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'I have placed thee above the peoples of the kingdom in order that thou mightest attack and tear down, destroy and scatter, plant and build up anew!'. . . For you see who the servant is who has been placed above the household the viceroy of Jesus Christ, the follower of Peter, the anointed of the Lord God of Pharaoh, placed as a mediator between God and men, under God and yet above men, lesser than God, but greater than man. . . Thus is Peter lifted up unto the full- ness of power."

The man of slight build who spoke these words was to develop to the full the heritage of Gregory VII. With all his energy he lived according to the principle that nothing which happens in the world must escape the regard and the power of the Roman Pontiff. He, a scholastic thinker and a dialectician, a jurist and a theologian, looked upon his culture, acquired in Paris and Bologna, as a great good. He wrote to the King of France that he owed everything he had of science, after the grace of God, to the University of Paris. As long as he lived he protected this young foundation and defended its teachers and students against the tyranny of the Bishop of Notre-Dame.

Innocent gained the upper hand in Rome with great effort and after many setbacks. The resistance of the city to him who was really its Papal national politician lasted a long while. The nobles chose the psychological moment in which to make a pact with the people, who had not forgotten their Arnold of Brescia. The battle-towers of re- bellious barons arose in the Colosseum, in the Theatre of Marcellus, and in the Baths of Caracalla. What the mob thought of Popes was demonstrated anew on the day when the body of Alexander III was brought home from exile for burial. Stones and mud were hurled at the coffin. During many a day and many a night, Innocent sat in the Lateran Palace listening to the bells on the Capitol summon men to civil war. Long after the city prefect and the Senate had sworn him an oath of allegiance, "the ill-tempered mare" as Dante called Rome rebelled again. During the spring of 1203, the Pope fled from the burning city. After ten months he returned, silenced the demagogues and bribed the leaders of the people with money. This rime he secured everything he wanted, including the right to name and remove the fodesta, who was the administrator of Roman executive power. Innocent, who termed himself fatherly protector

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of Italy, also gained back again for the Roman See some parts of the Papal States, which had become Imperial territory during the wars with the Hohenstaufens. There he replaced the Imperial authorities with Papal rectors. Whenever that was possible, he assumed the role of protector of the Italian communes and opposed the Empire, which he hated as much as Augustine had hated the ancient Empire, because it was built on force. But these communes became states within the state, and thus social entities in their own right. Science in the universities began to be autonomous, just as did politics in the chancellories of kings and princes, or poetry and aesthetic culture at the courts. All these things together hollowed out from within the Imperial idea, which had embraced within itself all aspects of earthly activity; and in the same way the times of Innocent and the Popes who immediately followed him confronted the Church with a trend away from Imperial to state authority, from a prophetic, creative atti- tude of mind to an intellectual, methodical attitude, and from divinely given inspiration to Church law.

The theocratic consciousness of Hildebrand, who felt as he wrote his epistles that Peter himself was looking over his shoulder, was not to be acquired in Bologna and Paris. More than ever before ques- tions of law were decided by a Papacy which studied the juridical and ethical implications of the corpus juris. Innocent, the "apostolic oracle," answered all questions magnanimously and without bias as wisely as if he were a second Solomon. A Geneva monk who was expert in surgery had operated on a peasant woman for goitre and had ordered her to stay in bed. But the woman went to work and died as a result. The question now arose: dare a man who has com- mitted a murder unwillingly, continue to exercise the priestly func- tion? Yes, said Innocent, it is true that the religious was at fault in practising such a craft, but since he acted in the spirit of human sympathy and not for money and was a conscientious medical practi- tioner he cannot be held responsible for the death of a woman who did not do his bidding. Therefore, after he has performed his pen- ance, he may say Mass again. May sick persons eat meat in Lent if they do not give alms? Yes, replied the Pope, necessity is here the law. May a bastard become a bishop? This was forbidden by the traditional law. Innocent sent the chapter of Lincoln this reply:

