Louis Marie Olivier Duchesne, Denis Jean Achille Luchaire, Ludwig von Pastor, William Walker Rockwell, Franz Xaver Kraus, and Walter Alison Phillips

“ The crisis which the Catholic Church underwent, during this terrible epoch, was the greatest in all her history: for while everything was thrown into the utmost confusion by the life and death struggles of the rival popes, while the ecclesiastical revenues and emoluments were used almost exclusively for the reward of partisan service, while everywhere the worldliness of the clergy had reached its highest pitch, heretical movements, by which the whole order of the Church was threatened with overthrow, were gaining strength in England, France, Italy, Germany and especially in Bohemia. ”

“ With joy and pride he welcomed the Byzantine East into the circle of vassal peoples and kingdoms of Rome bound politically to the see of St Peter, and with the same emotions beheld the patriarchate of Constantinople at last recognize Roman supremacy. But from this enormous increase of territory and influence arose a whole series of new and difficult problems. The court of Rome had to substitute for the old Greek hierarchy a hierarchy of Latin bishops; to force the remaining Greek clergy to practise the beliefs and rites of the Roman religion and bow to the supremacy of the pope ”

“ Not only was the result of the crusade extremely favourable to the extension of the Roman power, but throughout the middle ages the papacy never ceased to derive almost incalculable political and financial advantages from the agitation produced by the preachers and the crusading expeditions. The mere fact of the crusaders being placed under the special protection of the Church and the pope, and loaded with privileges, freed them from the jurisdiction, and even, up to a certain point, from the lordship of their natural masters, to become the almost direct subjects of the papacy ”

“ The educated bourgeoisie, which controls the fields of politics, science, finance, administration, art and literature, does not trouble itself about that great spiritual universal monarchy which Rome, as heir of the Caesars, claimed for the Vatican, and to which the Curia of to-day still clings. ”

“ Italy regarded the pope more than ever as a foe within its walls; and the policy of the pope, as regards Italy, aimed at replacing the kingdom by one or more republics, in which the temporal power should, in some form or other, find a place. But the continuance of the Republic in Paris was a condition precedent to the establishment of a republic in Rome, and the first had no chance of existence if the democracy in France did not remain in power. ”

“ To warn Eugenius against pride, Bernard reminds him in biblical terms that an insensate sovereign on a throne resembles “an ape upon a housetop,” and that the dignity with which he is invested does not prevent him from being a man, that is, “a being, naked, poor, miserable, made for toil and not for honours.” To his thinking, poison and the dagger were less to be feared by the pope than the lust of power. Ambition and cupidity were the source of the most deplorable abuses in the Roman Church. The cardinals, said Bernard, were satraps who put pomp before the truth. ”

“ It is conceivable that a pope of Boniface VIII.’s temperament would not submit kindly to any restriction of the discretionary power with which he was invested by tradition, and he endeavoured to make the cardinals dependent on him and even to dispense with their services as far as possible, only assembling them in consistory in cases of extreme necessity. This tendency of the Sacred College to convert the Roman Church into a constitutional monarchy, in which it should itself play the part of parliament, was a sufficiently grave symptom of the progress of the new spirit. ”

“ The main preoccupation of all these popes was how best to repair the injury done to orthodox Europe and to Rome by the destruction of the Latin Empire. Several of them thought of restoring the lost empire by force, and thus giving a pendant to the fourth crusade; but the Curia finally realized the enormous difficulties of such a project, and convinced themselves that the only practical solution of the difficulty was to come to an understanding with the Palaeologi and realize pacifically the long-dreamed union of the Greek and Latin Churches. ”

“ Yet it is surprising—and scarcely excusable—that Nicholas, while selecting the men whom he considered necessary for his literary work, passed over much which ought to have aroused grave suspicion in his mind. Thus the active humanistic life, called into existence by the enthusiasm of the pope, was not without its dark side. Quite apart from the fact that Rome became the scene of a chronique scandaleuse among these scholars, there was something unnatural in the predominance of the humanists in the Curia. ”

“ The electioneering alliances, which were everywhere in vogue, but particularly in Germany, between the Catholics and popular party and the Social Democrats, throw a lurid light upon the character of a movement that certainly went far beyond the intentions of the pope, but which it was now difficult to undo or to hold in check. For it is the essence of the matter that there were further considerations going far beyond the Roman question and forcing the Curia to adhere to the sovereignty of the people. ”

