doing one must trace not merely the negotiations of kings and popes, but must seek to understand also the aims of parliamentary parties, which from 1848 on increasingly determine ecclesiastical legislation.
The chief ally of the papacy from 1849 to 1870 was France. The policy which made Louis Napoleon dictator forced him into mortal conflict with the republican parties; and the price of the parliamentary support of the Catholic majority was high. Even before Napoleon’s election as president, Falloux, the Catholic leader, had promised Louis Napoleon and the Papacy. to secure intervention in favour of the dispossessed pope. Napoleon, however, could not forget that as a young man he himself had vainly fought to obtain from Gregory XVI. those liberties which Pius IX. still refused to grant; he therefore essayed diplomacy, not arms. Nevertheless, to forestall the rescue of the pope by Austrian troops, he sent, in August 1849, an army corps under Oudinot to Civita Vecchia. By heading off reactionary Austria Napoleon hoped to conciliate the French Liberals; by helping the pope, to satisfy the Catholics; by concessions to be wrung both from Pius and from the Roman triumvirs, to achieve a bloodless victory. As neither party yielded, Oudinot listened to his Catholic advisers, attacked Rome, with which the French Republic was technically at peace—and was roundly repulsed by Garibaldi. To relieve their inglorious predicament the ministry hurried the Liberal diplomatist, Ferdinand de Lesseps, to Rome to prevent further conflict. At the moment when Lesseps had secured the signing of a treaty with the Roman Republic permitting peaceful occupation of the city by the French army, he was peremptorily recalled and Oudinot was as unexpectedly ordered to take the city by storm. This amazing reversal of policy was procured by the intrigues of Catholic diplomatists and GermanFrench Capture of Rome. Jesuits, conveyed to Paris by Prince de la Tour d’Auvergne. For the honour of the army and the Church republican France thereupon destroyed the Roman republic. Napoleon lost 1200 in dead and wounded, actually secured not a single reform on which he had insisted, and drew upon himself the fateful obligation to mount perpetual guard over the Vatican. As the catspaw of clerical reaction he had also to acquiesce in that “Roman campaign at home” that resulted in the Falloux Act of 1850, which in the name of liberty of education put the university in bondage to the archbishops, militated against lay teachers in secondary and primary schools, and set themNapoleon III. and the Papacy. under clerical control, made it ominously easy for members of religious congregations to become instructors of youth, and cut the nerve of the communal school system. That education was delivered up to the Church was partly the result of the terror inspired in the middle classes by the socialistic upheavals of 1848. The bourgeoisie sought the support of the clergy, and irreligion became as unfashionable among them as it had been among the nobility after 1793. Religion was thought to be part of a fashionable education, and the training of girls came almost exclusively into the hands of the religious orders and congregations. So long as the alliance of the autocratic empire and the clergy lasted (1852–1860), intellectual reaction reigned; the university professorships of history and philosophy were suppressed. This alliance of the empire with the clergy was shaken by the Italian War of 1859, which resulted in the loss by the pope of two-thirds of his territories. Napoleon was evidently returning to the traditions of his youth, and in the September Convention of 1864 it looked as if he would abandon Rome to its manifest destiny. This solution was spoiled by the impatience of Garibaldi and the supineness of the Romans themselves. In 1867 Napoleon made himself once more guardian of the Holy See; but the wonders wrought by the new French chassepots at the battle of Mentana cost the friendship of Italy. Thereafter Napoleon was blindly staggering to his fall. He ​ aimed at honour in upholding the pope, in driving the Austrian tyrant from Italy, in attacking Prussia. The Austrian support on which he relied confidently in 1870 proved delusive, for he could obtain nothing from Austria unless he had Italy with him, and nothing from Italy without the evacuation of Rome. Even after the war with Prussia had actually broken out he refused Italian aid at the price of the abandonment of the city, a step which he nevertheless reversed hurriedly twenty days too late. With Napoleon fell the temporal power; but the French hierarchy still kept his gifts in the shape of the congregations, the pro-Catholic colonial policy, and a certain control of education. Of these privileges the Church was to be deprived a generation later. The Third Republic can never forget that it was to the support of the temporal sovereignty of the pope that Napoleon III. owed his empire and France her deepest humiliation.
On the withdrawal of the French garrison Rome was occupied by the troops of Victor Emmanuel. This monarch had always been a thorn in the side of the papacy. Under him Sardinia had adopted the Siccardi Laws of 1850, which had taken away the right of asylum and the jurisdiction of the Church over its own clergy. His reputation Italian Occupation of Rome. for sacrilege, increased five years later by the abolition of many monasteries, became notorious when the formation of the kingdom of Italy (1861) took away all the dominions of the pope except the patrimony of Peter, thereby reducing the papal provinces from twenty to five, and their population from over 3,000,000 to about 685,000. This act was followed in 1867 by the confiscation of church property, and on the 20th of September 1870 by the triumphant seizure of Rome.
If France was the right arm and Italy the scourge of the papacy under Pius IX., the Spanish-speaking countries were its obedient tools. Torn by civil wars, their harassed rulers sought papal recognition at a cost which more experienced governments would have refused. Thus Isabella II. of Spain in the concordat of The Papacy and the Spanish States. 1851 confirmed the exclusive privileges of the Roman religion and gave the control of all education to the Church; but after the Revolution of 1868 Spain departed for the first time from the principle of the unity of the faith by establishing liberty of worship, which was, however, a dead letter. On the Spanish model concordats were arranged with various Central and South American republics, perhaps the most ironclad being that concluded with Ecuador in 1862 (abrogated 1878).
Among the more stable governments of Europe reaction in favour of conservatism and religion after 1848 was used by clerical parties to obtain concordats more systematic and thoroughgoing than had been concluded even after 1814. Austria, for instance, although long the political mainstay of the papacy, had never Concordat with Austria, 1855. abandoned the broad lines of ecclesiastical policy laid down by Joseph II.; but the young Francis Joseph, seeking the aid of Rome in curbing heterogeneous nationalities, in 1855 negotiated a concordat whose paragraphs regarding the censorship, education and marriage were far-reaching. It was, moreover, the first document of the sort in which a first-class power recognized that the rights of the Church are based upon “divine institution and canon law,” not upon governmental concession. Violated by the Liberal constitution of 1867, which granted religious liberty, depotentiated by laws setting up lay jurisdiction over matrimonial cases and state control of education, it was abrogated in 1870 by Austria, who alleged that the proclamation of papal infallibility had so altered the status of one of the contracting parties that the agreement was void.
Passing over Portugal, the remaining European state which is Roman Catholic is Belgium. Torn from Austria by the clerical revolution of 1790, after many vicissitudes it was united in 1815 with Holland and placed under the rule of the Protestant William I., king of the United Netherlands. The constitutional guarantee of religious liberty had Belgium. from the outset been resisted by the powerful and resolute priesthood, supported by numerous sympathizers among the nobility. As the arbitrary king alienated the Liberal Catholics, who were still more or less under the spell of the French Revolution, the Catholic provinces took advantage of the upheavals of 1830 to form the independent kingdom of Belgium. Its Fundamental Law of 1831, conceived in the spirit of the English Whigs, and later imitated in the European countries, granted liberty of worship and of education. Strangely enough, this liberty meant increase of power for the Clericals; for besides putting an end to stringent state interference in the education of future priests, it made possible a free and far-reaching Catholic school system whose crown was the episcopally controlled university of Louvain (1834). The Education Act of 1842 led to the formation of the Liberal party, whose bond of union was resistance to clericalism, whose watchword was the “independence of the civil power.” The Catholics and Liberals were alternately in control until 1894, when the tenfold enlargement of the electorate broke down the Liberal party completely. The chief theme of contention, developed through many a noteworthy phase, has been the question of schools. In the half-century from 1830 to 1880 the cloisters likewise prospered and multiplied fivefold. The result of this evolution is that Belgium is to-day the most staunchly Catholic land north of the Alps.
In Holland, as in Belgium, the education question has been uppermost. Here, even after 1831 the Roman Catholics constituted three-eighths of the population. Allied with the Liberals against the orthodox Protestants, who were threatening religious liberty, the Catholics assisted in 1857 to establish a system of non-sectarian state schools, where attendance Holland. is not obligatory nor instruction gratuitous. Changing front, in 1868, in league with the orthodox, they tried to make these denominational; but as the Liberals defeated their attempt, they founded schools of their own.
In the non-Catholic countries of Europe during the reign of Pius IX., and in fact during the whole 19th century, the important gains of Rome were in strategic position rather than in numbers. The spread of toleration, which always favours minorities, broke down between 1845 and 1873 the Lutheran exclusiveness of Norway, Denmark Other non-Catholic Countries. and Sweden; but as yet the Catholics form a disappearing fraction of the population. In European Russia, as a result of the partitions of Poland under Catherine II. (1762–1796), about one-tenth of the people are Roman Catholics. The Ruthenians had united with Rome at Brest in 1596, forming a group of Uniates distinct from, the Poles, who belonged to the Latin rite. In spite of the assurances of Catherine, Russia has repeatedly persecuted the Ruthenian Uniates, in order to incorporate them into the Holy Orthodox Church; and she has occasionally taken drastic measures against the Poles, particularly after the revolts of 1830 and 1863. After more than a century of repression in 1905 the Edict of Toleration brought some relief.
The remarkable extension of the Catholic hierarchy by Pius IX. into Protestant lands, legally possible because of toleration, was in some cases made practicable because of immigration. Though this factor was perhaps not prominent in the case of Holland (1853) or Scotland (1878) it was Irish immigration which made it feasible in England (1850). For a time the Roman propaganda in England, which drew to itself High Churchmen like Newman and Manning, was viewed with apprehension; but though the Roman Catholic Church has grown greatly in influence in the country, the number of its adherents, in proportion to the growth of population, has not very greatly increased.
In the United States of America, however, the Catholic population has increased by leaps and bounds through immigration. The famines of the ’forties, with their subsequent political and economic difficulties, transferred to America millions of the Irish, whose genius for organization in politics has not fallen short of their zeal for religion. The German-speaking immigrants have also had a creditable share in the work of church extension, but the Italians have manifested no marked ardour for their faith. The losses in transplantation have been huge, but it is impossible to estimate them accurately, for even the ​ current figures for the Catholic population are based on detailed estimates rather than on an actual count.
Summing up the history of the papacy from the Congress of Vienna to the fall of the temporal power, one finds statistical gains in Protestant countries offset perhaps by relative losses in Catholic lands, both largely due to the closely related forces of toleration and immigration. While the hold of the popes on the States of the Church was constantly weakening, their power over the domestic policies of foreign governments was increasing; and the transition from autocracy to parliamentary rule accelerated this process, at least in non-Catholic territories. The unparalleled spread of ultramontane ideas (see Ultramontanism) brought about a centralization of authority at Rome such as would have appalled the 18th century. This centralization was, however, for the time not so much legal as doctrinal. In 1854 Pius IX. by his sole authority established a dogma (see Immaculate Conception); and the infallibility implied in this act was openly acknowledged in 1870 by the Council of the Vatican (see Vatican Council and Infallibility). Thus were the spiritual prerogatives of the papacy exalted in the very summer that the temporal power was brought low. (W. W. R.*)
V.—Period from 1870 to 1900.
