purer and the more enduring. It is under the emblem of CHAP. VIL soul and body that the relation of the papal and imperial power is presented to us throughout the Middle Ages.* The Pope, as God's vicar in matters spiritual, is to lead men to eternal life; the Emperor, as vicar in matters temporal, must so control them in their dealings with one another that they may be able to pursue undisturbed the spiritual life, and thereby attain the same supreme and common end of everlasting happiness. In the view of this object his chief duty is to maintain peace in the world, while towards the Church his position is that of Advocate or Patron, a title borrowed from the practice adopted by churches and monasteries of choosing some powerful baron to protect their lands and lead their tenants in war." The functions of Advocacy are twofold: at home to make the Christian people obedient to the priesthood, and to execute priestly decrees upon heretics and sinners; abroad to propagate the faith among the heathen, not sparing to use. t' Merito summus Pontifex Romanus episcopus dici potest rex et sacerdos. Si enim dominus noster Iesus Christus sic appellatur, non videtur incongruum suum vocare successorem. Corporale et temporale ex spirituali et perpetuo dependet, sicut corporis operatio ex virtute animae. Sicut ergo corpus per animam habet esse virtutem et operationem, ita et temporalis iurisdictio principum per spiritualem Petri et successorum eius.'-St. Thomas Aquinas, De Regimine Principum. 6 Nonne Romana ecclesia tenetur imperatori tanquam suo patrono, et imperator ecclesiam fovere et defensare tanquam suus vere patronus? certe sic. . . . Patronis vero concessum est ut praelatos in ecclesiis sui patronatus eligant. Cum ergo imperator onus sentiat patronatus, ut qui tenetur eam defendere, sentire debet honorem et emolumentum.' I quote this from a curious document, a pamphlet called forth by the great schism of A.D. 1378, in Goldast's collection of tracts (Monarchia Imperii, vol. i. p. 229), entitled 'Letter of the four Universities, Paris, Oxford, Prague, and the "Romana generalitas," to the Emperor Wenzel and Pope Urban,' A.D. 1380. The title or description is obviously untrue, but the document has all the appearance of being practically contemporary. It is therefore available as evidence of the ideas which filled men's minds. CHAP. VII. Correspondence and harmony carnal weapons. Thus does the Emperor answer in every point to his antitype the Pope, his power being yet of a lower rank, created on the analogy of the papal, as the papal itself had been modelled after the elder Empire. The parallel holds good even in its details; for just as we have seen the churchman assuming the crown and robes of the secular prince, so now did he array the Emperor in his own ecclesiastical vestments, the stole and the dalmatic, gave him a clerical as well as sacred character, removed his office from all narrowing associations of birth or of the spirit country, inaugurated him by rites every one of which was meant to symbolize and enjoin duties in their essence religious. Thus the Holy Roman Church and the Holy Roman Empire are one and the same thing, seen from different sides; and Catholicism, the principle of the universal Christian society, is also Romanism; that is, rests upon Rome as the origin and type of its universality; manifesting itself in a mystic dualism which corresponds to the two natures of its Founder. As divine and eternal, its head is the Pope, to whom souls have been entrusted; as human and temporal, the Emperor, commissioned to rule men's bodies and acts. ual and temporal powers. In nature and compass the government of these two potentates is the same, differing only in the sphere of its * So Leo III in a charter issued on the day of Charles's coronation: actum in praesentia gloriosi atque excellentissimi filii nostri Caroli quem auctore Deo in defensionem et provectionem sanctae universalis ecclesiae hodie Augustum sacravimus.' — Jaffé, Regesta Pontificum Romanorum, ad ann. 800. So, indeed, Theodulf of Orleans, a contemporary of Charles, ascribes to 'Coeli habet hic (sc. Papa) claves, proprias te iussit habere; Tu regis eius opes, clerum populumque gubernas, Hic te coelicolas ducet ad usque choros.' -In D. Bouquet, v. 415. State. working; and it matters little whether we call the Pope CHAP. VII. a spiritual Emperor or the Emperor a secular Pope. Nor, though the one office is below the other as far as man's life on earth is less precious than his life hereafter, is therefore, on the older and sounder theory, the imperial authority delegated by the papal. For, as has been said. already, God is represented by the Pope not in every capacity, but only as the ruler of spirits in heaven as sovereign of earth, He issues His commission directly to the Emperor. Opposition between two servants of the same King is inconceivable, each being bound to aid and foster the other, the co-operation of both being needed in all that concerns the welfare of Christendom at large. This is the one perfect and self-consistent scheme of the union of Union of Church and State; for, taking the absolute coincidence Church and of their limits to be self-evident, it assumes the infallibility of their joint government, and derives, as a corollary from that infallibility, the duty of the civil magistrate to root out heresy and schism no less than to punish treason and