“ Between the perhaps excessive admiration of Innocent’s biographer, Friedrich von Hurter, and the cooler estimate of a later historian, Felix Rocquain, who, after taking into consideration Innocent’s political mistakes, lack of foresight and numerous disappointments and failures, concludes that his reputation has been much exaggerated, it is possible to steer a middle course and form a judgment that is at once impartial and conformable to the historical facts. Innocent was an eminent jurist and canonist, and never ceased to use his immense power in the service of the law. ”

“ The egregious blunder in the May Laws was the punitive clauses directed against the inferior clergy. Instead of enlisting them as friends, the Prussian government contrived by wild and wanton persecution to make them its enemies. The open protection it accorded to the Old Catholic movement contributed in no small measure to estrange those influential elements which, whilst favouring the suppression of Ultramontane tendencies, desired no schism in the Church, and viewed with horror the idea of a National Church in Bismarck’s sense (see Old Catholics) . ”

“ At the beginning, indeed, a reconciliation between the pope and council was effected by Sigismund who, on the 31st of May 1433, was crowned emperor at Rome. But, as early as the 29th of May 1434 a revolution broke out in Rome, which, on the 4th of June, drove the pope in flight to Florence; where he was obliged to remain, while Giovanni Vitelleschi restored order in the papal state.
The migration of Eugenius IV. to Florence was of extreme importance; for this town was the real home of the new art, and the intellectual focus of all the humanistic movements in Italy. ”

“ On the other hand, the great opportunity now open to the papacy on its spiritual side, is proved by the growing respect in which it has been held since 1870 in the English-speaking countries, where Roman Catholics are in a minority and their Church is in no sense established. Without doubt, opinion has been influenced in these countries by the fact that Rome has not been sufficiently strong to exercise any disturbing influence on the general course of national affairs, while in both its conspicuous members set a high example of private and civic conduct. ”

“ In many points, especially his great nepotism—witness the promotion of the worthless Pier Luigi Farnese—he remained, even as pope, a true child of the Renaissance period in which he had risen to greatness. Nevertheless he possessed the necessary adaptability and acumen to enable him to do justice to the demands of the new age, which imperatively demanded that the interests of the Church should be the first consideration. Thus, in the course of his long reign he did valuable work in the cause of the Catholic reformation and prepared the way for the Catholic restoration. ”

“ The College of Cardinals, and the Curia in general, grew more and more infected with worldliness during his pontificate. On the other side, however, the pope did splendid service to art and science, while to men of letters he allowed incredible freedom. The Vatican library was enriched and thrown open for public use, Platina—the historian of the popes—receiving the post of librarian. The city of Rome was transfigured. ”

“ The true tendency of affairs manifested itself in 1629, when the emperor Ferdinand II. (1619–1637) , at the zenith of his fortunes, forced the Protestant princes of Germany to restore to the Roman hierarchy all the ecclesiastical territories they had secularized during the past seventy-four years. Then France, freed from the fear of domestic enemies, arose to help the heretics to harry the house of Habsburg. Arranging a truce between Poland and Sweden, she unleashed Gustavus Adolphus. ”

“ The practice of the nomination of bishops by the Curia and of papal recommendation to prebends and benefices of every kind grew daily more general, and the number of appeals to Rome and exemptions granted to abbeys and even to simple churches increased continually. The third Lateran Council (1179) was a triumph for the leader of the Church. At that council wise and urgent measures were taken against the abuses that discredited the priesthood, but the principle of appeals and exemptions and the question of the increasing abuse of the power wielded by the Roman legates remained untouched. ”

“ This accidental fact constitutes a prime difference in favour of the preceding period, in which there were only five pontiffs during the first sixty years of the 13th century. Towards the end of the 13th century the directors of the Christian world occupied the throne of St Peter for too short a time to be able to make their personal views prevail or to execute their political projects at leisure after ripe meditation. Whatever the merit of a Gregory X. or a Nicholas III., the brevity of their pontificates prevented any one of these ephemeral sovereigns from being a great pope. ”

