The Power Of The Popes

ht lustre of Italian literature; but, it is tinged with all the blood which fanaticism could shed in the lapse of an hundred years. Each of the

y in 1572; the league, the assassination of Henry III. by James Clement, in 1589; the victories of Henry IV. his recantation, and the edict of Nantz, in 1598. Fifteen popes during these tragical events governed the church, almost all of them of distinguished talents, and some of an energetic character: but the remembrance of the Avignon schism, the permanent scand

y the Venetians, the princes of Arragon, and the powerful families that ruled Florence and Milan. Pope Julius II. nephew of Sixtus IV. resolved to enfranchise Italy, that is, to subject it to the court of Rome, to expel foreigners, to sow divisions among the rivals

concluded against them with the king of France, the emperor, and the king of Arragon, the famous league of Cambray.-But, soon after, the advancement of Louis XII. rendered him uneasy: he feared to allow that of the emperor; he hastens to enter into a secret négociation with the Venetians, and promises them, provided they restore Faenza and Rimini, to join them in repelling the 'barbarians'; it is thus he calls the French, the Spaniards, and Germans. The Venetians, who rejected these offers, were excommunicated, defeated, and absolved by submitting to the pope. Then Juliu

discover the bishop in him; he attended too little to even the forms of the Apostolat; this was the principal deficiency in his policy.292 It was nevertheless in his pontificate that the doctrine of the infallibility of the pope was established. Julius II. according to Guicciardini,293 did not merit the title of a great man; and he obtains it from those only

procures. The son of Lorenzo de Medicis, he especially interested himself in ways of securing to his family a lasting ascendancy in Italy. He destined for his nephew the sovereignty of Tuscany, and to his own brother the kingdom of Naples. Louis XII. absolved from the anathemas with which Julius had loaded him, was pledged to favour the ambition of the Medicis, wh

almost instantly expired, as is asserted from joy. He was but forty-six years of age; and notwithstanding the errors into which pontifical policy led him, we must regret that he did not live to protect for a longer period the advancement of the fine arts. He encouraged them like a man worthy of cultivating them; he cherished them with a sincere and constant love, with which they never inspire bad princes. His interior administration merited the gratitude of the Romans:295 their grief when deprived of him was profound; an

at revolution in Christendom. Leo X. excommunicated Luther and his followers. Bossuet296 thinks with reason, that the heresies and schisms of this century might have been prevented, if neces

id: 'This great booby will spoil all.'-In fact, Francis I. in an interview with Leo at Bologna, consented to a concordat, and directed his chancellor Anthony Duprat to digest it in unison with two cardinals appointed for this purpose by the pope. The principal articles of this concordat are those which import, that for the future the chapters of the cathedral and metropolitan churches should not proceed in future to the election of bishops; that the king, within the term of six months from the date of a see becoming vacant, shall present to the pope a doctor or lieutenant of twenty-seven

The parliament places a protest in the hands of the bishop of Langres, that, if the registry take place, it will be by constraint, and that they will not act in consequence in less conformit

Alby. In 1521, a bishop of Condom, elected by the chapters of this church, was in the same manner supported against him whom the king had nominated. All the causes of this kind were similarly decided, until after the imprisonment of Francis I. and would ha

owing: 1st, kings in founding benefices, and in receiving the church into the state, have succeeded to the right of election exerc

us constitution, a pragmatic, founded on the decrees of general councils, cherished by the people and promulgated by the sovereign. This bull suspended, excommunicated, menaced with loss of temporal possessions, civil or ecclesiastic, the French prelates, and even lay lords, who should re-demand or regret the pragmatic sanction of Charles VII. In fine, they dared to cite in this same bull of Leo X. the bull of Boniface VIII. "Unam sanctam," in which the right of humbling thron

e parliaments seized every opportunity of remonstrating against this alteration of the fundamental laws of the Gallican church. The states of Orleans under Charles IX., those of Blois under Henry III. expressed the same regret: the clergy themselves