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One can make an exception when the man in question is able and has rendered real service, when circumstances compel it, and when all the electors are in agreement. In Palestine Moslem converts came breez- ily to the baptismal font with the four wives the Koran permitted them and their bounteous offspring. Could they become Christians? This time Innocent hesitated; but then he bethought himself of Abraham and the other fathers who had lived no differently from the Turks. The Gospel itself, he said, contains no page in which po- lygamy is expressly forbidden. And since it seems that the heathens can lawfully have several wives according to the laws of their own cults, they may keep them in accordance with the custom of the Pa- triarchs when they become Christians. His principle that mercy stood higher than the law did not prevent the Pope from insisting upon an upright juridical practice, nor did it keep him from exercising mer- ciless sternness when judges were found to sponsor dubious interpreta- tions of the law.

The greatest successes of Innocent's policy were obtained outside the scope of the German problem. In England John Sansterre, whom his own brother Richard of the Lion Heart had excluded from the succession in his testament, came under suspicion as having murdered the heir apparent and was summoned to appear in France for trial by the Breton nobles. When he did not respond, he was deprived of his lands in France. England appealed to Innocent for a decision, but Philippe Auguste forbade the Church to interfere in this quarrel be- tween kings; for he himself had run afoul of the Pope by reason of his marital troubles. Innocent did not abandon his right and duty to either side. When the election of a bishop to the See of Canterbury resulted in a dual choice, the chapter appealed to him and he charged an English commission with conducting a free election in Rome. John, however, refused to recognize the Archbishop-elect, Cardinal Stephen Langton, took action against the monks of Canterbury, con- fiscated their property and berated the Pope. When all means of spiritual influence were exhausted, Innocent placed England under the interdict in 1208. No divine service was held in the churches, no candle burned, the Cross and every statue were veiled. The dead were borne along the streets without prayer or benefit of clergy. Only children were baptized, and the dead were given the Viaticum.

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Anger and dejection spread among the people. John swore venge- ance, and carried out his oath with terrible cruelty. Well-nigh the whole clergy disappeared from England, churches and monasteries were sacked, and the Jews were either tortured until they gave the King their money or driven to suicide when they could not flee the country. In 1209 Innocent went further and imposed the ban on John; but even then the persecution of the Church did not cease. Then in 1211 the Pope declared the Plantagenet deposed from his throne, and released his subjects of their oath of loyalty. The King of France was to carry out this verdict in so far as John's possessions on the Continent were concerned.

Philippe Auguste of France had already come to grips with the Papacy under Celestine III. Soon after his marriage with Ingeborg, he had put her aside and wedded Agnes de Meran. Ingeborg sum- moned Innocent as well as Celestine to aid her cause, and they cham- pioned her right by imposing the ban and the interdict on the King, whom intimated prelates had helped to have his will. Philippe finally gave way to popular feeling and separated himself from Agnes, who died soon thereafter. Nevertheless Ingeborg remained under arrest and continued to beseech Innocent to obtain justice for her. Events in England now induced the Pope, who during the struggle for power between the two countries, had hitherto protected the lands of the Lionheart against the Capetian monarch's desire of conquest, to pit the strength of France against John. During twelve years he had ceaselessly besought Philippe to set his marriage in order, gradually sub- stituting persuasion for command. Now, when he formally sum- moned the king to undertake a crusade against John, he found in him who had chronically berated the Papacy a zealous advocate of Papal authority. For he had long since cherished a dream of landing a force in England. Now the banished Ingeborg was once more attractive to her husband. He declared that she was his lawful wife, received absolution from Innocent and prepared to take the field against John. Meanwhile the Papal Legate suggested to the English monarch that his only salvation lay in submitting to the Pope. John, who was also menaced by foes in England, knelt before the Legate, took his hand and swore that he would obey the Pope. He restored peace to the Church and ruled that the Kingdom of England and Ireland, as a

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dependency of Rome, had to pay tribute. The King of France was now compelled to abandon his English Crusade. Innocent threatened him with the ban if he laid hands on the newly acquired dominions of the Holy See.

