authority of the Bishop of Rome. These terms were rejected, and the British bishops refused to acknowledge Augustine for their archbishop, who had already assumed superiority by not deigning to rise from his seat to receive them. It was not until the year 755 that the ancient British Church conformed in these points to the Anglo-Saxon and Roman Churches. The whole country having been converted, dissensions sprang up in the Church, in consequence of which certain Auglo-Saxon kings sent a priest named Wighard to Rome, to be there canonically consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury. Wighard, however, died at Rome, and the pope consecrated in his stead a learned monk of Tarsus, named Theodore, whom he desA.D. 669. patched to England in the year 669. The Saxon kings confirmed his appointment, and granted to the see of Canterbury the primacy over the English Church. Theodore healed the dissensions that existed, corrected abuses, and established discipline. He introduced the practice of holding councils, and encouraged the building of Churches, apart from monasteries which were by this time springing up, by allowing the founders to become patrons of them. The relation in which England stood to Rome at this period is not very easily determined; it was probably ill-defined and uncertain. The Church of England may be said to have owed to Rome the respect due from a mother to a daughter. The intercourse between the two countries was difficult and tedious, and that authority in ecclesiastical affairs which was subsequently claimed by the Bishops of Rome was exercised by the king and synods of the clergy.

of legates. Under what circumstances was Theodore sent to England? What was the result of his mission? In what relation did England stand to Rome at this early period?

The Venera

ble Bede.

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3. The most learned and celebrated writer of the early English Church was the Venerable Bede, who lived and died an humble recluse in the monastery of Jarrow, in Northumberland, where he was born in the year 671. His life was devoted to the attainments of varied knowledge, diversified only by the monastic exercises of psalmody, prayer, and manual labour. His works, which consist of commentaries on Scripture, homilies, lives of Saints, an admirable history of the Church of England from the mission of Augustine to his own time, and other treatises, fill eight folio volumes. Bede died in the year 734, at the age of sixty-three.

Growth of Papal Power.

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4. The two centuries which succeeded St. Gregory were not unfavourable to the growth of papal power. In the western Churches the influence of the Roman see made gradual progress, from a variety of reasons which it is not our purpose to examine. But it was wonderfully augmented and consolidated in the ninth century by the singular counterfeit of the False Decretals, a collection of letters on ecclesiastical laws, which purported to have been written by the Bishops of Rome from the time of Clement down to the year 614, and in which the judgments of all bishops, the holding of all councils, and a right to hear appeals from all ecclesiastical judgments were claimed for the Roman pontiffs. These decretal epistles, which are now acknowledged by the most learned Romanists to be mere fabrications, exaggerated to

3. Give a short account of the Venerable Bede. Of what do his works consist ?

4. What was the state of papal power in England for the two centuries which succeeded St. Gregory? Give an account of the means by which the influence of the Roman see was greatly augmented in the 9th century.

the highest degree the powers and privileges of the popes. The ignorance which prevailed in these early times prevented any discovery of their falsehood, and they gradually became the groundwork of the papal canon-law.

Hildebrand, or
Gregory VII.

5. The celebrated Hildebrand, or Gregory VII., a man of humble origin, but undaunted spirit and confident zeal, ascended the throne in the year 1073. He was the first to develope fully the idea of papal supremacy, by carrying out the principles of the False Decretals. The whole world was his diocese; and he maintained the supremacy of the Church over all temporal sovereignties. In not a few instances his claim was allowed: over the Emperor Henry IV. of Germany he exerted his assumed authority to the utmost, having excommunicated and deposed him for disobedience to the papal mandates, obliged him to sue humbly for absolution, and deprived him finally of his dominions, which he gave to another prince. For two centuries after the time of Hildebrand, the history of Europe is little more than the history of the contests of the popes with temporal princes.

The Inquisition.

6. This was the title of an ecclesiastical court, armed with extensive authority for the examination and punishment of heretics. From a very early period it was the custom to enforce the discipline of the Church, not only by spiritual terrors, but by secular punishments; and in the eighth century yearly rounds were made for the inspection of the state of the Churches. In 1215 this power of the bishops was changed into a standing

5. When did Hildebrand ascend the papal throne? Give a short account of his proceedings.

6.

Relate the origin of the Inquisition, and the mode of its proceeding. To what did its jurisdiction extend ?

M

Inquisition by the Lateran Council, which was still further enforced by a council at Toulouse in 1229. Subsequently the Dominicans were appointed the chief inquisitors in the name of the pope. A party who was brought under cognizance of the court by secret accusation was immediately seized by its officers (termed officials or familiars), and his property put under sequestration. The subsequent process of the court by imprisonment, secret examination, and torture is well known. Penitent offenders were subjected to imprisonment, scourging, confiscation, and legal infamy. Those convicted, who were sentenced to death, were burnt at the autos-da-fe, which usually took place on some Sunday between Trinity and Advent. The Inquisition was chiefly enforced in the south of France: in Germany, opposition checked its proceedings. Its jurisdiction extended to heresy, Judaism, Mahommedanism, and polygamy.

The Papal Power

7. The Church of England smarted severely under papal tyranny; but there in England. are few instances of it in England before the Norman conquest. The pope, however, made a pretext of his support of William I. in his invasion of this country for enlarging his encroachments, and in that king's reign began to send legates hither. Afterwards he prevailed with Henry I. (1100-1135) to part with the right of nominating to bishoprics,* the king only reserving to himself the ceremony of homage. In the reign of Stephen (1135— 1154) he gained the prerogative of appeals; and as the juris

* In Saxon times all ecclesiasti- | king.

cal dignities were conferred by the

7. When did the pope begin to enlarge his encroachments in this country?

diction of the Church extended in those ages to a great number of temporal causes, vast sums of money were in this way continually draining out of England. He exempted all clerks from the secular power in the reign of Henry II. (1154-1189), who at first strenously opposed the innovation; but after the death of Thomas á Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, the pope succeeded, and Henry appeased the wrath of the Church of Rome by performing a severe penance at Becket's tomb. Not long after this, in the reign of John (1199-1216), another struggle occurred respecting the investiture of the bishops. Upon this occasion the pope laid the kingdom under an interdict; John was reduced to such straits that he surrendered his kingdom and crown to the pope, consenting to hold them of him under a rent of a thousand marks, and gave up in effect the disposal of all bishoprics in England to the pope. Absentee foreigners held most of the richest benefices in the reign of Henry III. (1216—1272); and partly from this cause, and partly from the taxes imposed by the pope, there went yearly out of this kingdom seventy thousand pounds sterling, an immense sum in those days. During this period the discipline of the Church and the morals of the laity were corrupted by the sale of plenary indulgences; and pardons,

* The investiture of a bishop was his endowment with the fiefs and temporalities of the see.

t By this, almost all means of grace were denied to the people :

the priests were forbidden to exercise their functions; the dead remained unburied, or were deposited in unconsecrated ground.

An indulgence is a remission

State the progress of the papal power.

[Note.] State the popish doctrine of "indulgences," and the foundation of the system. In what did the sale of them originate? What was the consequence ?