The few months that elapsed between the 18th of July 1870 and the 18th of January 1871 witnessed four events that have been fraught with more consequence to the papacy than anything else that had affected that institution for the past three centuries. They were as follows: (1) The proclamation of the Infallibility of the Pope on the 18th of July 1870; (2) the fall of the Napoleonic empire and the establishment of the third French republic on the 4th of September 1870; (3) the occupation of Rome by the Italian forces on the 20th of September 1870, resulting in the incorporation of the remaining states of the Church in the kingdom of Italy; and (4) the foundation of the German Empire by the proclamation, on the 18th of January 1871, of the king of Prussia as hereditary German emperor. These changes, which so greatly disturbed the current of all European relations, could not fail to react upon the papal policy in various ways. They brought its existing tendencies into greater relief, set before it new aims and diverted it into new channels. Essential modifications could not, of course, be at once effected or even indicated in a power whose life-blood is tradition, and whose main strength has always lain in calmly abiding the issue of events and in temporizing. The eight years that Pius IX. was permitted to see after the loss of his temporalities entirely harmonize with this character. The veil that hides the negotiations which, during the closing months of the Franco-German War, were carried on between Bismarck and the pope, through the agency of Cardinal Bonnhose, has not yet been lifted, and perhaps never will be. According to Bismarck and the Temporal Power. Prince Bismarck’s own account of the matter, as given in his Gedanken und Erinnerungen, these negotiations were initiated by the chancellor, who. between the 5th and 9th of November 1870, entertained pourparlers with Archbishop Ledochowski on the question of the territorial interests of the pope. The chancellor, acting, as he himself says, in the spirit of the adage, “one hand washes the other,” proposed to that prelate that the pope should give earnest of the relations subsisting between him and Germany by influencing the French clergy in the direction of the conclusion of peace. The cool reception his endeavours met with, both at the hands of the French ecclesiastics as well as in Rome, satisfied Bismarck “that the papal hierarchy lacked either the power or the good will to afford Germany assistance of sufficient value to make it worth while giving umbrage to both the German Protestants and the ItaLIan national party, and risking a reaction of the latter upon the future relations between the two countries, which would be the inevitable result were Germany openly to espouse the papal cause in Rome.” These utterances are eminently characteristic. They show how far Bismarck was (even at the close of 1870) from comprehending the traditional policy of the papacy towards Germany and German interests, and how little he conceived it possible to employ the relations between the future empire and the Vatican as a point of departure for a successful and consistent ecclesiastical policy. Rome, in a certain sense, showed itself possessed of far greater foresight. The German politicians and the Prussian diplomatists accredited to Rome had worked too openly at undermining the papal hierarchy, and had veiled their sympathies for Piedmont far too lightly to lead the Vatican to expect, after the 20th of September 1870, a genuine and firm intervention on the part of Prussia on behalf of the temporal power of the Holy See. To satisfy the demands of Bismarck in November 1870 would have cost the Vatican more than it would ever have gained. It could neither afford to trifle with the sympathies of the French Catholics nor to interrupt the progress of those elements, which would naturally be a thorn in the side of the young German Empire, thus undo Bismarck’s work, and restore the Vatican policy to its pristine strength and vigour. It was soon to be perceived how carefully the Curia had made its calculations.
The address of the Catholic deputies to the emperor William in Versailles on the 18th of February 1871, pleading for the restoration of the States of the Church and the temporal sovereignty of the pope, and for the reconstitution of the Catholic group formed in the Prussian Landtag in 1860 as the Centrum or Centre Party in the new Reichstag (April 1871), must not be regarded as the origin but rather the immediate occasion of the Kulturkampf. The congratulations which the pope sent to the emperor William on receiving the announcement of the establishment of the German Empire (March 6, 1871) were a last exchange of civilities, and the abolition of the Catholic department in the Prussian ministry of public worship (July 8, 1871) quickly followed, together with the appointment of Falk as Kultusminister (Jan. 22, 1872), and the School Inspection Law of the 9th of February 1872.
On the 30th of January Bismarck took the opportunity of inveighing against the formation of the sectarian Centrum as being “one of the most monstrous phenomena in the world of politics,” and he left no room for doubt in the minds of his hearers that he regarded the leadership of Windthorst as constituting, in his eyes, a peril The Kulturkampf. to the national unity. In his Memoirs (ii. 126) he declares that the Kulturkampf was mainly initiated by him as a Polish question. This declaration, in view of the development of affairs, must appear as strange as the chancellor’s confession (Memoirs, ii. 129 seq.) that he endeavoured to persuade the emperor of the advantage of having a nuncio accredited to Berlin (in lieu of the Catholic department of public worship). The refusal of the emperor William to entertain this project shows that in such matters his judgment was more correct than that of his counsellor, and the incident proves that the latter had anything but a clear insight into the historical position. He was drifting about with no higher aim than a “hand-to-mouth” policy, whilst the Holy See could feel the superiority with which the consciousness of centuries of tradition had endowed it, and took full advantage of the mistakes of its opponent. The chancellor never realized the gravity of the onslaught which, with his Kulturkampf, he was making upon the conscience and liberty of his Catholic fellow citizens. He dealt with the great question at issue from the standpoint of the diplomatist, rather than from that of the statesman well versed in ecclesiastical history and possessing an insight into what it implies; and by his violent, inconsiderate action he unwittingly drove into the ranks of Ultramontanism the moderate elements of the Catholic population. This conflict, moreover, brought Ultramontanism the enormous advantage that, even after the abolition of the May Laws, it had still left to it a well-disciplined press, an admirable organization, and a network of interests and interested parties; and all these combined to make the Centrum the strongest and the most influential political party in Germany for the remainder of the 19th century. Owing to these circumstances, the rise and further development of the ​ Kulturkampf were viewed in Jesuit and Vatican circles with feelings of the utmost complacency.
The purely ecclesiastical policy of Pius IX. was guided by the earnest desire to see the doctrine of Papal Infallibility brought to universal recognition. The definition of the Immaculate Conception (1854) and the proclamation of the Syllabus (1864) were finger-posts pointing the way to the Council of 1870. The pope had been persuaded that the proclamation of the new dogma would be effected without difficulty and without discussion; and when the pronouncement actually met with opposition, he was both surprised and embittered. For a moment the idea was entertained of giving way to the opposition and deferring a decision in the matter, or, in the manner of the fathers in the Council of Trent, adjourning it to the Greek kalends. But the party that needed for its purposes an infallible pope readily persuaded Pius IX. that if the council broke up without arriving at a decision favourable to the papacy, this would be tantamount to a serious defeat of the Holy See and an open victory for the Gallican system. The consequence was the bull Pastor aeternus, which Pius IX. issued on the 15th of July. This did not by any means represent all the demands of the Jesuits, and it was couched in terms which appeared not unacceptable to the majority of the Catholics. The fact that the bishops were prepared to forego their opposition was not unknown in Rome. It was anticipated by the authorities. But in Germany, as also in France, the waves of anti-Infallibility were rolling so high, that the further development of events was viewed with no small concern. Under normal conditions, the situation could not fail to terminate favourably for the Vatican. That the Kulturkampf had followed so rapidly upon the war was the greatest piece of good fortune that could have befallen the Holy See. The war demanded both in Germany and France the sacrifice of all available energy and public spirit; while the Kulturkampf, by bringing into relief the question of the external existence of the Church, thrust all internal dogmatic interests and problems completely into the background. The egregious blunder in the May Laws was the punitive clauses directed against the inferior clergy. Instead of enlisting them as friends, the Prussian government contrived by wild and wanton persecution to make them its enemies. The open protection it accorded to the Old Catholic movement contributed in no small measure to estrange those influential elements which, whilst favouring the suppression of Ultramontane tendencies, desired no schism in the Church, and viewed with horror the idea of a National Church in Bismarck’s sense (see Old Catholics). Thus we find that the bitter years of the Kulturkampf extricated the Vatican from one of the most difficult situations in which it had ever been placed. Pius IX. could now fold his hands, so far as the future was concerned. It is well known that he fed on inspirations, and expected each day the advent of some supernatural occurrence which should bring about the triumph of the Church. In this frame of mind, on the 24th of June 1872, he addressed the German Leseverein, and referred to the stone that would soon fall from on high and crush the feet of the Colossus. Yet the stone has not fallen from the summit of the holy hill, and the Colossus of the German Empire has not crumbled into dust, which is more than can be said for the pope’s inspirations, which led him to expect the sudden withdrawal of the Italians from Rome, and a solution of the Roman question in the sense inspired by his visionary policy. The Holy See directed all its energies towards the solution of the problem; in the event of its proving to be insoluble, it would take care that it should remain a festering sore in the body of the monarchy. (For the Kulturkampf see further Germany: History.)
The documents of the Vatican Council which have been published since 1870 leave no room for doubt that the proclamation of Papal Infallibility was intended to be followed by a further declaration, to the effect that the doctrine of the temporal power of the pope should be regarded as a revealed article of faith; yet the advantage and necessity of the temporal power were not to be regarded as a revealed dogma properly speaking, but as a truth guaranteed by the doctrinal body of the Holy Church. These articles, contained in the 5th Scheme, and zealously championed by the sectaries of the Jesuit order, reveal the immediate object for which the council of 1869–1870 was convened. The resolutions were devised to save the situation, in view of the impending loss of the temporalities. No one could expect that Pius IX. would recognize the annexation of Rome by Italy. Rome, even in the 19th century, had been a spectator of many changes in the political world. It had seen more than one kingdom rise and fall. No wonder, then, that the Vatican, confronted by a new Italy, observed The Papacy and the new Italian Kingdom. a passive and expectant attitude, and sanctioned no jot or tittle that could infringe its rights or be interpreted as a renunciation of its temporal sovereignty. It was quite in keeping that Pius IX. availed himself to the full of the (for him) convenient clauses of the Italian Law of Guarantees (May 13, 1871), while refusing the civil list of three and a quarter million lire provided for his use, and inhibiting Italian Catholics from participating in the elections to the House of Deputies (nè elettori nè eletti). This step was regarded in Italy as a natural one. Although the Liberal record of the pope was a thing of the past, and his policy had, since Gaeta, become firmly identified with the reactionary policy of Antonelli, yet the early years of his pontificate were in such lively recollection as to allow of Pius IX.’s appearing to some extent in the light of a national hero. And rightly; for he had always had a warm heart for Italy; and had it not been for the anti-ecclesiastical policy of the house of Piedmont, he would not, in the ’sixties, have been wholly averse from reconciliation. The hitherto unpublished correspondence of the pope with Victor Emmanuel contains remarkable proofs in support of this contention, and a further corroboration can also be perceived in the conciliatory attitude of Pius IX. on the death of the king.
Pius died on the 7th of February 1878, only a few weeks later than his opponent. He had long passed the traditional years of Peter’s pontificate, had reigned longer than any previous wearer of the tiara, and had seen some brilliant days—days of illusory glory. On his death he left the Church shaken to its very foundations, and in feud with almost every government. In Italy the Holy See was surrounded by a hostile force, whose “prisoner” the lord of the Vatican declared himself to be. In Spain and Portugal, and also in Belgium, a Liberalism inimical to the Church was in power. Prussia, together with other German states, was in arms against pope and episcopate. In France the Conservative Monarchical party had just shown its inability to preserve the Crown, whilst the Republic had anchored itself firmly by denouncing the clergy as its enemy. There was hardly a sovereign or a government in Christendom against which Pius IX. had not either protested or against which he had not openly declared war. Such was the heritage that devolved upon Leo XIII. on his election on the 20th of February 1878.
