“ Such documents as I have chosen are the very framework of history. How little are they known, even by those who have perused volumes of references to and comments upon them! Clauses from them have, during centuries, been woven again and again into histories of Europe, but how few people have ever read them in their own rugged simplicity! And yet a great document is a far greater monument of a crisis in history than is any description of a battle or characterization of a man. ”

“ For although our Lord and Saviour impressed upon his faithful followers the special advantages of peace and charity—in testimony of which toomany proofs exist to be comprised in the extent of a letter—thou, on the contrary, striving after profane novelties, delighting more in a widely known than in a good name, being swelled with unheard of pride, hast, like a standardbearer of schism, torn with proud cruelty and cruel pride all the members of the church, which, following the apostle, were enjoying a quiet and tranquil life before thy times. ”

“ During two centuries the eyes of Europe were fixed upon the pope as the champion of the faith. The people wanted a leader, and the popes wanted to lead. And the church became richer and richer, as one crusader after another died without redeeming the lands that he had pledged. ”

“ Moreover, when, in the time of pope Nicholas, a synod was held with 125 bishops in session, this was established and decreed : that no one should ever become pope except by election of the cardinals, with the approbation of the people and through the consent and authority of the king. And thou thyself wast the author, the sponsor and the signer of this decree. Furthermore thou hast filled the whole church, as it were, with the ill odour of a most grave charge concerning the too familiar living together and cohabitation with a strange woman. ”

“ A bishop at that time was not only a dignitary of the church, but also a prince of the realm, whose duty it was to send his contingents to the king's army, and to act as councillor at his court. The fiefs and jurisdictions of the bishoprics were given therefore to faithful followers, not only as a reward for their past services, but also in consideration of their future ones. ”

“ But we do intend to oppose those abuses through which all the churches of our land are oppressed and worn out, and almost all monastic discipline is dead and buried, God, through the emperor, has exalted the church to be at the head of the world; at the head of the world the church, not through God, as we believe, now tries to demolish the empire. ”

“ It was most disastrous for Henry that there happened to be a strong opposition party among the princes of his own land, to whom even an ally like Gregory, the accomplishment of whose aims would have been the greatest possible national misfortune, was not unwelcome. Nor were the princes long alone in their enmity to the king. Gregory succeeded in winning over a number even of the very bishops who had signed the document of his own deposition. Henry's proposed council at Worms was so scantily attended that it was removed to Mainz. Here too the German princes were conspicuous by their absence. ”

“ But if there shall be any one in the party of the emperor who shall refuse to swear to the aforesaid truce, the emperor shall command all who are of his party, by the fealty due him and for the sake of his favour, to lend no aid to such person, and not to stand in the way of or oppose those who wish to do him harm; and if any one shall do him harm, he shall not be accountable for it. The emperor, moreover, will not recall that mandate so long as the truce shall last. And the lord king Henry, his son, shall confirm the aforesaid, as has been stated in the writing. ”

“ There are two things by which our empire ought to be ruled, the holy laws of the emperors and the good customs of our predecessors and fathers. We will not and can not go beyond those limits placed for the church; whatever is counter to them we do not receive. We willingly exhibit due reverence to our father; we look upon the free crown of our empire as a divine benefice alone ”

“ A number of the bishops even, who had been consecrated by his anti-popes, were allowed to remain in their own sees, or were otherwise provided for. But, nevertheless, the papacy had come forth victorious from the long struggle.
No. V. is the act by which King John, in 1213, laid England at the feet of a papal legate, to receive it back, by paying tribute, as a fief from the see of Rome. The course of the struggle between John and Pope Innocent is too familiar to need recapitulation. ”

“ The custom of appealing to Rome—a custom which had begun under Henry I. whose brother was papal legate for England—had assumed alarming dimensions under Henry II. The king had almost no jurisdiction over his clerical subjects. And, to make matters worse, the clergy did not refrain from crimes which called for the utmost severity of the law. In ten years we hear of more than one hundred unpunished cases of murder among them. ”

“ There is scarcely a doubt but that the pope knew the full force of the words he w;as using. Since the time of Gregory VII., who was the first to receive princes as vassals of the Roman see, the feudal relation had been entered into with the papacy more than once, and its terminology could not have been unfamiliar to Adrian. In the present case one of the legates had made matters worse by bursting out with the remark: "from whom then has the emperor the empire except from the pope?"
Frederick's manifesto (III. c) is a spirited defence of the imperial independence. ”

“ We will rather lay aside the crown than to consent that the crown, together with ourselves, be so abased. Let the pictures be obliterated, the writings retracted, so that they may not remain eternal sources of discord between the kingdom and the priesthood. ”

“ And the lord pope, calling together a council as quickly as it can be done, shall, together with the cardinal bishops and the monks and ecclesiastics who shall be present, declare the excommunication against all who shall attempt to infringe this peace. ”

“ And the lord emperor will truly restore peace as well to the lord pope Alexander, as to all his successors and to the whole Roman church.
3. Every possession and holding, moreover, whether of a prefecture or of any other thing, which the Roman church enjoyed and which he took away of himself or through others, he will restore in good faith; saving all the rights of the empire. The Roman church also will restore in good faith, every possession and holding which it took away from him through itself or through others; saving all the rights of the Roman church. ”

“ The papal candidate, Stephen Langton, was finally received as archbishop of Canterbury, and, after removing the interdict, the pope accepted John's submission in the form here given. Innocent was now at the height of his power. England, Aragon, and Hungary, were fiefs of Rome, and the Latin rulers in the East were completely subject to him. Never at any time has the papacy so nearly approached its ideal of world rule. ”