“ On his death he left the Church shaken to its very foundations, and in feud with almost every government. In Italy the Holy See was surrounded by a hostile force, whose “prisoner” the lord of the Vatican declared himself to be. In Spain and Portugal, and also in Belgium, a Liberalism inimical to the Church was in power. Prussia, together with other German states, was in arms against pope and episcopate. In France the Conservative Monarchical party had just shown its inability to preserve the Crown, whilst the Republic had anchored itself firmly by denouncing the clergy as its enemy. ”

“ The powerful following which Gregory enjoyed in Italy and Germany, and Benedict in Spain and Scotland, ought to have shown from the very first that a simple decree of deposition could never suffice to overthrow the two popes. Thus, as the sentence of Pisa found recognition in France and England, as well as in many parts of Germany and Italy, the synod, which was to secure the restoration of unity, proved only the cause for worse confusion — instead of two, there were now three popes. ”

“ In the Vatican, however, Fiesole completed the noble frescoes, from the lives of St Stephen and St Lawrence, which are still preserved to us. Nicholas, again, lent the protection and encouragement of his powerful arm to science as well as art, till the papal court became a veritable domain of the Muses. He supported all scientific enterprises with unlimited generosity, and the most famous savants of all countries flocked to Rome. ”

“ A nature formed on great broad lines—a man of spontaneous impulses carrying away others as he himself was carried away, a genuine Latin in the whole of his being—he belongs to those imposing figures of the Italian Renaissance whose character is summarized in contemporary literature by the word terrible, which is best translated “extraordinary” or “magnificent.”
As cardinal Julius II. had been the adversary of Alexander VI., as pope he stood equally in diametrical opposition to his predecessor. The Borgia’s foremost thought had been for his family ”

“ He suspended an archbishop of Sens (1136) who had neglected to take into consideration the appeal to Rome, summoned an archbishop of Milan to Rome to receive the pallium from the pope’s hands, lavished exemptions, and extended the right of appeal to such abnormal lengths that a Byzantine ambassador is reported to have exclaimed to Lothair III., “Your Pope Innocent is not a bishop, but an emperor.” When the universal Church assembled at the second Lateran Council (1139) , this leader of religion declared to the bishops that he was the absolute master of Christendom. ”

“ One nation only—the France of Philip Augustus—was able to remain outside the Roman vassalage. There is not a word, in the documents concerning the relations of Philip Augustus with Rome, from which we may conclude that the Capetian crown submitted, or that the papacy wished to impose upon it the effective suzerainty of the Holy See. Innocent III. had been able to encroach on France at one point only, when the Albigensian crusade had enabled him to exercise over the southern fiefs conquered by Simon de Montfort a political and secular supremacy in the form of collections of moneys. ”

“ The fact that the Vatican presents a great force hostile to and obstructive of certain characteristic tendencies of modern life and thought has necessarily raised up a powerful opposition even in countries traditionally Catholic. France no longer deserves the title of eldest daughter of the Church; the Catholicism of Italy is largely superficial; even Spain has shown signs of restiveness. ”

“ The Churches of England and Germany, founded, far from all traditions of autonomy, by Roman legates, tendered their obedience voluntarily. In Gaul there was no hostility to the Holy See, but on the contrary a profound veneration for the great Christian sanctuary of the West. The Carolingian princes, when Boniface pointed them towards Rome, followed him without their clergy offering any resistance on grounds of principle. ”

“ The true centre of this world was the capital of the Empire; the transference was consequently accepted as natural at an early date. The idea that the Roman Church is at the head of the other Churches, and has towards them certain duties consequent on this position, is expressed in various ways, with more or less clearness, in writings such as those of Clemens Romanus, Ignatius of Antioch and Hermas. In the 2nd century all Christendom flocked to Rome; there was a constant stream of people—bishops from distant parts, apologists or heresiarchs. ”

“ The royal dupe was the last man in the world to check the advance of the papacy. That service to Protestantism was performed by Catholic powers jealous of the preponderance of the Habsburgs. In view of these antipathies the treaty of 1627 between France, Spain and the pope is but an episode: instructive, however, in that the project, originated apparently by the pope, provided that England should be dismembered, and that Ireland should be treated as a papal fief. ”

“ At Florence the pope came into closer contact with the humanists, and to this circumstance is due the gradual dominance which they attained in the Roman Curia—a dominance which, both in itself, and even more because of the frankly pagan leanings of many in that party, was bound to awaken serious misgivings. ”