Leo XIII. brought to his new dignity many qualities that caused his election to be sympathetically received. In contrast to his predecessor, he was a man of slow and calm deliberation, and it was natural to suppose that he was little, if at all, accessible to impulses of the moment or to the persuasions of his entourage. He was endowed Leo XIII. 1878–1903. with a certain scholastic erudition, and enjoyed the reputation of being a good Latinist. As nuncio in Brussels he had become acquainted with the trans-Alpine world, and had been initiated into the working of the machinery of modern politics and modern parliamentary government. The fact that he had for so long been absent from Rome afforded ground for the belief that he was not inclined to identify himself with any of the parties at the Vatican court. These were the considerations that had caused ​ the Moderates in the Sacred College to fix their eyes upon him. The appointment of Franchi as secretary of state was a bid for peace that was viewed by the Irreconcilables with ill-disguised vexation. The following years of Leo XIII.’s pontificate only tended to increase their dissatisfaction. The first care of the new pope was to pave the way for the restoration of peace with Russia and the German Empire, and it was owing to his patience, persistence and energy that these efforts for peace were crowned with success. In the case of Germany he made many concessions which appeared to the Zelanti to be excessive, and made even still greater ones to France and Russia, to the great distress of the Poles. But at last Leo XIII. could Leo XIII. as Diplomatist. boast not only of having re-established diplomatic relations with most of the powers, but also of having entered into a convention with the great powers of the North, which accorded him, in conjunction with the three emperors, a leading position as champion of the conservative interests of humanity. How proud Leo XIII. was of his importance in this position is shown by the beautiful encyclical, De civitatum constitutione christiana (“Immortale Dei” of Nov. 1, 1885), in which he adopted the strongest attitude against the principle of the sovereignty of the people (ex iis autem Pontificum præscriptis illud omnino intelligi necesse est, ortum publicæ potestatis a Deo ipso, non a multitudine repeti posse), refuting the notion that the principle of public power emanates from the will of the people alone (principatum non esse nisi populi voluntatem), and absolutely rejecting the sovereignty of the people as such. But this attitude was adopted by Leo XIII. not as an end but as a means. The real aims of his rule were disclosed in the second phase of his pontificate.
At its very commencement, the pope in his first encyclical (Easter 1878) proclaimed the necessity of a temporal hierarchy. This was at the time regarded merely as a formality imposed by circumstances, and one not to be seriously entertained; but it became more and more evident that the recovery of the temporalities was the real mainspring of Leo’s whole policy. In the negotiations with Germany, it was clearly seen that it was from that side that the pope expected intervention in favour of restitution; and, according to all appearances, Bismarck did for a while keep alive these representations, though with more tact than candour. After peace had been concluded, Leo, by the agency of Galimberti, reminded the chancellor of the settlement of the Roman question. Bismarck replied that he was “unaware of the existence of any such question.” The two visits paid by Emperor William II. to the Vatican could not fail to remove any doubts in the mind of the pope as to the fact that Germany did not dream of giving him back Rome. The Austro-German-Italian triple alliance was a dire blow to his expectations, and Crispi’s policy with its irritating and galling pin-pricks caused the cup to overflow.
Thus slowly, but yet deliberately, between 1887 and 1893, a transformation took place in Leo’s spirit and policy, and with it was brought about one of the most momentous changes in the attitude of the Church towards the problems of the times and their impelling forces. A rapprochement with France inevitably entailed not only an Leo XIII. and the French Republic. alliance with modern democracy, but also a recognition of its principles and aims. In Rome there was no room for both pope and king. The note of the pope to Rampolla of the 8th of October 1895, in consequence of the celebrations on the 20th of September, declared, in terms more decided than any that had until then been uttered, that the papacy required a territorial sovereignty in order to ensure its full independence, and that its interests were therefore incompatible with the existence of the kingdom of Italy as then constituted. The inevitable consequences ensued. Italy regarded the pope more than ever as a foe within its walls; and the policy of the pope, as regards Italy, aimed at replacing the kingdom by one or more republics, in which the temporal power should, in some form or other, find a place. But the continuance of the Republic in Paris was a condition precedent to the establishment of a republic in Rome, and the first had no chance of existence if the democracy in France did not remain in power. The result was the policy of the Ralliement. Instructions were given to the French Catholics to break with monarchical principles, and both externally and internally to cleave to the Republic as representing the best form of constitutional government. In carrying out the regime of Rampolla, which was, in every respect, a bad imitation of that of Antonelli, the Vatican left no stone unturned in its attempt to coerce the conscience of the French royalists; it did not even stop at dishonour, as was evidenced by the case of the unhappy Mgr d’Hulst, who, in order to evade the censorship of his pamphlet on Old Testament criticism, had to abandon both his king and his principles, only to die in exile of a broken heart. The case was characteristic of the whole Catholic monarchical party, which, owing to the pope’s interference in French politics, became disintegrated and dissolved, a fate that was all the more painful seeing that the Ralliement failed to influence the course of events. The “atheistic” Republic did not for one moment think of putting on sackcloth, or even of giving the Church a single proof of esteem and sympathy.
In one respect it was impossible for the papacy to continue on the path it had taken. In his first encyclical, Leo XIII. had sounded the clarion for battle against the Social Democracy; his encyclical Novarum rerum endeavoured to show the means to be employed, mainly in view of the condition of things in Belgium, for solving The Pope and Social Democracy. the social question on Christian lines. But the Christian Democracy, which, starting in Belgium and France, had now extended its activity to Italy, Austria and Germany, and was striving to arrive at this solution, degenerated everywhere into a political party. The leaders of this party came into close contact with the Social Democrats, and their relations became so cordial that Social Democracy everywhere declared the “Démocratie Chrétienne” to be its forerunner and pioneer. The electioneering alliances, which were everywhere in vogue, but particularly in Germany, between the Catholics and popular party and the Social Democrats, throw a lurid light upon the character of a movement that certainly went far beyond the intentions of the pope, but which it was now difficult to undo or to hold in check. For it is the essence of the matter that there were further considerations going far beyond the Roman question and forcing the Curia to adhere to the sovereignty of the people.
The external rehabilitation of the Church had become, in many points, a fait accompli, but, internally, events had not kept pace with it. Catholic romanticism had withered away in France, as it had in Germany. “Liberal Catholicism,” which was its offspring, had died with Montalembert, after being placed under a ban by Alienation of the Educated Middle Class. Rome. The national religious movement, associated in Italy with the great names of Rosmini and Gioberti, had similarly been disavowed and crushed. The development of the last decade of the 19th century had clearly shown that the educated bourgeoisie, the tiers état, in whose hands the supreme power had since 1848 become vested throughout Europe, was either entirely lost to the Church or, at all events, indifferent to what were called Ultramontane tendencies. The educated bourgeoisie, which controls the fields of politics, science, finance, administration, art and literature, does not trouble itself about that great spiritual universal monarchy which Rome, as heir of the Caesars, claimed for the Vatican, and to which the Curia of to-day still clings. This bourgeoisie and the modern state that it upholds stand and fall with the motion of a constitutional state, whose magna carta is municipal and spiritual liberty, institutions with which the ideas of the Curia are in direct conflict. The more the hope of being able to regain these middle classes of society disappeared, the more decidedly did the Curia perceive that it must seek the support and the regeneration of its power in the steadily growing democracy, and endeavour through the medium of universal suffrage to secure the influence which this new alliance was able to offer.
The pontificate of Leo XIII. in its first phase aimed at preserving a certain balance of power. Whilst not openly repelling ​ the tendencies of the Jesuits, Leo yet showed himself well disposed towards, and even amenable to, views of a diametrically opposite kind; and as soon as the Vatican threw itself into the arms of France, and bade farewell to the idea of a national Italy, the policy ofThe Papacy and the Modern Democracy. equilibrium had to be abandoned. The second phase in Leo’s policy could only be accomplished with the aid of the Jesuits, or rather, it required the submission of the ecclesiastical hierarchy to the mandates of the Society of Jesus. The further consequence was that all aspirations were subjected to the thraldom of the Church. The pontificate of Leo XIII. is distinguished by the great number of persecutions, prosecutions and injuries inflicted upon Catholic savants, from the prosecution of Antonio Rosmini down to the proscription directed against the heads of the American Church. Episodes, such as the protection so long extended to the Leo Taxil affair, and to the revelations of Diana Vaughan (the object of which last was to bring Italian freemasonry and its ostensible work, the unity of Italy, into discredit), together with the attitude of the Ultramontane press in the Dreyfus affair, and later towards England, the invigoration of political agitation by the Lourdes celebration and by anti-Semitism, were all manifestations that could not raise the “system” in the estimation of the cultured and civilized world. Perhaps even more dangerous was the employment of the whole ecclesiastical organization, and of Catholicism generally, for political purposes.
No one will be so foolish or so unjust as to hold Leo XIII. responsible for the excesses committed by the subordinate departments of his government, in disclosing prosecuting and sometimes even fraudulently misrepresenting his aims and ends. But all these details, upon which it is not necessary to dwell, are overshadowed beyond all doubt by the one great fact that the ecclesiastical regime had not only taken under its wing the solution of social questions, but also claimed that political action was within the proper scope of the Church, and, moreover, arrogated to itself the right of interfering by means of “Directives” with the political life of nations. This was nothing new. for as early as 1215 the English barons protested against it. But the weakening of the papacy had allowed this claim to lapse for centuries. To have revived it, and to have carried it out as far as is possible, was the work of Leo XIII.
It would be both presumptuous and premature to pass a final verdict upon the value and success of a policy to which, whatever else be said, must be accorded a certain meed of praise for its daring. Even in 1892 Spüller, in his essay upon Lamennais, pointed out how the latest evolution of Catholicism was taking the course indicated by Lamennais in his Livre du peuple (1837) and how the hermit of “La Chênaie,” who departed this life in bitter strife with Rome, declared himself to be the actual precursor of modern Christian Socialism. He hinted that the work of Leo XIII. was, in his eyes, merely a new attempt to build up afresh the theocracy of the middle ages upon the ruins of the old monarchies, utilizing to this end the inexperience of the young and easily beguiled democracies of the dawning 20th century. To comprehend these views aright, we must first remember that what in the first half of the 19th century, and also in the days of Lamennais, was understood by Democracy was not coincident with the meaning of this expression as it was afterwards used, and as the Christian Socialists understood it. Down to 1848, and even still later, “Democracy” was used to cover the whole mass of the people, pre-eminently represented by the broad strata of the bourgeoisie; in 1900 the Democratic party itself meant by this term the rule of the labouring class organized as a nation, which, by its numerical superiority, thrust aside all other classes, including the bourgeoisie, and excluded them from participation in its rule. In like manner it would be erroneous to confuse the sense of the expression as it obtains on the continent of Europe with what is understood under this term in England and America. In this latter case the term “Democracy,” as applied to the historical development of Great Britain and the United States, denotes a constitutional state in which every citizen has rights proportionate to his energy and intelligence. The socialistic idea, with which the “Démocratie Chrétienne” had identified itself both in France and Belgium, regards numbers as the centre of gravity of the whole state organism. As a matter of fact it recognizes as actual citizens only the labourer, or, in other words, the proletariat.