The year following, 1214, Philippe Auguste defeated the German King Otto, who had formed an alliance with John Sansterre, in the Battle of Bouvines in Flanders. Then the spiritual and temporal nobles of England, under the leadership of Stephen Langton, pro- tected themselves against the autocratic dictates of their King, misrule and spoliation of the churches, by compelling him to sign the Magna Charta Libertatum in 1215. This basic law establishing the state as an aristocracy supported by the people became England's charter of liberal constitutional government and public law. Then Pope In- nocent, acting as protector of his vassal, repudiated the bill of rights thus obtained by "rebels who had had recourse to arms." Unmoved by the bitterness felt by all those involved, he hurled the anathema at them. Even the Primate was affected. The Pope had reason to fear that a people which obtained independence might dispense with his temporal power. In Shakespeare's King John one can still hearken to the echo of the storm the Pope aroused in England. It was only when the Barons called the armies of the Dauphin Louis VIII (whom Innocent also banned), and when John Sansterre died of hardships incurred during a gruesome flight, that his son Heniy III confirmed the Magna Charta. England remained a fief of the Pope until this relationship was formally abrogated by Parliament under Edward III in 1366.

In much the same way, the Pope took a hand in the politics of all other European countries. He compelled the Kings of Leon and Aragon to obey the marriage laws of the Church; he imposed on Aragon and Portugal the duty to pay tribute; he gave the Bulgarians and the Wallachs their kings; and he acted as arbitrator in Poland, Hungary, Dalmatia and Norway. He called the nations to a new Crusade, but against his will this ended in a siege of Constantinople. The leader of the fleet was the blind, nineteen-year-old Doge of Ven- ice, who was much more concerned with conquering the city than with wresting the Holy Land from Islam. Therewith the Byzantine Em-

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pire came to an end in Europe, and for sixty years a Latin Empire kept watch on the Bosphorus.

The Papal guardian of Frederic met with no success in carrying out his German policy. At first he maintained neutrality in the struggle for the throne between Philip of Swabia and Otto the Guelph, Then, because Philip in his capacity as administrator of the Mathildan do- main had interfered with the rights of the Church, and also because the entire Hohenstaufen faction did not recognize the Papal gains in the Papal States, Innocent went over to the side of Otto, who was rich in promises. He imposed the ban on Otto's opponents and in an- swer to their protest declared that, though the German princes un- questionably had the right to elect their King, it was the Pope's priv- ilege to examine the king elected before crowning him Emperor, and, in case that two candidates were chosen, to decide in favour of the one who appeared most likely to perform his royal duties. Philip gained the larger number of supporters and had already succeeded in inducing Innocent to free him from the ban, when he was murdered by a Wittelsbach assassin in 1208. Otto, who was betrothed to Phil- ip's daughter, was now unquestionably King and renewed all the golden promises he had made to the Pope. But once crowned Em- peror (1209) he was no longer anxious to keep them. What was still worse, he wrecked the political plan on which the Curia had staked its greatest hopes. It sought to prevent once and forever the union under one rule of the Neapolitan Sicilian Kingdom and the Empire, since this would have placed the Italian Church states anew under the control of the Empire. When Otto, who had already sub- jugated the mainland, wanted to conquer Sicily also, the Pope first imposed the ban on him and then induced the German princes to depose him and elect a new ruler. The choice fell on Frederic, as Henry VI had already foreseen, and Innocent approved. The reason was that Frederic recognized the Pope's right to determine the fate of Sicily, and obediently conveyed the Sicilian crown to his infant son. The Hohenstaufen monarch was then seventeen years old and was received with enthusiasm in the land of his ancestors. He became King of Germany; and by the Golden Bull of Ager he promised, with the assent of the princes, to fulfill all the spiritual and temporal requests,

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of the Pope, The year following Otto lost the Battle of Bouvines, and neither he nor his English ally recovered from the blow. The Papacy had thus pressed to its bosom a young and beautiful viper who would soon prove (as Voltaire was to say later on) "un modele de la plus parfait politique."