of Louvain, that the pope was subject to err in matters of faith: far from retracting this doctrine when pope, he caused a work to be printed in

pope be

that Adrian must

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stia, Civita-Vechia, Citta di Castello, and, to cause to be restored to them Parma and Placentia. Not being able to fulfil his engagements, the pope escaped in the disguise of a merchant to Orvieto. Affected with the great distresses of the pontiff, Francis I. resolved to march to his assistance, and made arrangements which compelled Charles to become reconciled with Clement. Charles, crowned emperor by Clement in 1530, promised to re-establish the Medicis in Florence, for the pontiff did not neglect the interests of his family; he married his niece Catherine, to the son of Francis I, that niece but too famous in the annals of France, down to the year 1589. It was in these circumstances Henry VIII. of England thought of putting away his wife, Catherine of Arragon, aunt of the emperor, in order to marry Ann Boleyn. While the war continued between the Holy See and Charles, Clement seemed favourable towards this project, and the bull of divorce was prepared. The reconciliation of the pop

ign pontiff; those who, without consent from Rome, exact from the clergy contributions for the necessities of the state; the civil tribunals which presume to try bishops, priests, those who are only tonsured, or monks; chancellor, vice-chancellors, presidents, counsellors, and, attorney-generals, who decide ecclesiastical causes: all those, in fine, who do not admit the omnipotence of the Ho

nd prelates who addressed to Paul III. some very j

hey say, "that you

attered. It was u

ld have been suffi

adulation follow

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cess to uncompro

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vereign pontiff

f Christendom; a

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that, that which

lawful to him.

strating cardina

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horse, all the ab

ave afflicted th

to unite them to the duchy of Milan, was threatened with the heaviest censures. Afterwards the pontiff wished for Parm

ommunicated the king of France, and threatened to place the kingdom under interdict. Henry was not terrified; he forbade his subjects from taking money to Rome, or addressing th

ty-one days, John Peter Caraffa, was ele

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s h

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the Spaniard, had the address to make the French monarch sign a truce of five years with the court of Madrid. Paul is enraged; his nephew, the cardinal Caraffa, comes to France to complain of the treaty they have presumed to make with Spain, without the knowledge of the Court of Rome. The duke of Alba, viceroy of Naples is dessous of lulling this quarrel; he sends a delegate to the pope, whom the pope imprisons. This outrage compels the vic

s nevertheless, during the greatest part of the sixteenth century, that which most justly excited the jealously of the sovereign pontiffs; and Paul IV. in declaring war against him, was led into it by the general policy of the Holy See, as much as by family interests and personal resentments. He refused to confirm Ferdinand's election to the empire, and maintained that Charles V. had

ared that all prelates, princes, kings and emperors, who fall into heresy, are, by the act itself, deprived of their benefices, states, kingdoms and empires, which belong to the first catholic who may wish to make himself master of them, and that the said heretical princes or prelates never can resume them. From this moment Elizabeth no longer hesitated to establish the English schism; she embraced, favoured, and propagated heresy: we must blame her no doubt; but how can we excuse a pope whose violence

within six months, under the usual penalties of excommunication, deprivation, and degradation: menaces almost as ridiculous as they were criminal, the only effect of which was to irritate the court of. France. But the pontificate of P

mple tonsure; it desires that criminal proceedings against bishops should be judged only by the pope; it authorises the pope to depose non-resident bishops, and appoint successors to them; it subjects in fine its own decrees to the approval of the sovereign pontiff, whose unbounded supremacy it recognizes. Gregory VII., Innocent III., Boniface VIII., and Julius III., never aspired to a more absolute theocracy, more subversive of all civil authority and of all social principle.307 In consequence, they determined in France, that the council of Trent, infallible in its dogmas, was not so in its legislation; and not to be surprised into

directed against men of letters; "sicam districtam in jugula litteratorum." A bull of Pius V. against certain propositions of Michael Baius, was the first signal of a long and melancholy quarrel. This pope in renewing and amplifying the bull of Paul III. "In c?na Domini," commanded it to be published on hol