On surveying the situation, certain weak points in the policy of the Vatican under Leo XIII. were manifest even to a contemporary observer. They might be summed up as follows: (1) An unmistakable decline of religious fervour in church life. (2) The intensifying and nurturing of all the passions and questionable practices which are so easily encouraged by practical politics, and are incompatible in almost all points with the priestly office. (3) An ever-increasing displacement of all the refined, educated and nobler elements of society by such as are rude and uncultured, by what, in fact, may be styled the ecclesiastical “Trottori.” (4) The naturally resulting paralysis of intelligence and scientific research, which the Church either proscribed or only sullenly tolerated. (5) The increasing decay and waxing corruption of the Romance nations, and the fostering of that diseased state of things which displayed itself in France in so many instances, such as the Dreyfus case, the anti-Semitic movement, and the campaign for and against the Assumptionists and their newspaper, the Croix. (6) The increasing estrangement of German and Anglo-Saxon feeling. As against these, noteworthy reasons might be urged in favour of the new development. It might well be maintained that the faults just enumerated were only cankers inseparable from every new and great movement, and that these excrescences would disappear in course of time, and the whole movement enter upon a more tranquil path. Moreover, in the industrial districts of Germany, for example, the Christian industrial movement, supported by Protestants and Catholics alike, had achieved considerable results, and proved a serviceable means of combating the seductions of Socialism. Finally, the Church had reminded the wealthy classes of their duties to the sick and toilers, and by making the social question its own it had gone a long way towards permeating all social and political conditions with the spirit of Christianity. (F. X. K.)
VI.—Period from 1900 to 1910.
On the 3rd of March 1903 Leo XIII. celebrated his Jubilee with more than ordinary splendour, the occasion bringing him rich tributes of respect from all parts of the world. Catholic; and non-Catholic; on the 20th of July following he died. The succession was expected to fall to Leo’s secretary of state, Cardinal Rampolla; but he was credited with having inspired the French sympathies of the late pope; Austria exercised its right of veto (see Conclave, ad fin.), and on the 8th of August, Giuseppe Sarto, who as cardinal patriarch of Venice had shown a friendly disposition towards the Italian government, was elected pope. He took as his secretary of state Cardinal RaphaelPius X. Merry del Val, a Spaniard of English birth and education, well versed in diplomacy, but of well-known ultramontane tendencies. The new pope was known to be no politician, but a simple and saintly priest, and in some quarters there were hopes that the attitude of the papacy towards the Italian kingdom might now be changed. But the name he assumed, Pius X., was significant; and, even had he had the will, it was soon clear that he had not the power to make any material departure from the policy of the first “prisoner of the Vatican.” What was even more important, the new regime at the Vatican soon made itself felt in the relations of the Holy See with the world of modern thought and with the modern conception of the state.
The new pope’s motto, it is said, was “to establish all things in Christ” (instaurare omnia in Christo); and since, ex hypothesi, he himself was Christ’s vicar on earth, the working out of this principle meant in effect the extension and consolidation of the papal authority and, as far as possible, an end to the compromises by means of which the papacy had sought to make friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness. It was this spirit which informed such decrees as that on “mixed marriages”; ​ (Ne temere) of 1907, which widened still further the social gulf between Catholics and Protestants (see Marriage: Canon Law), or the refusal to allow the French bishops to accept the Associations Law passed by the French government after the denunciation of the concordat and the separation of Church and State (see France: History): better that the Church in France should sink into more than apostolic poverty than that a tittle of the rights of the Holy See should be surrendered. Above all it was this spirit that breathed through every line of the famous encyclical, Pascendi gregis, directed against the “Modernists” (see Roman Catholic Church: History), which denounced with bitter scorn and irony those so-called Catholics who dared to attempt to reconcile the doctrine of the Church with the results of modern science, and who, presumptuously disregarding the authority of the Holy See, maintained “the absurd doctrine that would make of the laity the factor of progress in the Church.” That under Pius X. the papacy had abandoned none of its pretensions to dominate consciences, not of Catholics only, was again proved in 1910 when, at the very moment when the pope was praising the English people for the spirit of tolerance which led the British government to introduce a bill to alter the form of the Declaration made by the sovereign on his accession into a form inoffensive to Roman Catholics, he was remonstrating with the government of Spain for abrogating the law forbidding the Spanish dissident churches to display publicly the symbols of the Christian faith or to conduct their services otherwise than semi-privately.
In pursuance of the task of strengthening the Holy See, the Vatican policy under Pius X. was not merely one of defiance towards supposed hostile forces within and without the Church; it was also strenuous in pushing on the work of internal organization and reform. In 1904 a commission of cardinals was appointed to undertake the stupendous Church Reforms. Reforms of Pius X. task of codifying the canon law (see Canon Law), and in 1908 an extensive reorganization of the Curia was carried out, in order to conform its machinery more nearly to present-day needs (see Curia Romana). In taking England, the United States and other non-Catholic states from under the care of the Congregation of the Propaganda, the pope raised the status of the Roman Catholic Church in those countries. All these changes tended to consolidating the centralized authority of the papacy. Other reforms were of a different character. One of the earliest acts of the new pontificate was to forbid the use in the services of the Church of any music later than Palestrina, a drastic order justified by the extreme degradation into which church music had fallen in Italy, but in general honoured rather in the spirit than in the letter. More important was the appointment in 1907 of a commission, under the presidency of Abbot Gasquet, to attempt the restoration of the pure text of the Vulgate as St Jerome wrote it.
Such activities might well be taken as proof that the papacy at the outset of the 20th century possessed a vigour which it was far from possessing a hundred years earlier. Under Pius VI. and Pius VII. the papacy had reached the lowest depths of spiritual and political impotence since the Reformation, and the belief was even widespread Causes of the Revival of the Papacy. that the prisoner of Fontainebleau would be the last of the long line of St Peter’s successors. This weakness was due not to attacks from without—for orthodox Protestantism had long since lost its aggressive force—but to disruptive tendencies within the Church; the Enlightenment of the 18th century had sapped the foundations of the faith among the world of intellect and fashion; the development of Gallicanism and Febronianism threatened to leave the Holy See but a shadowy pre-eminence over a series of national churches, and even to obliterate the frontier line between Catholicism and Protestantism. It was the Revolution, which at one moment seemed finally to have engulfed the papacy, which in fact preserved it; Febronianism, as a force to be seriously reckoned with, perished in the downfall of the ecclesiastical principalities of the old Empire; Gallicanism perished with the constitutional Church in France, and its principles fell into discredit with a generation which associated it with the Revolution and its excesses. In the reaction that followed the chaos of the Revolutionary epoch men turned to the papacy as alone giving a foothold of authority in a confused and quaking world. The Romantic movement helped, with its idealization of a past but vaguely realized and imperfectly understood, and Chateaubriand heralded in the Catholic reaction with his Génie du Christianisme (1801) a brilliant if superficial attack on the encyclopaedists and their neo-Paganism, and a glorification of the Christian Church as supreme not only in the regions of faith and morals, but also in those of intellect and art. More weighty was the Du Pape of Joseph de Maistre (1819), closely reasoned and fortified with a wealth of learning, which had an enormous influence upon all those who thought that they saw in the union of “altar and throne” the palladium of society. The Holy Empire was dead, in spite of the pope’s protest at Vienna against the failure to restore “the centre of political unity”; Joseph de Maistre’s idea was to set up the Holy See in its place. To many minds the papacy thus came to represent a unifying principle, as opposed to the disruptive tendencies of Liberalism and Nationalism, and the papal monarchy came to be surrounded with a new halo, as in some sort realizing that ideal of a “federation of the world” after which the age was dimly feeling.
So far as politics are concerned this sentiment was practically confined to certain classes, which saw their traditional advantages threatened by the revolutionary tendencies of the times; and the alliance between the throne and the altar, by confusing the interests of the papacy with those of political parties, tended—as Leo XIII. had the wit to The Papacy and Modern Thought. realize—to involve the fate of the one with that of the other, as in France. Far stronger was the appeal made by the authoritative attitude of the papacy to all those who were disturbed by the scientific spirit of the age: the ceaseless questioning of all the foundations on which faith and morality had been supposed to rest. Biblical criticism, by throwing doubt on the infallibility of the Scriptures, was undermining the traditional foundation of orthodox Protestantism, and most of the Protestant Churches, divided between antagonistic tendencies, were ceasing to speak with a certain voice. To logical but timid minds, like that of J. H. Newman, which could not be content with a compromise with truth, but feared to face ultimate realities, the rigidly authoritative attitude of Rome made an irresistible appeal. The process, maybe, from the point of view of those outside, was to make a mental wilderness and call it peace; but from the papal point of view it had a double advantage: it attracted those in search of religious certainty, it facilitated the maintenance of its hold over the Catholic democracy. The methods by which it has sought to maintain this hold are criticized in the article Ultramontanism.
There can also be little doubt—though the Curia itself would not admit it—that the spiritual power of the papacy has been greatly increased by the loss of the temporal power. The pope is no longer a petty Italian prince who, in order to preserve his dominions, was necessarily involved in the tangle of European diplomacy; he is the monarch The Loss of Temporal Power. of a vast, admirably organized, spiritual world-empire, and when—as must needs happen—the overlapping of the spiritual and temporal spheres brings him into conflict with a secular power, his diplomacy is backed, wherever Catholic sentiment is strong, by a force which the secular power has much difficulty in resisting; for in spiritual matters (and the term covers a wide field) the Catholic, however loyal to his country he may be, must obey God, whose vicegerent is the pope, rather than man. Even Bismarck, in the end, had to “go to Canossa.”
It is, indeed, possible to exaggerate this power. The fact that the Vatican presents a great force hostile to and obstructive of certain characteristic tendencies of modern life and thought has necessarily raised up a powerful opposition even in countries traditionally Catholic. France no longer deserves the title of eldest daughter of the Church; the Catholicism of Italy is largely superficial; even Spain has shown signs of restiveness. On the ​ other hand, the great opportunity now open to the papacy on its spiritual side, is proved by the growing respect in which it has been held since 1870 in the English-speaking countries, where Roman Catholics are in a minority and their Church is in no sense established. Without doubt, opinion has been influenced in these countries by the fact that Rome has not been sufficiently strong to exercise any disturbing influence on the general course of national affairs, while in both its conspicuous members set a high example of private and civic conduct.  (W. A. P.)