These events were followed by the Council of the Lateran (1215) which was the greatest assemblage of churchmen the world had ever seen. Many more than a thousand ecclesiastics, including the Patri- archs of Constantinople and Jerusalem, delegates from Alexandria and Antioch, and legates of the temporal rulers assembled. Archbishop Roderic of Toledo delivered in Latin, French, German, English and Spanish a greatly admired address on the extent of the Papal powers. To this spiritual glorification the Bishop of Liege appended a symbol of the temporal power of the Church by appearing on the first day as a Count clad in scarlet, on the second day as a Duke dressed in green, and on the third day as a Bishop arrayed in violet garments.

Innocent opened the sessions with a feeling that he was soon to die: "I have desired with a great desire to eat this Pascal Lamb with you before I go." The situation then existing throughout the world entitled him to liken the authority of the Papacy to the Sun and the power of Kings to the Moon, which bears its light as a loan from the day star. A man who despised the world sat on a throne from which he ruled the world; and the just steward (whom the press of business he so much deplored had never robbed of a deep earnestness of thought or of the gravity so characteristic of the true Roman statesman), had proved himself a frugal householder who knew how to garner but also how to give, and who lived as simply as Cincinnatus himself. He had been loyal to the sentiments he had uttered on the day of his coronation: "If I wished to teach and not to do, you would rightly say to me 'Doctor, cure yourself!' One has every reason to despise the sermon of a man who himself gives scandal." The hostile lyrics of Walther von der Vogelweide "Aha, how Christlike is now the Pope's laughter" had missed their target. The Council discussed steps to be taken in order to regain the Holy Land, and the Reforma- tion of the Church. Seventy canons on matters of faith, law and discipline gave a new expression to ancient binding legislation. They dealt with the act of consecration, the Mass, indulgences and their

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misuse, Easter duty, the curbing of a monasticism grown too luxuriant, and the uprooting of heresy. The ban was once more imposed on Otto IV, and Frederic the Hohenstaufen was recognized as the duly elected Emperor.

During the next year Innocent set out for Lombardy with the ob- ject of settling the war between Genoa and Pisa. But he died in Perugia and was buried there. Soon a German chronicler set down the legend that the restless soul of the dead Pope had appeared again on earth, surrounded by the flames of Purgatory: driven by the whips of the Devil through the world, it finally reached the foot of the Cross and cried aloud for the prayers of the faithful. This story enshrined the truth that the Popes remained as conscious of the dan- gers and temptations latent in the temporal power of the Church as were the early Christians. During the nineteenth century, Leo XIII erected a monument to the Pontiff of the thirteenth century who served him as a revered model: in the semidarkness of the basilica, Innocent sleeps with hands folded and with the tiara on his head, looking as young as when Giotto had drawn him in his pictures of St. Francis.

The great concerns of Innocent's pontificate had been Emperor and Empire, Mendicant Orders and heresy. The same things were to bring joy and sorrow to his successors. The cosmos of the Catholic Church is a perfect co-ordination of antitheses which hover in constant tension, maintaining themselves and mutually softening one another. In it the rights of the divine and the human, of the temporal and the timeless, of the material and the spiritual, of the soul and the intellect, of freedom and subservience, of mastery and service, tend like spokes of a wheel towards the point of rest at the centre, in which all the energies moving in and out part company and join forces alike. It is just this fullness of life in balance which makes the Church a cosmos. But the separate energies which it embraces and fosters, harnessing each to the rest, are always in conflict when seen as historical realities. Each wishes to be alone and to dominate. In addition it always seems right at any given moment that one certain idea should be emphasized above all others. Therefore it is eminently natural that as a rule the richest and most active eras are those which most violently oppose the Church's system of doctrine and life. The Church of the thirteenth

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century received in the Samma of St. Thomas Aquinas, grand-nephew of Barbarossa and heritor of both German and Latin blood, a marvel- lously harmonious reflection of its inner structure. At the same time, however, it witnessed efforts of unparalleled vigour to effect emanci- pation from its religious and spiritual communion. To live in the Catholic state of tension was unendurable to many spirits; and both good and evil men found in the administration of the Church an excuse, or even an incentive, for separating themselves from it. To one who looks closely the whole Middle Ages are like a landscape shot through with fissures and chasms in spite of all these cleavages. The fact that Europe held together out of a sense of devotion to the ulti- mate highest things can hardly be understood unless one has recourse to the mysterious law which governs the throne of Peter. Again and again it has learned the truth of salus ab inimicis; and this was also to be the case during the storms of the turbulent thirteenth century. The fact that many who opposed the Church were subjectively right and in conformity with Christian principle, compelled the Popes to be on guard and despite everything to guide the wild waters at last behind the dams of the universal Church. Generally they achieved it with spiritual means, as for instance through the movement which fostered poverty. Where these failed, sometimes through the fault of those who applied them, the result was a baneful recourse to force, as in the Albigensian Wars.