ory of Lepanto; and the pope was not afraid to apply to this warrior, the bastard of Charles V. these words of the Gospel: "There was a man sent from God, and this man's name was John." Finally, by the power which he said he held from God, and in character of pastor charged with examining into the claim of those who had merited extraordinary honours by their superior zeal for the Holy See, Pius V. decreed the title of grand duke of Tuscany to Cosmo de Medicis. The emperor remonstrated in vain: Cosmo with his new title had himself

nd to the Arabs, that in spite of the diversity of worship, a common interest ought to unite Europe and Asia to combat the Mussulmans. This apparent cont

approbation bestowed by the pontiff on the assassins of Coligny: "Pontifex Colignii necem probat." In 1584, Gregory also sanctioned the league, on the exposé of the Jesuit Mathieu, who was deputed to Rome for this purpose. "For the rest," writes this Jesuit, "the pope does not think it proper to attempt the life of the ki

e de Medicis had propagated, inspired sentiments of intolerance in those who remained in the communion of the Holy See: the 'pragmatic' would have preserved France both from heresy and from persecuting zeal. Under the reign of the concordat, these two seeds of discord, rendering each other fruitful, had enveloped with their horrible fruits, the reigns of Charles IX. and Henry III. The new interests which the concordat gave to the clergy of France, rendered

nd because such a step seemed required in his pontifical character. He detested and dreaded Philip II.: he wished to take the kingdom of Naples from him; he supported him against England. A solemn bull gave Great Britain to Philip, declared Elizabeth a usurper, a heretic, and excommunicated; commanded the English to join the Spaniards to dethrone her, and promised

s blasted race, heretics, relapsed enemies of God and of religion; loosed their present and future subjects from their oaths of allegiance, finally declaring these two princ

l the potentate

l from their thron

them into the aby

rs of th

r distracted between the two parties, had neither the skill nor the power that such a situation demanded. We behold him depriving the king of Navarre of the right of succession to the throne of France, and afterwards throwing himself into the arms of this generous prince. This reconciliation provoked a Monitory, in which Sixtus orders Henry III. to appear at Rome in person, or by Attorney, within sixty days, to give an account of his conduct, and declares him excommunicated if he do not obey. We must conquer, said the king of Navarre to Henry III. whom this an

nce by pontifical anathemas, would extend further and lead to some result fatal to Philip. This display of the papal supremacy, exhibited against the kings of Navarre and of England, more truly menaced him who, governing Spain, Portugal, Belgia, the Two Sicilies, and a part of the new world, surpassed in riches and in greatness every other

in defending himself against Spain, Queen Elizabeth preferred securing her o

t weeks. Gregory had sufficient time to encourage the leaguers, notwithstanding, to excommunicate Henr

to the ceremonies of the absolution;310 and they had not much difficulty in obtaining the suppression of the formula: "We reinvest him in his royalty." But the absolved prince took a decisive measure against the pretensions of the court of Rome, in securing to the Protestants, by the Edict of Nantes, the free exercise of their religion and full enjoyment of their civil rights. When the catholic clergy came to require of him t

e the schism of Avignon, the progress of heresy, and the ascendancy of some princes, had placed the Holy See. If during the sixteenth century the chair of St. Peter has been almost continually occupied by skilful pontiffs, this age also presents to us seated on most of the thrones, celebrated sovereigns, whose virtues, talents, or energetic characters, severally recommended them to the historian: for example, Henry VIII. and his daughter Elizabeth, in England; Louis XII. Francis 1. and Henry IV. in France; Charles V. and Philip II. in Spain. None of our modern eras has been more fertile in memorab

and has almost obtained the authority of a code; for, we find it not only quoted in pleadings but in the laws themselves.311 The pragmatic of St Louis in tbe thirteenth century, the Vergers Dream in the fourteenth, the pr