rebellion. It is also the scheme which, granting the possibility of their harmonious action, places the two powers in that relation which gives to each of them its maximum of strength. But by a law to which it would be hard to find exceptions, in proportion as the State became more Christian, the Church, who to work out her purposes had assumed worldly forms, became by the contact worldlier, meaner, spiritually weaker; and the system whose foundations were joyfully laid in the days of Constantine, and which culminated triumphantly in the Empire Church of the Middle Ages, has in each succeeding generation been slowly losing ground, has seen its brightness dimmed and its completeness marred, and sees now those who are most zealous on behalf of its surviving institutions feebly defend or silently desert the principle upon which all must rest. CHAP. VII. The complete accord of the papal and imperial powers which this theory, as sublime as it is impracticable, requires, was attained only at a few points in their history." It was finally supplanted by another view of their relation, which, professing to be a developement of a principle recognized as fundamental, the superior importance of the religious life, found increasing favour in the eyes of fervent churchmen." Declaring the Pope sole representative on earth of the Deity, it concluded that from him, and not directly from God, must the Empire be held - held feudally, it was said by many-and it thereby thrust down the temporal power to be the servant instead of the sister of the spiritual. Nevertheless, the Papacy in her meridian, and under the guidance of her greatest minds, of Hildebrand, of Alexander II, of Innocent III, not seeking to y Perhaps at no more than three: in the time of Charles and Leo III; again under Otto III and his two Popes Gregory V and Sylvester II; thirdly, under Henry III; certainly never thenceforth. The Sachsenspiegel (Speculum Saxonicum, circ. A.D. 1240), the great North-German law book, says, 'The Empire is held from God alone, not from the Pope. Emperor and Pope are supreme each in what has been entrusted to him: the Pope in what concerns the soul; the Emperor in all that belongs to the body and to knighthood.' The Schwabenspiegel, compiled half a century later, subordinates the prince to the pontiff: The Pope gives the worldly sword of judgement to the Emperor: the spiritual sword belongs to the Pope that he may judge therewith.' 'Daz weltliche Schwert des Gerichtes daz lihet der Babest dem Chaiser; daz geistlich ist dem Babest gesetzt daz er damit richte.' a So Boniface VIII in the bull Unam Sanctam (Corp. Iur. Canon. Extrav. Commun. i. 8) will have but one head for the Christian people: 'Igitur ecclesiae unius et unicae unum corpus, unum caput, non duo capita quasi monstrum, Christus videlicet et Christi vicarius Petrus, Petrique successor, ... In eius potestate duos esse gladios, spiritualem et temporalem, evangelicis dictis instruimur. Nam dicentibus apostolis "Ecce gladii duo hic," in ecclesia scilicet, non respondit Dominus nimis esse sed satis. . . . Uterque gladius, spiritualis et materialis, est in potestate ecclesiae. Sed is quidem pro ecclesia, ille vero ab ecclesia exercendus. Ille sacerdotis, is manu regum et militum, sed ad nutum et patientiam sacerdotis.' abolish or absorb the civil government, required only its CHAP. VII. obedience, and exalted its dignity against all save herself." It was reserved for Boniface VIII, whose extravagant pretensions betrayed the decay that was already at work within, to show himself to the crowding pilgrims at the jubilee of A.D. 1300, seated on the throne of Constantine, arrayed with sword, and crown, and sceptre, shouting aloud, I am Caesar - I am Emperor.' mediaeval documents. The theory of an Emperor's place and functions thus Proofs from sketched cannot be definitely assigned to any point of time; for it was growing and changing from the fifth century to the fifteenth. Nor need it surprise us that we do not find in any one author a full account of the grounds whereon it rested, since much of what seems strangest to us was then too obvious to need statement or b St. Bernard writes to Conrad III: 'Non veniat anima mea in consilium eorum qui dicunt vel imperio pacem et libertatem ecclesiae vel ecclesiae prosperitatem et exaltationem imperii nocituram.' So speaking of the papal claim to temporal and spiritual authority, he writes in the De Consideratione, addressed to Pope Eugenius III: 'I ergo tu et tibi usurpare aude aut dominans Apostolatum aut Apostolicus dominatum. Plane ab alterutro prohiberis. Si utrumque simul habere velis, perdes utrumque' (Bk. ii. ch. 6). e Sedens in solio armatus et cinctus ensem, habensque in capite Constantini diadema, stricto dextra capulo ensis accincti, ait: "Numquid ego summus. sum pontifex ? nonne ista est cathedra Petri? Nonne possum imperii iura tutari? ego ego sum imperator."- Fr. Pipinus (ap. Murat. S. R. I. ix), l. iv. c. 41. These words, however, are by this writer ascribed to Boniface when receiving the envoys of the Emperor Albert I, in A.D. 1299. I have not been able to find authority for their use at the jubilee, but give the current story for what it is worth. It is possible that Dante may be alluding to this sword scene in a remarkable passage of the Purgatorio (xvi. 1. 106): 'Soleva Roma, che 'l buon mondo feo, Duo Soli aver, che l' una e l'altra strada |