The Mendicant Orders of Franciscans and Dominicans had been founded under Innocent III. Legend has it that in a dream the Pope had seen the two founders, the Umbrian and the Spaniard, supporting the tottering Lateran Basilica. This story enshrines the historical truth that the best men of the time entertained dark fears when wide- spread apostasy proved a reality in France. The long and tedious process by which the spiritual world-state was eventually to be dis- rupted had already begun. Prophecies of the Calabrian Abbot Joachim di Fiore, who died in 1202, declared that a great judgment would be held over "the Church which anti-Christ ruled." An age of the Eternal Gospel that is of deeper spiritual understanding of the Bible was to begin. Joachim preached of a coming new Or- der which would substitute a Church of the spirit for a Church of the flesh. At the same time the call to penance and poverty preached

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by the Lyonnaise merchant Peter Waldes, and his French or Lombard followers, offered further proof that a revolution of the spirit was in progress.

This revolution was quiet and peaceful at first. In Southern France, however, a rival of the Church began to emerge. This, the richest and most fruitful country of Europe, had been of old a fertile soil for Gnostic rebellion against Christendom. Its spirited, sense-loving population has often wavered between unlimited devotion to pleasure and a nihilistic renouncement of life. Nowhere else in any Christian land did the Manichean dualism of the Cathari flourish as it did here. Before the year 1000 this doctrine had spread westward from the Bal- kans to the Champagne district and had erected its first chapels in Lombardy. In the French south, Albi was its headquarters; and from this city the sect took its name. Lust of life and hatred of life were peculiarly or rather very naturally mingled in the activity and teachings of the group. The "perfect" and the "comforted" carried asceticism to the point of suicide; but the "simple" lived mer- rily and gaily, scoffed at eternity and followed the counsels of the troubadours concerning women. When death came it was merely to open to them the door of Paradise by reason of the imposition of hands, the consolamentum by one who was "perfect." If the body was created by the Devil just as the soul is created by God, what dif- ference could it make whether the body had offered homage to pleas- ure or to flagellation? Complete pessimism regarding marriage, the family, and social obligations were contrasted with the edifying exam- ple given by the truly saintly conduct of the strict observer, which con- duct the people then compared with the scandal so frequently given by priests, monks and prelates of the Church. Since the Albigensians hated Rome, which they termed the Church of temporal power, of darkness and of the Devil, the nobles encouraged the Cathari in every possible way. Not unjustly had Innocent said at the Lateran Coun- cil that all the deterioration of the people proceeded chiefly from the clergy. And now a new spirit of purity, discipline and strict observ- ance spread as the new Orders gained strength.

The Albigensian War broke out in 1209 and lasted through twenty years of manifold cruelty. Innocent tried in every possible way to gain the upper hand over the rival church by peaceful means, but his