List of the Pontiffs of the Roman Church.
| Date of Election  or Consecration. | | Date of Death. | Date of Death. |
| c. 41 | B. Petrus | 29 vi, | c. 65–67 |
| c. 67 | S. Linus | † 23 ix, | c. 79 |
| c. 79 | S. Cletus (Anencletus) | † 26 iv, | c. 91 |
| c. 91 | S. Clemens I | † 23 ix, | c. 100 |
| c.100 | S. Evaristus | † 26 x, | c. 109 |
| c.109 | S. Alexander | †  3 v, | c. 119 |
| c.119 | S. Sixtus (Xystus) | †  6 iv, | c. 126 |
| ? 128 | S. Telesphorus | †  5 iv, | c. 137 |
| c.138 | S. Hyginus | † 11 i, | c. 142 |
| c.142 | S. Pius | † 11 vii, | c. 156 |
| c.157 | S. Anicetus | † 17 iv, | 167 |
| c.168 | S. Soter | † 22 iv, | c. 176 |
| 177 | S. Eleutherus | † 26 v, | 189 |
| c.190 | S. Victor I. | † 20 iv, | c. 202 |
| c.202 | S. Zephyrinus | † 26 viii, | 217 |
| 218 | S. Calixtus I. | † 14 x, | 222 |
| 222 | S. Urbanus I. | † 25 v, | 230 |
| 230 | S. Pontianus res. | 28 ix, | 235 |
| 235 (21 xi, ord.) | S. Anterus | †  3 i, | 236 |
| 236 | S. Fabianus | † 20 i, | 250 |
| 251 (iii. el.) | S. Cornelius | † 14 ix, | 253 |
| 253 el. | S. Lucius | †  5 iii, | 254 |
| 254 (12 v ?, el.) | S. Stephanus I. | †  2 viii, | 257 |
| 257 viii | S. Sixtus (Xystus) II. | †  6 viii, | 258 |
| 259 22 vii, el, | S. Dionysius | † 26 xii, | 268 |
| 269 5 i, el. | S. Felix | † 30 xii, | 274 |
| 275 c. 5 i | S. Eutychianus | †  8 xii, | 283 |
| 283 17 xii | S. Gaius | † 22 iv, | 296 |
| 296 30 vi | S. Marcellinus | † (? 25 x), | 304 |
| 307 el. | S. Marcellus | † 15 i, | 309 |
| 309 iv, el. | S. Eusebius | † 17 viii, | 309 |
| 310 2 vii | S. Melchiades (Miltiades) | † 11 i, | 314 |
| 314 31 i | S. Sylvester | † 31 xii, | 335 |
| 336 18 i | S. Marcus | †  7 x, | 336 |
| 337 6 ii, el. | S. Julius | † 12 iv, | 352 |
| 352 22 v | S. Liberius | † 24 ix, | 366 |
| 366 ix | S. Damasus | † 10 xii, | 384 |
| 384 xii | S. Siricius | † 26 xi, | 398 |
| 398 xi–xii | S. Anastasius I. † vert. anno | | 401–2 |
| 402 | S. Innocentius I. | † 12 iii, | 417 |
| 417 18 iii, cs. | S. Zosimus | † 26 xii, | 418 |
| 418 28 xii | S. Bonifacius I. | †  4 ix, | 422 |
| 422 c. 10 ix | S. Coelestinus I. | † 26 Vii, | 432 |
| 432 31 vii | S. Sixtus III. | † 18 viii, | 440 |
| 440 viii, el. | S. Leo I. | † 10 xi, | 461 |
| 461 12 xi, cs. | S. Hilarus | † 21 ii, | 468 |
| 468 25 ii, cs. | S. Simplicius | †  2 iii, | 483 |
| 483 | S. Felix III. | † c. 25 ii, | 492 |
| 492 1 iii, cs. | S. Gelasius | † 19 xi, | 496 |
| 496 c. 24 xi. cs. | S. Anastasius II. † et sep. | 19 xi, | 498 |
| 498 22 xi | S. Symmachus † et sepult. | 19 vii, | 514 |
| 514 20 vii, cs. | S. Hormisdas † sepult. | 7 viii, | 523 |
| 523 13 viii | S. Joannes I. | † 18 v, | 526 |
| 526 12 vii, cs. | S. Felix IV. † sepel. | 12 x (?) | 530 |
| 530 17 ix, el. | Bonifacius II. † sepul. | 17 x, | 532 |
| 532 31 xii, cs. | Joannes II. † sepel. | 27 v, | 535 |
| 535 3 vi, cs. | S. Agapetus I. | † 22 iv, | 536 |
| 536 8 vi, cs. | S. Silverius, exul † sepel. | 20 vi, | c. 538 |
| 537 29 iii, cs. | Vigilus | †  7 v i, | 555 |
| 555 vi, cs. | Pelagius I. | †  3 iii, | 560 |
| 560 14 vii, cs. | Joannes III. † sepel. | 13 vii, | 573 |
| 574 3 vi, cs. | Benedictus I. | † 31 vii, | 578 |
| 578 27 xi, cs.i | Pelagius II. † sepel. | 6 ii, | 590 |
| 590 3 ix, cs. | S. Gregorius I. † sepel. | 12 iii, | 604 |
| 604 13 ix, cs. | Sabinianus | † 22 ii, | 606 |
| 607 19 ii, cs. | Bonifacius III. † sepel. | 12 xi, | 607 |
| 608 15 ix, cs. | S. Bonifacius IV. † sepel. | 25 v, | 615 |
| 615 19 x: cs. | S. Deusdedit † sepel. | 8 xi, | 618 |
| 619 23 xii, cs. | Bonifacius V. † sepel. | 25 x, | 625 |
| 625 3 xi, cs. | Honorius † sepel. | 12 x, | 638 |
| 640 28 v, cs. | Severinus † sepel. | 2 viii, | 640 |
| 640 25 xii, cs. | Joannes IV. † sepel. | 12 x, | 642 |
| 642 24 xi, cs. | Theodorus I. † sepel. | 14 v, | 649 |
| 649 vi–vii, cs. | S. Martinus † exul. | 16 ix, | 655 |
| 654 10 viii, cs. | S. Eugenius I. † sepel. | 3 vi, | 657 |
| 657 30 vii, cs. | S. .Vitalianus † sepel. | 27 i, | 672 |
| 672 11 iv, cs. | Adeodatus † sepel. | 16 vi, | 676 |
| 676 2 xi, cs. | Donus † sepel. | 11 iv, | 678 |
| 678 vi–vii, cs. | S. Agatho † sep. | 10 i, | 681 |
| 682 17 viii, cs. | S. Leo II. † sep. | 3 vii, | 683 |
| 684 26 vi; cs. | S. Benedictus II. † sep. | 8 v, | 685 |
| 685 23 vii, cs. | Joannes V. | †  2 viii, | 686 |
| 686 21 x, cs. | Conon † sepel. | 22 ix, | 687 |
| 687 x–xii, el. | S. Sergius I. † sepel. | 8 ix, | 701 |
| 701 3 0 x, cs. | Joannes VI. † sepel. | 10–11 i, | 705 |
| 705 1 iii, cs. | Joannes VII. † sep. | 18 x, | 707 |
| 708 18 i (?) | Sisinnius † sep. | 7 ii, | 708 |
| 708 25 iii, cs. | Constantinus I. | † 9 iv, | 715 |
| 715 19 v, cs. | S. Gregorius II. † sepel. | 11 ii. | 731 |
| 731 11 ii, el. | S. Gregorius III. † sep. | 29 xi, | 741 |
| 741 3 xii, cs. | S. Zacharias † sep. | 15 iii, | 752 |
| 752 iii, el. | Stephanus II. † ex. | iii, | 752 |
| 752 ex. iii, el. | Stephanus III. † sep. | 26 iv, | 757 |
| 757 29 v, cs. | S. Paulus I. | † 28 vi, | 767 |
| 767 5 vii, cs. | Constantinus II. depos. | 6 viii, | 768 |
| 768 7 viii, cs. | Stephanus IV. | † 1 ii, | 772 |
| 772 1 ii, el. | Hadrianus I. | † 25 xii, | 795 |
| 795 26 xii, el. | S. Leo III. † sep. | 12 vi, | 816 |
| 816 vi, el. | Stephanus V. | † 24 i, | 817 |
| 817 25 i, cs. | S. Paschalis I. | † c. 14 v, | 824 |
| 824 v–vi | Eugenius II. | † viii, | 827 |
| 827 | Valentinus † ex ann. | | 827 |
| 827 ex. ann. | Gregorius IV. | † i, | 844 |
| 844 i | Sergius II. | † 27 i, | 847 |
| 847 10 iv, cs. | S. Leo IV. | † 17 vii, | 855 |
| 855 29 ix, cs. | Benedictus III. | † 7 iv, | 858 |
| 858 24 iv, cs. | S. Nicolaus I. | † 13 xi, | 867 |
| 867 14 xii, cs. | Hadrianus II. | † c. 1 xii, | 872 |
| 872 14 xii | Joannes VIII. | † 15 xii, | 882 |
| 882 c. xii | Marinus I. | † c. v, | 884 |
| 884 c. v, el. | Hadrianus III. | † c. viii - ix, | 885 |
| 885 c. ix, el. | Stephanus VI. | † c. ix, | 891 |
| 891 c. ix | Formosus | † 23 v: | 896 |
| 896 c. 23 v, el. | Bonifacius VI. | † c. 6 vi, | 896 |
| 896 a. 11 vi,intrus | Stephanus VI. (VII.) amot. | †  vii, | 897 |
| 897 vii, cs. | Romanus | † c. xi, | 897 |
| 897 c. xi | Theodorus II. † post 20 dies | |
| 898 c. vi, cs. | Joannes IX. | † vii, | 900 |
| 900 6–26 vii | Benedictus IV. | † viii, | 903 |
| 903 c. viii | Leo V. | † c. ix, | 903 |
| 903 c. x | Christophorus amot. | i, | 904 |
| 904 29 i, cs. | Sergius III. | † p 4 ix, | 911 |
| 911 c. ix, cs. | Anastasius | † c. xi, | 913 |
| 913 c. xi, CS. | Lando | † c. v, | 914 |
| 914 15 v, cs. | Joannes X. † in carcere | | 929 |
| 928 c. vii, cs. | Leo VI. | † c. ii: | 929 |
| 929 c. ii. cs. | Stephanus VIII. | † 15 iii, | 931 |
| 931 c. iii, cs. | Joannes XI. | † i, | 936 |
| 936 a. 9 i, cs. | Leo VI. (VII.) | † vii, | 939 |
| 939 a. 19 vii, cons. | Stephanus IX. | † c. x, | 942 |
| 942 a. 11 xi, cons. | Marinus II. | † c. iv, | 946 |
| 946 c. iv | Agapetus II. | † c. 8 xi, | 955 |
