from the ill-fated Knights-Templars by torture. And yet he must have known before the Council met, that the result of the investigation did not justify the penal abolition of the Order. All he gained by it was, that the King allowed him to put a stop to the process against his predecessor Boniface VIII., which was a source of pain, anxiety, shame, and humiliation for Clement and the Papacy generally; for if Boniface had been condemned on the charge of heresy and unbelief brought against him by King Philip, all his acts would have become null and void, and a terrible confusion in the Church must have followed. "This assemblage," says the contemporary writer, Walter of Hemingburgh, "cannot be called a Council, for the Pope did everything out of his own head, so that the Council neither answered nor assented." The servitude of bishops and degradation of Councils could go no further. And now came a change for which the Great Schism prepared the way.

" 1

After the deposition of the last German Emperor who deserved the name, July 17, 1245, the Papacy became the prey for French and Italians to quarrel over. In the long contest of Popes and anti-popes, the old 1 Chron. Walt. de Heming. Lond. 1849, ii. 293.

weapons by which the Papacy had acquired its gigantic power became somewhat blunted; the nations rebelled. A different spirit and different principles prevailed at the fifteenth century Councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basle, and the preponderance of Italian bishops was broken by new regulations. Even at the Synod of Florence in 1439, the forms of the ancient Councils and free discussion had to be allowed on account of the Greeks, and the mere dictation and promulgation of decrees previously prepared in the papal Curia had to be abandoned.

Soon, however, better days for the Curia returned. Julius II. inaugurated, and Leo x. concluded, the fifth Lateran Synod with about fifty-three Italian bishops and a number of cardinals (1512-17). That such an assemblage is no representation of the whole Church, that it sounds like a mockery to put it on a par with the Synods of Nicæa, Chalcedon, and Constantinople at a time when, by the admission of a bishop who was present, there were not four capable men among the 200 bishops of Italy, is evident to the blindest eye. Julius showed his appreciation of it, when he had a decree laid before it at the third session forbidding the annual market hitherto held at Lyons, and transferring it to

Geneva.1 Prior Kilian Leib of Rebdorf expresses wonder in his annals at this being called a General Council, at which hardly any one was present besides the usual attendants of the Court, and nothing of importance was done. The papal decrees published there were, however, far from unimportant. On the contrary, a decree was issued exceeding in weight and significance any published in former Roman Councils, viz., Leo x.'s Bull, Pastor Eternus, in which, while abolishing the Pragmatic Sanction in France, he declares as a dogma that "the Pope has full and unlimited authority over Councils; he can at his good pleasure summon, remove, or dissolve them." The proofs for this cited in the Bull are all spurious or irrelevant. Earlier and later fictions, partly borrowed from the pseudo-Isidore, are quoted to show that the ancient Councils were under the absolute authority of the Pope, that even the Nicene Council supplicated him for the confirmation of its decrees, etc. The long deduction, in which every statement would be a lie, if the compiler could be credited with any knowledge of Church history, closes with the renewal of Boniface VIII.'s Bull, Unam Sanctam.

1 Concil. ed. Labbé, xiv. 82.

2 See Aretin's Beiträge, vii. 624.

§ XII.-Theological Study at Rome.

It may seem strange that since the new system of Church government centralized at Rome had come into vogue, and the Councils had pretty well lost their importance, the Popes should not have thought of establishing a theological school in Rome at the seat of the Curia. The profound ignorance of the Roman clergy, and their incapacity for judging theological questions, was proverbial. As early as the end of the seventh century, Pope Agatho had to make the humiliating confession to the Greeks, that the right interpretation of Holy Scripture could not be found with the Roman clergy, who had to work with their hands for their support. They could do no more than preserve the traditions handed down from the ancient Councils and Popes.1 The Greeks, who were better versed in Biblical studies, might well ascribe to this ignorance, admitted by the Popes, the interpreting the prayer of Christ for St. Peter (Luke xxii. 32) in a sense which had never occurred to any one before, and which clearly had but one object, viz., to secure authority in doctrinal matters to the Roman Church, in spite of the undeni1 Harduin, Concil. iii. 1078.

able rudeness and ignorance of its clergy. Their defects in learning and knowledge had to be supplied by special Divine inspiration. Gregory II. speaks, fifty years later, as modestly as Pope Agatho. Otho of Vercelli, in the tenth century, and Gerbert in the eleventh, expressed themselves strongly about this theological ignorance of the Roman clergy. But since Gratian's time jurisprudence became the queen of sciences; exegesis of Holy Scripture, and study of tradition and the Fathers were dropped, for they would have led to suspicious results and dangerous disclosures, and would eventually have exposed the evil contradictions between the old and new law of the Church. The new codes of canon law, Gratian, the decretals, and the Roman imperial law, were studied; and, accordingly, Innocent IV. established a school of law in Rome, leaving theology to the distant Paris. Theology was never extensively prosecuted at Rome, or with any result, nor did those who wished to study it go there during the Middle Ages. Among the cardinals there were always at least twenty jurists to one theologian; and herein the Curia was genuinely Italian, or Italy genuinely Roman; for though from the beginning of the thirteenth

1 Pertz, Monum. iii. 675.

2 Maii, Nova Coll. vi. ii. 60. "In tantâ Ecclesiâ vix unus posset reperiri, quin vel illiteratus, vel simoniacus, vel esset concubinarius.”