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legates and the Cistercian missionaries failed miserably. It was their fault that armed conflict ensued. Then the Crusade, which the Pope endorsed only on the provision that it would merely dispossess and drive out the heretics, became, despite the religious earnestness of many knights, a deplorable war of conquest carried on by French barons against the landed nobility of the south. While its devilish work was proceeding in the name of Christ, Dominic Guzman, who had crossed the Pyrenees 'with his Bishop Diego, organized spiritual resistance. In conformity with a religious ideal of poverty which had made an increasingly deep impression on Catholic countries since the close of the twelfth century, he opposed to the successful educa- tional work done by the Albigensian women a new Catholic force, the nucleus of which was the Society of cloistered women of Prouillc (1206). Later (1215) he founded in Toulouse a company of thor- oughly educated preachers, whose function it was to train the people to combat heresy. This work was authorized during the following year by Pope Honorius III, but not until 1220 did Dominic's group follow the example of the Franciscans and become a Mendicant Order. This Spaniard of German ancestry had a worthy companion in his apostolic labour Francis, the son of an Umbrian merchant. Mod- em times, which derive a picture of Francis from the Fioretti alone, do not quite know him. He was more than a troubadour of heavenly love and a gentle friend to all living creatures. Under the cover of gold and azure paint which later rimes have laid over him, there is hidden the original a strong, unflinching man of action who con- fronted the Church and the uncouth feudalism of his time with the simple, uncompromising force of the Gospel. Courageously he read the Sermon on the Mount to Popes and prelates, insisting that decre- tals and texts of canon law must not consign it to oblivion. The Wolf of Gubbio, whom he forbade to plunder, is only a symbol of the barons to whom he preached his sermon of justice with burning pas- sion. He lived for the Church which had forgotten the humble and all those oppressed by feudal rules. For the sake of these disinherited ones as well as for that of their brutal masters, he himself lived the poor life of Christ. His rule sundered him and his "company" from the evil powers of the time, from money, sensuality, arrogance, barbarism, sloth and forgetfulness of God. "The rule and life of these brethren"

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he proclaimed, "is this: to live under obedience, in chastity and with- out property so that they may follow the teachings and the footsteps of Our Lord, Jesus Christ." One who demands much of men can always win them over to his side; and so Francis' ideals spread as rapidly as does bread among the hungry. He established an Order for men in 1209, and one for women in 1212. To this there was added in 1221 a Third Order for those living in the world. In addi- tion to fostering the especial duties of charity and devotion, he brought about a memorable social renaissance. The craftsmen and workers among his tertiaries were to pay a small tax wherewith a capital was to be formed that would serve their needs, enable them to establish an industry, or make possible the purchase of a bankrupt nobleman's land.

When the politicians around Frederic II began to understand the import of this self-help to which the working population was resort- ing; when the Emperor looked upon the tertiaries as rebels like the Manicheans and the Paterena; when the Franciscan world itself pro- duced a schismatic trend which sought to declare the ideal of poverty in its full strictness a dogma; when its martyrs died by fire or sat be- hind the prison walls of the Inquisition yearning for the dawn of the day of God Francis of Assisi had long since departed from the scene of the troubles. And though men spoke of him over his grave as "the second Christ," they misused or misunderstood his words. His saintly, wholehearted desire had been to serve the Church, which through its Popes Innocent III and Gregory IX (Cardinal Ugolino) had served him and his work. His rule of 1210 began: "This is the life according to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which Brother Francis requested the Lord Pope Innocent to allow unto him and to confirm; and the Lord Pope permitted it and confirmed it for him and the brethren whom he had and would have. Brother Francis, and who- ever after him shall be head of this association, promise obedience and loyalty to Lord Innocent, the Pope, and his successors. And all other brethren are bound in duty to obey Brother Francis and his successors."

The two great founders were not more like each other than are heart and mind. Francis, the Lover, at the end rose from earth to meet the Master whom he had seen with arms opened out wide on the Cross, and whose own Wounds he had received. The studious

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Dominic was like a cherub standing at the gates of Paradise with a sword, so that he might sift, receive, or ward off those who came in accordance with their knowledge of the password or their profession of the true faith. Both Orders attained immeasurable significance. In the cities they were a social force making for distributive justice. In the universities they wrestled either in company or against each other over the fundamental problems of thought; and by reason of their readiness to give batde they kept living intellectual effort astir in the Church. To the Papacy they offered soldiers light of foot for the decisive struggle with the Empire and for the bloody surgical opera- tion of the Inquisition, which it was believed would heal the sores of the social structure.