| 955 c. xi, cs. | Joannes XII.(amot. 4 xii, 963) | † 14 v, | 964 |
| 963 4 xii, el. | Leo VIII. | † c. iii, | 965 |
| 964 v, el. | Benedict V. exul | | 965 |
| 965 1 x, cs. | Joannes XIII. | † 6 ix . | 972 |
| 973 19 i, cs. | Benedict VI. † occis. | vii, | 974 |
| 974 x | Benedictus VII. | † x, | 983 |
| 983 ex. ann. | Joannes XIV. † occis. | 20 viii, | 984 |
| 984 | Bonifacius VII. | † vii, | 985 |
| 985 1 ix, cs. | Joannes XV. † in. | iv, | 996 |
| 996 3 v: cs. | Gregorius V. | † ii, | 999 |
| 999 in. iv, cs. | Sylvester II. (Gerbert) | † 12 v, | 1003 |
| 1003 13 vi, cs. | Joannes XVII. (Sicco) | † 7 xii, | 1003 |
| 1003 25 xii, cs. | Joannes XVIII. | †  vi, | 1009 |
| 1009 p. 20 vi, cs. | Sergius IV. | † 16–22 vi, | 1012 |
| 1012 22 vi, cs. | Benedict VIII. | †  7 iv, | 1024 |
| 1024 24 vi–15 vii,cs. | Joannes XIX. | †   i, | 1033 |
| 1033 i, cs. | Benedictus IX. resignat. | 1 v, | 1045 |
| 1045 1 v, intr. | Gregorius VI. resignat. | 20 xii, | 1046 |
| 1046 25 xii, CS. | Clemens II. | †  9 x, | 1047 |
| 1048 17 vii, cs. | Damasus II. | †  9 viii, | 1048 |
| 1049 12 ii, cs. | S. Leo IX. | † 19 iv, | 1054 |
| 1055 13 iv, cs. | Victor II. | † 28 vii, | 1057 |
| 1057 2 viii, el. | Stephanus X. | † 29 iii, | 1058 |
| 1058 5 iv, el. | Benedict X. expuls. c. | i, | 1059  ​ |
| 1059 24 i, cs. | Nicolaus II. | † 27 vii, | 1061 |
| 1061 1 x, el. | Alexander II. | † 21 iv, | 1073 |
| 1073 22 iv, el. | S. Gregorius VII. | † 25 v, | 1085 |
| 1086 24 v, el. | Victor III. | † 16 ix, | 1087 |
| 1088 12 iii, el. | Urbanus II. | † 29 vii, | 1099 |
| 1099 13 viii, el. | Paschalis II. | † 21 i, | 1118 |
| 1118 24 i, el. | Gelasius II. | † 29 i, | 1119 |
| 1119 2 ii, el. | Calixtus II. | † 13–14 xii, | 1124 |
| 1124 15–16 xii, el. | Honorius II. | † 14 ii, | 1130 |
| 1130 14 ii, el. | Innocentius II. | † 24 ix, | 1143 |
| 1143 26 ix, el. | Coelestinus II. | †  8 iii, | 1144 |
| 1144 12 iii, el. | Lucius II. | † 15 ii, | 1145 |
| 1145 15 ii, el. | Eugenius III. | †  8 vii, | 1153 |
| 1153 12 vii, cs. | Anastasius IV. | †  3 xii, | 1154 |
| 1154 4 xii, el. | Hadrianus IV. | †  1 ix, | 1159 |
| 1159 7 ix, el. | Alexander III. | † 30 viii, | 1181 |
| 1181 1 ix | Lucius III. | † 25 xi, | 1185 |
| 1185 25 Xi | Urbanus III. | † 20 x, | 1187 |
| 1187 21 x, el. | Gregorius VIII. | † 17 xii, | 1187 |
| 1187 19 xii, el. | Clemens III. | †iii, | 1191 |
| 1191 30 iii, el. | Coelestinus III. | †  8 i, | 1198 |
| 1198 8 i | Innocentius III. | † 16 vii, | 1216 |
| 1216 18 vii | Honorius III. | † 18 iii, | 1227 |
| 1227 19 iii | Gregorius IX. | † 21 viii, | 1241 |
| 1241 x | Coelestinus IV. | † 17–18 xi, | 1241 |
| 1243 25 vi | Innocentius IV. | † 13 xii, | 1254 |
| 1254 25 xii | Alexander IV. | † 25 v, | 1261 |
| 1261 29 viii | Urbanus IV. | †  2 x, | 1264 |
| 1265 5 ii | Clemens IV. | † 29 xi, | 1268 |
| 1271 1 ix | Gregorius X. | † 11 i, | 1276 |
| 1276 23 ii cs. | Innocentius V. | † 22 vi, | 1276 |
| 1276 12 vii, el. | Hadrianus V. | † 17 viii, | 1276 |
| 1276 13 ix | Joannes XXI. | † 16 v, | 1277 |
| 1277 25 xi | Nicolaus III. | † 22 viii, | 1280 |
| 1281 22 ii | Martinus IV. | † 28 iii, | 1285 |
| 1285 2 iV | Honorius IV. | †  3 iv, | 1287 |
| 1288 15 ii | Nicolaus IV. | †  4 iv, | 1292 |
| 1294 5 vii | S. Coelestinus V. († 19 v, 1296) res. | 13 xii, | 1294 |
| 1294 24 xii | Bonifacius VIII. | † 11 x, | 1303 |
| 1303 22 x | Benedictus XI. | † 7 vii, | 1304 |
| 1305 5 vi | Clemens V. | † 20 iv, | 1314 |
| 1316 7 viii | Joannes XXII. | †  4 xii, | 1334 |
| 1334 20 xii | Benedictus XII. | † 25 iv, | 1342 |
| 1342 7 v, el. | Clemens VI. | †  6 xii , | 1352 |
| 1352 18 xii | Innocentius VI. | † 12 ix, | 1362 |
| 1362 28 x | Urbanus V. | † 19 xii, | 1370 |
| 1370 30 xii | Gregorius XI. | † 27 iii, | 1378 |
| 1378 8 iv | Urbanus VI. | † 15 x, | 1389 |
| [1378 20 ix | Clemens VII. antipapa Aven. | † 16 ix, | 1394 |
| 1394 28 ix | Benedict XIII. (amot 26 vii) 1417 | † 23 v, | 1423] |
| 1389 2 xi | Bonifacius IX. | †  1 x, | 1404 |
| 1447 17 x | Innocentius VII. | †  6 xi, | 1406 |
| 1406 2 xii | Gregorius XII. († 1419) resignat. | 4 vii, | 1415 |
| 1409 26 vi | Alexander V. | †  3 v, | 1410 |
| 1410 17 v | Joannes XXIII. († 22 xi,1419) amot. | 24 v, | 1415 |
| 1417 11 xi | Martinus V. | † 20 ii, | 1431 |
| 1431 3 iii | Eugenius IV. | † 23 ii, | 1447 |
| 1447 6 iii | Nicolaus V. | † 24 iii, | 1455 |
| 1455 8 iv | Calixtus III. | †  6 viii, | 1458 |
| 1458 19 viii | Pius II. | † 15 viii, | 1464 |
| 1464 31 viii | Paulus II. | † 28 vii, | 1471 |
| 1471 9 viii | Sixtus IV. | † 12 viii, | 1484 |
| 1484 24 viii | Innocentius VIII. | † 25 vii, | 1492 |
| 1492 11 viii | Alexander VI. | † 18 viii, | 1503 |
| 1503 22 ix | Pius III. | † 18 x, | 1503 |
| 1503 1 xi | Julius II. | † 21 ii, | 1513 |
| 1513 15 iii | Leo X. | †  1 xii, | 1521 |
| 1522 9 i | Hadrianus VI. | † 14 ix, | 1523 |
| 1523 19 xi | Clemens VII. | † 25 ix, | 1534 |
| 1534 1 3 x | Paulus III. | † 10 xi, | 1549 |
| 1550 8 ii | Julius III. | † 23 iii, | 1555 |
| 1555 9 iv | Marcellus II. | † 30 iv, | 1555 |
| 1555 2 3 v | Paulus IV. | † 18 viii, | 1559 |
| 1559 25 xii | Pius IV. | †  9 xii, | 1565 |
| 1566 17 i, cs. | S. Pius V. | †  1 v, | 1572 |
| 1572 26 v | Gregorius XIII. | † 10 iv, | 1585 |
| 1585 1 v, cs. | Sixtus V. | † 27 viii, | 1590 |
| 1590 15 ix, el. | Urbanus VII. | † 27 ix, | 1590 |
| 1590 5 xii | Gregorius XIV. | † 15 x, | 1591 |
| 1591 29 x, el. | Innocentius IX. | † 30 xii, | 1591 |
| 1592 30 i, el. | Clemens VIII. | †  5 iii, | 1605 |
| 1605 1 iv, el. | Leo XI. | † 27 iv, | 1605 |
| 1605 16 v, el. | Paulus V. | † 28 i, | 1621 |
| 1621 9 ii | Gregorius XV. | †  8 vii, | 1623 |
| 1623 6 viii, el. | Urbanus VIII. | † 29 vii, | 1644 |
| 1644 15 ix | Innocentius X. | †  7 i, | 1655 |
| 1655 7 iv | Alexander VII. | † 22 v, | 1667 |
| 1667 20 vi | Clemens IX. | †  9 xii, | 1669 |
| 1670 29 iv | Clemens X. | † 22 vii, | 1676 |
| 1676 21 ix | Innocentius XI. | † 12 vii, | 1689 |
| 1689 6 x | Alexander VIII. | †  1 ii, | 1691 |
| 1691 12 vii | Innocentius XII. | † 27 ix, | 1700 |
| 1700 23 xi, el | Clemens XI. | † 19 iii, | 1721 |
| 1721 8 v | Innocentius XIII. | †  7 iii, | 1724 |
| 1724 29 v | Benedictus XIII. | † 21 ii, | 1730 |
| 1730 12 vii | Clemens XII. | †  6 ii, | 1740 |
| 1740 17 viii | Benedictus XIV. | †  3 v, | 1758 |
| 1758 6 vii | Clemens XIII. | †  2 ii, | 1769 |
| 1769 19 v | Clemens XIV. | † 22 ix, | 1774 |
| 1775 15 ii | Pius VI. | † 29 viii, | 1799 |
| 1800 14 iii | Pius VII. | † 20 viii, | 1823 |
| 1823 28 ix | Leo XII. | † 10 ii, | 1829 |
| 1829 31 iii | Pius VIII. | † 30 xi, | 1830 |
| 1831 2 ii | Gregorius XVI. | †  1 vi, | 1846 |
| 1846 16 vi, el. | Pius IX. | †  3 vi, | 1877 |
| 1877 vi, el. | Leo XIII. | † 20 vii, | 1903 |
| 1903 4 viii, el. | Pius X. | |
Bibliography.—The works mentioned below are for the most part those not included in the separate bibliographies to the articles on the individual popes (qq.v.).
