§ VIII. Progress of the Papal Power.

Alexander III. (1159-81) and Innocent III. (1198-1216) were the chief authors of the development of the new system, and creators of the decretal canon law, through the number of their edicts, and the unity and coherence of their policy, based on one fundamental idea. The notion is more prominent with Innocent than even with Gregory VII., that the Pope is God's locum tenens on earth, set to watch over the social, political, and religious condition of mankind, like a Divine Providence, as chief overseer and lord, who must put down all opposition. The radical principle with him, as with Gregory, is that all rank and authority not held by priests is an incongruity in the Divine plan of the world, introduced through human folly and sinfulness, while the priesthood is, properly speaking, the sole ordinance and institution of God. Gregory had declared, of course in direct contradiction to the Gospel teaching about the Divine institution of government, that the royal power was set up at the instigation of Satan, by persons ignorant of God, and full of crimes, out of mere lust of dominion, whereas before men had been equal.2

1 See Ep. ad Joan. Angl. Reg. in Rymer's Fodera Reg. Angl. i. 1, 119, "Institutum fuit sacerdotium per ordinationem Divinam, regnum autem per extortionem humanam," etc.

.

Epist. lib. viii. Ep 21: "Quis nesciat, reges et duces ab iis habuisse

New means of influence accrued to the Roman See through the Crusades, and the consequent change in the system of penance and indulgences, the privileges awarded to Crusaders, and the leadership in these holy wars, which, as a matter of course, devolved on the Popes. The same end was served by the military Orders, which acknowledged the Pope as their only superior; the constant union with France, clergy as well as kings (before 1300); and still more by the intellectual power the Papal monarchy derived from the two great Universities—Bologna, the school of Papal canon law, and Paris, the home of scholasticism, which was more and more lending itself to the Papal system. But, above all, from the beginning of the thirteenth century, the new Religious Orders of Mendicants, which swarmed over the whole Christian world-Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and Carmelites, especially the two first-were the strongest pillars and supports of this monarchy. After the Isidorian decretals and Gratian, the introduction of these Orders, with their rigid monarchical organization, was the third great lever whereby the old Church system, resting on the gradaprincipium, qui Deum ignorantes, superbiâ, rapinis, perfidiâ, homicidiis postremo universis pene sceleribus, mundi principe diabolo videlicet agitante, dominari cæcâ cupiditate et intolerabili præsumtione affectaverunt !"

tion of bishops, presbyteries, and parish priests, was undermined and destroyed. Completely under Roman control, and acting everywhere as Papal delegates, wholly independent of bishops, with plenary power to encroach on the rights of parish priests, these monks set up their own churches in the Church, laboured for the honour and greatness of their Order, and for the Papal authority on which their prerogatives rested. We may say that that authority was literally doubled through their means. They became masters of literature, of the pulpits, and of the university chairs; they travelled about as Papal tax-gatherers and preachers of indulgences, with plenary power, even of inflicting excommunication. And thus the spiritual campaign organized at Rome was carried into every village, and the parish clergy generally succumbed to the Mendicants, armed as they were with privileges from head to heel. For they possessed and used the effective expedients of easy absolution, and new devotions and methods of salvation, invented by themselves, to which the parish priests had nothing to oppose, while their isolation made every attempt at open resistance on their part useless. They could compel both priest and people, by excommunication, to hear them preach the Papal indulgences, and could absolve

from reserved sins in the confessional. Bishops and priests felt their impotence against the new power of these monks, strengthened by the Inquisition, and had, however indignantly, to bend under the yoke laid on their necks by two powers irresistible in their union.

If Gregory VII. supported his new claims, his political lordship and subjugation of the monarchy, on falsehoods, not indeed of his own coining, Innocent III. went further in this direction, and dealt with history as with the Bible, according to the exigencies of the case. He invented the story that the Empire had been transferred from the Greeks to the Franks by a Papal sentence;1 and thence inferred that the German princes derived their right of electing the Emperor from the Pope only, and asserted that he had the right of rejecting their nominee. Later Papal authors have transformed these assertions into historical facts invented by themselves.

One of Gregory VII.'s maxims, ascribing personal holiness to every rightly elected Pope, was suffered to drop. There was danger of the want of holiness suggesting the invalidity of the election, and therefore the decretal books, while upholding the rest of Gregory's

postulates, were silent about this.

1 De Elect. c. 34.

Moreover, every

one knew and said that simony, which was generally treated as heresy, was rampant in the Roman Court, and that taking bribes for benefices and legal proceedings was a daily occurrence with the Popes and Cardinals. The charge of heresy going on under the very eyes of the Pope, and with his express or tacit consent could not be answered, and was constantly urged, till the canonists hit upon the resource of maintaining that what was simony in others was not simony in the Pope, because he is superior to law, and everything in the Church is his property, which he can deal with as he will1

The Gregorian system required the most complete immunity of the whole clergy from the secular power and civil courts. It served to create an immense army, exclusively belonging to the Pope, and widely separated by common caste feeling and caste interests from the lay world. Every clergyman was to recognise but one lord and ruler, the Pope, who disposed of him indirectly, through the bishops, who were bound by oath to himself, or directly, in cases of exemption, and used him as a

1 Thus the canonist John of God, about 1245, quotes and repudiates the statement, "Lex Julia dicit quod apud Romam simonia non committitur" (De Pœn. D, Papa). See excerpts in Theodori Pœnitent. (ed. Petit.) Paris, 1677. There was a long controversy about it.