“ There seldom has been a man who took such unselfish interest in all his pupils. My thanks are also due to Professor Emerton, of Harvard University, who first roused in me an interest in historical studies, and in whose seminary the idea of a book like the present was first broached.
In the matter of actual assistance with the work in hand. I am bounden to no one so deeply as to Dr. F. Liebermann, of Berlin, who allowed me to presume upon his amiability to quite an unreasonable extent. He has read with me. word for word, my whole manuscript of the Dialogue concerning the Exchequer. ”

“ There is a famous manoeuvre in the Spanish bull-fights, which may prove successful once, but which means death to the torreador should he attempt to repeat it. The result of Gregory's second bann was not unlike it. A storm of indignation rose against the pope, and the Lombard and German bishops rallied to Henry. First in Bamberg, then in Mainz, and finally in Brixen (see No. 13) , Gregory was declared deposed. Wibert of Ravenna was made pope in his stead. Gregory's letter of justification, written to Bishop Herrmann of Metz (see No. 14) , shows a power of reasoning worthy of the Jesuits. ”

“ All the clergy who belong to Italy or to other regions outside of the German realm, shall be left to the disposition and judgment of the lord pope Alexander and his successors. But if it please the lord emperor to ask for a continuance in their grades of some who canonically received them, he shall be heard to the extent of 10 or 12, if he wish to insist. ”

“ After a few weeks of captivity Paschal was ready to make any concessions, and finally consented to an unqualified resignation of the right of investiture (see 15 b) . In the following year, however, a Lateran council repudiated this compact, and a synod held at Vienne declared lay investiture to be heresy, at the same time placing Henry under the bann. In 1118 the question of the investitures led to the election of a new anti-pope and the beginning of a new schism. ”

“ Of the church he became the bondsman, laying the independence of England in the hands of a papal legate, and promising a shameful tribute. [2] To the barons he conceded the privileges here translated. They will be seen to place legal restraint on the king in many different ways. The death-knell of absolutism had struck in England.
The demands that the king, as feudal lord, could make on his subjects were distinctly regulated—what aids he might ask, for what purposes, and when and how often. ”

“ Kunigunde, the wife of emperor Henry II.; not to speak of Emma, the mother of Edward the Confessor, underwent this last form of the ordeal.
In the hot water ordeal the accused was compelled to put his hand in a boiling cauldron of water and extract a stone or a ring. Another, and very common form of trying by water, was to throw the accused into a pool or tank of cold water, and see whether he sank or floated. The technical expression for this tank was "fossa"; Ducange's translation of which—a place to drown women in—does great injustice to the chivalry of our ancestors. ”

“ The documents chosen cover the modest period of nine hundred years of the world's history, and vary in length from one page to one hundred and twenty! Law, religion, politics, and general civilization are among the topics chosen for illustration."
Such objections as these are not unfounded, but in spite of them my book may and ought to be of use for the class of readers for whom it is intended: namely, for students of history—not specialists as yet—who have an interest in the monuments of the past and who seize the first convenient opportunity of acquainting themselves with them. ”

“ Upon the whole, therefore, this bull, like many before and many since, was the mere effect of a league between the papal and regal powers, to abet and assist each other's usurpations; nor is it easy to say whether more disturbance to the world, and more iniquity, have arisen from their acting conjointly, or from the opposition which the former has made to the latter! ”

“ The taxes and payments of cities as well as of individuals were established upon a just basis. All in all, as Hallam remarks, "Magna Carta is the foundation stone of English freedom, and all later privileges are little more than a confirmation and commentary upon it." ”

“ There was one great system which separated all Europe into classes, and made all the members of a given class akin. A nation, on the other hand, as such, had little influence on its neighbour, mingled seldom in that neighbour's quarrels. ”

“ For thou dost assert that no one of us shall have any further power of binding or loosing any one of our parishioners whose crime, or even the mere rumour of it, shall reach thee—save thou alone, or him whom thou dost especially delegate for this purpose. What man that is learned in the sacred Scriptures does not see the more than madness of this decree ? ”

“ By which thing our sense of shame suffers more than our cause, although this general complaint has resounded every where: that all the decrees of the apostolic see have been set in motion by women—in a word, that through this new senate of women the whole circle of the church is administered. For no amount of complaining suffices concerning the injuries and insults against bishops whom thou most unworthily dost call sons of harlots and the like. ”

“ The French Revolution almost killed the order of Benedict, and it is now kept alive only in Austria and Italy. The monks are still famous for their classical learning.
No. II., the formulas for holding ordeals, [2] are prayers, exhortations, exorcisms, etc., used by the priests in carrying out the so-called "judgments of God." Although these formulas, as here given, are first found in manuscripts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, they belong undoubtedly to Carolingian times. ”

“ What happened at Canossa is described by Gregory himself in his letter to the German princes (see No. 11) . Henry rode away from the Tuscan castle, bound, indeed, by promises for the future, but, in reality, a free man—free to labour and to consult for his own interests. ”

“ Although we know and are sure that neither the winds nor the waves of tempests can cast down the church of God which is founded on a firm rock: we, nevertheless, being very weak and timid, are shaken and tremble whenever such attacks occur. ”

“ The glory of the monastery falls in the first three centuries of its existence. At the beginning of the twelfth century there were 460 monks in Cluny itself, and 314 monasteries subordinate to it. The order later fell a victim to misrule and demoralization, but lingered on until the French Revolution gave it its coup de grâce. ”

“ Thus, for instance, it became necessary in course of time to reward by remissions of so and so many days those who would consent even to be present at the preaching of the papal legate who came to announce a crusade; and finally, just before the fall of Acre, full remission was granted to those who would contribute anything at all to the lost cause. [3]
No. VIII. is the Rule of St. Francis, which, although Innocent III. had verbally consented to the foundation of the order, was not formally approved by the papacy until 1223. ”