General.—Of encyclopedias may be mentioned the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopaedia of Religious Knowledge (New York, 1908 sqq.); the Catholic Encyclopaedia (New York, 1907 sqq.); Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie (3rd ed., Leipzig, 1896 sqq.); Wetzer and Welte, Kirchenlexikon (2nd ed., Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1882–1901); G. Maroni, Dizionario di erudizione storico-ecclesiastica (Venice, 1840 sqq.), all of which contain articles on individual popes and subjects connected with the papacy, with bibliographies. For chronological detail, see Z. V. Lobkowitz, Statistik der Päpste (Freiburg i. B., 1905). Carefully indexed source materials in the original languages are given by C. Mirbt, Quellen zur Geschichte des Papsttums und des römischen Katholizismus (2nd enlarged ed., Tübingen, 1901); many fragments in translation under “Papacy” in History for Ready Reference, ed. by J. N. Larned (vols. iv., vi., vii. Springfield, 1895–1910). Helpful Church histories are F. X. Funk, Lehrbuch der Kirchengeschichte (5th ed., Paderborn, 1907); A. Knopfler, Lehrbuch der Kirchengeschichte (4th ed., Freiburg i. B., 1906), both Roman Catholic; also the Lutheran work of J. H. Kurtz, Lehrbuch der Kirchengeschichte, ed N. Bonwetsch and P. Tschackert (14th ed., Leipzig, 1906). (W. W. R.*)
Period I. To 1087.—A bibliography of the history of the papacy during the first eleven centuries would embrace all the vast number of works on the history of the Church during this period. Of these a selected list will be found in the bibliography to the article Church History. Here it must suffice to mention certain modern works bearing more particularly on this period. Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 3rd ed. i. 400 et seq.; Hinschius, Kirchenrecht, vol. i. §§ 22–25, 74; Sohm, Kirchenrecht, vol. i. § 29 et seq.; Löning, Geschichte des deutschen Kirchenrechts (1878); Duchesne, Églises séparées (1905), Les Premiers temps de l’etat pontifical (1904).  (L. D.*)
Period II. (a) From 1087 to 1124.—L. Paulot’s Un Pape français: Urbain II. (Paris, 1903), which is written with a Catholic bias, is the only biography of Urban II. that is at all full. Cf. M. F. Stern, Zur Biographie des Papstes Urbans II. (Berlin, 1883). On Paschal II., see E. Franz, Papst Paschalis II. (Breslau, 1877); W. Schum, Die Politik Papst Paschalis II. gegen Kaiser Heinrich V. im Jahre 1112 (Erfurt, 1877); and the excellent “Étude des relations entre le Saint-Siège et le royaume de France de 1099 à 1108,” published by Bernard Monod in the Positions des thèses des élèves de l’École des Chartes (1904). The Bullarium of Calixtus II. and the History (Paris, 1891) of his pontificate have been published by Ulysse Robert. Cf. M. Maurer, Papst Calixt II. (Munich, 1889). Besides these monographs, useful information on the history of the popes of this period will be found in the following: R. Rohricht, Geschichte des Königreichs Jerusalem (Innsbruck, 1898) and Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzuges (Innsbruck, 1901); H. von Sybel, Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzugs (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1881); H. Hagenmeyer, Peter der Eremit (Leipzig, 1879); F. Chalandon, Essai sur le règne d’Alexis I. Comnène (Paris, 1900); G. Meyer von Knonau, Jahrbücher des deutschen Reiches unter Heinrich IV. und Heinrich V. (Leipzig, 1890 et seq.); Carl Mirbt, Die Publizistik im Zeitalter Gregors VII. (Leipzig, 1894): Ernst Bernheim, Zur Geschichte des Wormser Konkordates (Göttingen, 1878); Martin Rule, The Life and Times of St Anselm (2 vols., London, 1883); and Klemm, Der Investiturstreit unter Heinrich I.
(b) From 1124 to 1198.—Monographs dealing expressly with the ​ pontificates of this period are scarce. Mention, however, must be made of H. Reuter’s Geschichte Alexanders III. und der Kirche seiner Zeit (3 vols., Berlin, 1860–1864). Much information on the policy of these popes will be found in the works on the great personages of the time: W. Bernhardi, Lothar von Supplinburg (Leipzig, 1879), and Konrad III. (Leipzig, 1883); H. Prutz, Kaiser Friedrich I. (3 vols., Danzig, 1871–1874); P. Scheffer-Boichorst, Kaiser Friedrichs I. letzter Streit mit der Kurie (Berlin, 1866); Julius Ficker, Reinald von Dassel (Cologne, 1850); Th. Toeche, Kaiser Heinrich VI. (Leipzig, 1867); J. Jastrow and G. Winter, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Hohenstaufen (2 vols., Berlin, 1897–1901); F. von Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstaufen und ihrer Zeit (5th ed., 6 vols., Leipzig, 1878); A. Hausrath, Arnold von Brescia (Leipzig, 1891); Dietr. Hirsch, Studien zur Geschichte König Ludwigs VII. von Frankreich (Leipzig, 1892); O. Cartellieri, Abt Suger von Saint-Denis (Berlin, 1898); F. Vacandard, Vie de S. Bernard (2 vols., Paris, 1895); J. Thiel, Die politische Thätigkeit des Abtes Bernhard von Clairvaux (Königsberg, 1885); A. Luchaire, Louis VII., Philippe-Auguste, Louis VIII. (vol. iii. pt. i. of Lavisse’s Histoire de France); H. Bohmer, Kirche und Staat in England und in der Normandie im XI. und XII. Jahrhundert. (Leipzig, 1899); Kate Norgate, England under the Angevin kings (London, 1887); and P. Scheffer-Boichorst, “Hat Papst Hadrian IV. zu Gunsten des englischen Königs über Irland verfügt?” in Mitteilungendes Instituts für österr. Geschichtsforschung (supplementary vol. iv., 1893).
(c) From 1198 to 1261.—On the pontificate of Innocent III. in general, see F. von Hurter, Geschichte Papst Innocenz III. (3rd and 2nd ed., 4 vols., Hamburg, 1841–1844); and A. Luchaire, Innocent III., Rome et l’Italie (2nd ed., Paris, 1905), Innocent III. la croisade des albigeois (Paris, 1905), Innocent III., la papauté et l’empire (Paris, 1906), Innocent III., la question d’orient (Paris, 1906), and Innocent III., les royautés vassales du Saint-Siège (Paris, 1908). Cf. E. Winkelmann, Philipp von Schwaben und Otto IV. von Braunschweig (2 vols., Leipzig, 1873–1878); W. Norden, Das Papsttum und Byzanz (Berlin, 1903), a considerable part of which is devoted to Innocent III.; E. Gerland, Geschichte des lateinischen Kaiserreiches von Konstantinopel (Homburg, 1905); R. Davidsohn, Philipp II. August von Frankreich und Ingeborg (Stuttgart, 1888); R. Schwemer, Innocenz III. und die deutsche Kirche während des Thronstreites von 1198–1208 (Strassburg, 1882); Else Gütschow, Innocenz III. und England (Munich, 1904); and many other detailed monographs. The pontificate of Honorius III. is dealt with by J. Clausen in his Papst Honorius III. (Bonn, 1895), and his registers have been published by P. Pressutti (3 vols., Rome, 1884 and 1888–1895). On Gregory IX., see J. Felten, Papst Gregor IX. (Freiburg i. Br., 1886); P. Balan, Storia di Gregorio IX. e dei suoi tempi (3 vols., Modena, 1872–1873); and J. Marx, Die vita Gregorii IX. (Berlin, 1889). The publication of the registers of this pope was begun by L. Auvray in the Bibliothèque des écoles de Rome et d’Athènes (Paris, 1890 et seq.). On Innocent IV., see E. Berger, St Louis et Innocent IV. (Paris, 1893); E. Winkelmann, Kaiser Friedrich II. (2 vols., Leipzig, 1889–1897); P. Aldinger, Die Neubesetzung der deutschen Bistümer unter Papst Innocenz IV. (Leipzig, 1901); and C. Rodenberg, Innocenz IV. und das Königreich Sizilien (Halle. 1892). The publication of the registers of Innocent IV. was undertaken by Elie Berger (1881 et seq.), and those of Alexander IV. by J. de Loye, A. Coulon and C. Bourel de la Roncière (1895 et seq.). As the history of the later Hohenstaufens is intimately bound up with that of the contemporary popes, mention must be made of F. W. Schirrmacher, Die letzten Hohenstaufen (Göttingen, 1871); A. Karst, Geschichte Manfreds vom Ende Friedrichs II. bis zu seiner Krönung (Berlin, 1897); and K. Hampe, Geschichte Konradins von Hohenstaufen (Innsbruck, 1894).
(d) From 1261 to 1305.—L. Dorez and J. Guiraud, members of the French school at Rome, began the publication of the registers of Urban IV. (1892 et seq.); E. Jordan, those of Clement IV. (1893 et seq.); and J. Guiraud and L. Cadier, those of Gregory X. (1892 et seq.). On Gregory X., see F. Walter, Die Politik der Kurie unter Gregor X. (Berlin, 1894). The pontificate of John XXI. has been dealt with by R. Stapper, Papst Johannes XXI. (Münster i. W., 1898), and that of Nicholas III. by A. Demski, Papst Nikolaus III. (Münster i. W., 1903), in vol. vi. of the Kirchengeschichtliche Studien, ed. by Knöpfler, Schrörs and Sdralek. The publication of the registers of Nicholas III. was undertaken by J. Gay (1898 et seq.). Much information on the policy of these popes will be found in the following: R. Sternfield, Ludwigs des Heiligen Kreuzzug nach Tunis und die Politik Karls I. von Sizilien (Berlin, 1896); Ch. V. Langlois, Le Règne de Philippe III. le Hardi (Paris, 1887); L. Leclère, Les Rapports de la papauté et de la France sous Philippe III. (Brussels, 1889); C. Minieri-Riccio, Alcuni fatti riguardanti Carlo I. d’ Angiò . . . (Naples, 1874), and Il Regno di Carlo I. d’ Angio, in the Archivio storico italiano (3rd series, vols. xxii., xxiii., xxiv., xxv., xxvi.; 4th series, vols ii., iii., iv., v., vii., 1875–1881); A. Busson, Die Idee des deutschen Erbreichs und die ersten Habsburger (Vienna, 1878); G. del Giudice, La Famiglia di re Manfredi (Naples, 1880); and H. Otto, Die Beziehungen Rudolfs von Habsburg zu Papst Gregor X. (Innsbruck, 1895). There is a good account of the policy of Martin IV. in O. Cartellieri, Peter von Aragon und die sizilianischen Vesper (Heidelberg. 1904). On Honorius IV., see introduction to the complete edition of his registers by Maurice Prou (1886–1888). E. Langlois has published the registers of Nicholas IV. (1886–1893), and Otto Schiff deals with his pontificate in his Studien zur Geschichte Papst Nikolaus IV. (1897). On Celestine V., see H. Schulz, Peter von Murrhone (Papst Coelestin V.), Berlin, 1894. The publication of the registers of Boniface VIII. was begun by G. Digard, M. Faucon and A. Thomas (1884 et seq.). Of the vast literature on this pontificate we must content ourselves with citing: Heinrich Finke, Aus den Tagen Bonifaz’ VIII. (Münster i. W., 1902); Ch. V. Langlois, “St. Louis, Philippe le Bel, Les Derniers capétiens directs” (vol. iii., pt. ii. of Lavisse’s Histoire de France); Ernest Renan, Études sur la politique religieuse du règne de Philippe le Bel (1899); A. Baudrillart, “Des Idées qu’on se faisait au XIVᵉ siècle sur le droit d’intervention du souverain pontife en matière politique,” in the Revue d’histoire et de littérature religieuses (vol. iii., 1898); and R. Holtzmann, Wilhelm von Nogaret (Freiburg i. Br., 1898). The pontificate of Benedict XI. is dealt with by P. Funke in his Papst Benedikt XI. (Münster i. W., 1891). Cf. Ch. Grandjean, “Recherches sur l’administration financière du pape Benoît XI,” in the Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire (vol. iii., 1883), published by the French School at Rome. Grandjean has published the registers of Benedict XI. (1883 et seq.).
Among works of a more general character that throw light on the history of the papacy during the 12th and 13th centuries, the first place must be given to Walter Norden’s Das Papsttum und Byzanz. Die Trennung der beiden Mächte und das Problem ihrer Wiedervereinigung bis zum Untergange des byzantinischen Reichs (Berlin, 1903), which contains an account of the question of the East in its relations with the papal policy, from the rise of the schism down to the end of the middle ages. See also Félix Rocquain, La Papauté au moyen âge (Paris, 1881) and La Cour de Rome et l’esprit de réforme avant Luther (3 vols., Paris, 1893–1897); J. B. Sägmüller, Die Thätigkeit und Stellung der Cardinäle bis Papst Bonifaz VIII. (Freiburg i. Br., 1896); and A. Gottlob, Die päpstlichen Kreuzztigssteuern des 13. Jahrhunderts (Heiligenstadt, 1892) and Kreuzablass und Almosenablass (Stuttgart, 1906). (A. Lu.)
Period III. 1305–1590.—Baluze, Vitae paparum avenioniensium (1305–1394), 2 t. (Paris, 1693); Raynaldus, Annales eccles. ab anno 1198 [to 1565], annotated and added to by J. D. Mansi (15 vols., Lucca, 1747–1756); Mansi, Concil. collectio; Theodericus of Niem, De schismate, ed. Erler (1890); Christophe, Histoire de la papauté (1873); Hefele, Conciliengeschichte (Freiburg i. B., 1855, seq.); Höfler, Die avignonesischen Päpste (1871); Creighton, History of the Papacy (1882, seq.); L. Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste (Freiburg i. B., 1886, seq., Eng. trans, by F. I. Antrobus, 1891, seq.); Pastor, Acta pontific. (1904); N. Valois, La France et le grand schisme, 4 t. (1896, seq.); Haller, Papsttum und Kirchenreform (1903). For the Papacy in connexion with the Renaissance, see E. Müntz, Les Arts (1892); Voigt, Wiederbelebung des klassischen Altertums (1893); J. Burkhardt, Cultur der Renaissance in Italien, 2 B. (ed. L. Geiger, 1907). For the palace at Avignon, see Ehrle, Bibl. rom. pontif. i. (1890).
To the authorities for the lives of individual popes attached to the biographies under their several headings, and to the articles on the councils of Basel, Constance, Trent, may be added: Clement V.—Boutaric, Philippe le Bel (1861); König, Päpstl. Kammer unter Clemens V. u. Johann XXII. (1894); Finke, Acta Aragonen. (1908). John XXII.—Böhmer, Regest. Ludwigs des Baiern (1839); Vatikanische Aden (1891); Riezler, Literarische Widersacher (1874); Müller, Kampf Ludwigs mit der Curie (1879–1880); Coulon, Lettres secretes de Jean XXII., relat. à la France, i. (1907); Mollat, Lettres commun. de Jean XXII., i.–iv. (1907). Clement VI.—Werunsky, Kaiser Karl IV., i. (1800), ii. (1882–1886); Papencordt, Cola di Rienzo (1841); Dèprez, Lett. closes 1901 seq. Innocent VI.—Werunsky, Ital. Politik Innoc. VI. u. Karl IV. (1878); id., Karl IV. ii. (1882–1886), iii. (1892); Cerasoli, Archivio napolit. 22–23; Kirsch, Kollectorien (1892); Daumet, Innocent VI. et Blanche de Bourbon (1899). Urban V.—Magnan, Urbain V. (1863); Werunsky, Karl IV. iii. (1892); Prou, Relat. polit. avec les rois de France (1888); Wurm, Albornoz (1892); Kirsch, Rückkehr der Päpste Urban V. und Gregor XI. nach Rom (1898); Letacheux, Lettres secrètes (1903, seq.). Gregory XI.—Mirot, Retour du St Siège à Rome (1899); Tommaseo, Lettere di S. Caterina (1860); M. A. Mignaty, Catherine de Sienne (1886). Boniface IX.—Vita, ap. Muratori, Script, iii. 2; Cosmodromium, Gobelini Persona, ed. Jansen (1900); Jansen, Bonifacius IX. u. die deutsche Kirche (1904). Innocent VII.—Gregory XII., schismatic popes, council of Constance, &c. Monum. concil. gen. sacr. XV. (1857–1896); Alpartilz, Chronica, ed. Ehrle (1906); Pliemetfrieder, Literarische Polemik (1909). Martin V.—Vitae, ap. Muratori, iii. 2; Ottenthal, Bullenregister Martins V. u. Eugens IV. (1885). Eugenius IV.—Vita, ap. Muratori, Script, iii. 2; Repert. germanic. i. (1897); Müntz, Les Arts (1878–1879); Valois, Pragmatique sanction (1907). Nicholas V.—Manetti, Vita Nicolai V., ap. Muratori, Script, iii. 2; Vespasiano da Bisticci, Vite (1839); Georgius (1742); Müntz, Les Arts (1878–1879); Creighton, Papacy ii. (1882). Paul II.—Ammanati, Epistolae et commentarii (1506); Gaspar Veronensis. Vita, ap. Marini, Archiatri ii. and Muratori iii. 2 (new ed. by Zippel, 1903); Canensius, Vita, ed. Quirini (1740); Creighton, Papacy iii. (1887); Müntz, Les Arts ii. (1879). Sixtus IV.—Infessura, Diario, ed. Tommasini (1890); Notajo di Nantiporto, Diarii, ap. Muratori, ​Script, iii. 2; Jacobus Volaterranus, Diarium, ap. Muratori, Script. xxiii.; Schmarzow, Melozzo da Forlì (1886); Steinmann, Sixtinische Capelle i. (1901); Schlecht, Andrea Zamometic i. (1893). Innocent VIII.—Infessura, op. cit.; Burchardi, Diarium i.–ii. ed. cit. (also for Alexander VI.); Burchardi, Diarium, ed. Thuasne, i. (1883). Julius II.—Brosch, Julius II. u. d. Kirchenstaat (1878); Geymüller, Entwürfe für St Peter (1875–1880); Schulte, Maximilian als Candidat für den päpstlichen Stuhl (1906). Leo X.—Hergenröther, Reg. Leonis X. (1884–1891); Jovius, Vita (1548); Roscoe, Leone X., ed. Bossi (1816); Janssen, Gesch. d. deutschen Volks i. 18–ii. 18 (1897); Schulte, Fugger in Rom (1904); Kalkoff, Luthers römischer Prozess (1906). Adrian VI.—Burmann, Adrianus VI. (1727). Clement VII.—Friedensburg, Nuntiaturberichte i. (1892); Ehses, Documente zur Geschichte der Ehescheidung Heinrichs VIII. (1893); Ehses, Conc. trident, iv. (1904); Fraikin, Nonciatures de France i. (1906). Paul III.—Friedensburg, Nuntiaturberichte ii. sqq. (1892–1908); Venetianische Depeschen vom Kaiserhof i. (1889); Ehses, Concil. trident. iv. (1904); Merkle, Concil. trident, diaria i.; Maurenbrecher, Karl V. (1865); de Leva, Carlo V. iii.–v. (1867 seq.); Pastor, Reunionsbestrebungen Karls V. (1879); Janssen, Deutsche Geschichte iii. 18. (1899). Julius III.—Massarelli, ap. Döllinger, Concil. v. Trient (1876); de Leva, Carlo V. v. (1890). Marcellus II.—Pollidorus, Vita (1744). Pius IV.—Pallavicini, Concilio di Trento (1656); Duruy, Cardinal Carafa (1888); Susta, Curie und Concil. i.–ii. (1904–1909); Steinherz, Nuntiaturberichte i. and iii. (1897–1903). Pius V.— Guglielmotti, Marcantonio Colonna (1862). Gregory XIII.—Theiner, Annales ecclesiastici (1856); Maffei, Annali (1746); Brosch, Kirchenstaat i. (1880); Nuntiaturberichte, ed. Hansen, and Schellhass, i. (1892); Steinhuber, Collegium germanicum i. 2–ii. 2 (1907); Duhr, Jesuiten in Deutschland i. (1907); Astrain, Comp. de Jesus de España (3 vols., 1902). Sixtus V.—Memorie autografe, ed. Cagnoni, Archivio d. Soc. Rom. (1882); Nuntiaturberichte, ed. Görresgesellschaft, i. seq. (1895); Balzani, in Cambridge Modern History; Hübner, Sixte-Quinte (1870). (L. v. P.)
Periods IV., V., VI. 1590 onwards.—In addition to the general works already mentioned, see M. Brosch, Geschichte des Kirchenstaates (Gotha, 1880–1882), utilizing Venetian archives; L. Ranke, History of the Papacy in the 16th and 17th centuries (1840 and frequently); A. R. Pennington, Epochs of the Papacy (London, 1881); F. Nippold, The Papacy in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1900); B. Labanca, Il Papato (Torino, 1905), with Italian bibliography; F. Nielsen, The History of the Papacy in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1906), the scholarly and fascinating work of a Danish Lutheran bishop; A. Galton, Church and State in France, 1300–1907 (London, 1907); E. Bourgeois and E. Clermont, Rome et Napoleon III. (Paris, 1907), exposing secret negotiations; A. Debidour, L’Église catholique et l’etat sous la troisième république (Paris, 1906–1909), valuable though strongly anti-clerical; R. de Cesare, Roma e lo stato del papa dal ritorno di Pio IX. (2 vols., Rome, 1907); in abridged translation. The Last Days of Papal Rome (Boston, 1909). (W. W. R.*)
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ Victor’s conduct in this matter was not approved by a number of bishops (including Irenaeus), who protested against it (ἀντιπαρακελεύονται) in the interests of peace and Christian love (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. v. 24).—[Ed.]
* ↑ 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 regularly 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.]
* ↑ See Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste, i., 121.
* ↑ Here of course the author speaks of the papal supremacy and not of papal infallibility in matters of faith and morals—a doctrine which was formally declared a dogma of the Church only, at the Vatican council in 1870.—[Ed.]
* ↑ May 23, 1423: vide the Chronicle of Martin de Alpartil, edited by Ehrle (1906).
* ↑ Diether von Isenburg (1412–1463), second son of Count Diether of Isenburg-Büdingen; rector of the university of Erfurt, 1434; archbishop of Mainz, 1459. He led the movement for a reform of the Empire and the opposition to the papal encroachments, supporting the theory of church government enunciated at Constance and Basel and condemned in Pius II.’s bull Execrabilis.—[Ed.]
* ↑ The closer connexion of these frescoes with contemporary history was first elucidated by Pastor, in his Geschichte der Päpste, vol. iii., which also contains the most complete account of the reign of this the second Rovere pope.—[Ed.]
* ↑ Alfonso Petrucci (d. 1517), a Sienese. He was degraded from the cardinalate by Leo X.—[Ed.]
* ↑ By the Law of Guarantees the pope was recognized as an independent sovereign, with jurisdiction over his own palaces and their extensive precincts and the right to receive diplomatic representatives accredited to him. He also received the right to appoint bishops, who—except in Rome and the suburbicarian districts — were to be Italian subjects; and, with a significant exception, the exequatur, placet regium, and every form of government permission for the publication and execution of acts of ecclesiastical authority were abolished. (See also Italy: History.)
* ↑ As recorded in the registers of the Roman Church (from P. B. Gams, Series episcoporum Romanae ecclesiae).