Honorius III was a mild, patient man, ill designed to keep the Hohenstaufen monarch in check. In spite of the promise he had given to Innocent, Frederic in 1220 secured for his son Henry VII the German kingly crown in addition to the Sicilian crown. Then he himself received the Imperial crown from the Pope in the self-same year, because in view of the heavy losses that had been suffered at Cairo, Honorius hoped to persuade Frederic to fulfil at last his vow to lead a Crusade. The Papal States were at the mercy of the Empire; and nevertheless the Emperor, who did not wish to undermine the Papacy as such, looked upon those states as a barrier between the two parts of his realm. A new batde of giants over Imperial Italy was unavoidable; and the spiritual background which that struggle revealed rendered it quite different from all earlier contests between the same powers. The Emperor now desired to fashion his kingdom after the model of the Pope's kingdom, as an autonomous universal state. He realized that he was a changer of eras, an immutator tern- forum, and was not frightened (indeed he regarded it a title to fame) when his opponents recognized in him the "anti-Christ" and said as much. His ultimate purpose was not merely to establish world do- minion in the half naive, heroic sense of Barbarossa, but also to create an Empire wholly secular in character. As a politician who com- bined state and cultural objectives, he anticipated what a later time sought to describe with the meaningless phrase "religion of the here and now." The autocratic God of die Old Testament whom he ven-

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crated and ordered his political scholars to venerate, his Messianic char- acterization of himself as the Anointed of the Lord, as well as other Biblical masks behind which he hid these things revealed more than they concealed. His game became entirely obvious when he sought to supplant the mythological attitude toward the devotional practice of Christendom with a popular religion of the goddess For- tuna. The super-prince "who as a ruler is bound by no law," put himself in the place of Christ, whom he considered as being, in com- pany with Moses and Mohammed, one of the greatest defrauders of mankind! He denied having said this, but his deeds were everything else but a denial* A new wind blew out of Bagdad and Cordova, and filled the German son of a Semitic and Islamic culture, so sensitive to the perfumes it bore, with ideals by reason of which he would be proclaimed the ideal German by later Nordic generations.

In order not to lose the good will of Christendom, the Emperor signed the Treaty of San Germano (122,5) * n which he promised that if he did not go on a Crusade he would submit to the imposition of the ban. Two years later he went to sea, but was forced by a fever to return to port. Gregory IX (1227-1241) was a blunt* irascible old man. He mistrusted the Emperor and imposed the ban on him. When Frederic replied to the "anti-Christ Pope" with insults, he im- posed it a second time and placed the interdict upon whatever place harboured him. The Emperor instigated a Roman rebellion, which forced the Pope to flee. The Hohenstaufen armies occupied the Papal States. The banned Emperor then took up the Cross, and won a victory over his Islamic foe. When he returned, he defeated Gregory's troops which had invaded Apulia with Lombard allies, and drove them from the land. In 1230 the Pope concluded peace with him and freed him from the ban.

After some years of comparative calm, the storm broke out anew. Frederic's battles and victories in Lombardy; his constitutional and administrative reforms, which sought to make Qesaristic seignories out of the autonomous communes, and the threat which such successes constituted to the Papal States: all these compelled the Pope to form an alliance with Lombardy in 1239. If Italy was to be unified under one or the other master the one who lost would be forced to occupy the position of servitor. Frederic saw no way out excepting to do-

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stroy the temporal power o the Pope. This seemed to him impera- tive also by reason of the development in Germany. True enough, he suppressed the revolt of his son Henry. But die growing partic- ularism of the territorial princes, their opposition to the municipal bourgeoisie which the Emperor had sought all too late to aid, and the estrangement of the episcopacy over which the Curia had gained the upper hand in so far as it had not joined forces with the princes, undermined the medieval Imperial idea in the north while it was being automatically hollowed out in the south by the antique character of Frederic's own idea of the state. The victor over Milan warmed himself in the light of an already sinking sun. There was not room enough, he said, to bury the enemies he had conquered. He bestowed upon himself the aura of a just judge of heretics, and in his letters vented all his spleen upon the Pope and the car-dinals. Gregory, long since irritated by the fact that the Papal fief of Sardinia had been bestowed on Enzio, one of Frederic's bastard sons, renewed the ban over the "beast, the so-called Emperor," and declared him deposed. There followed a ghastly literary row between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. Finally, after Frederic had conquered the Papal States, the issue was fought out with arms. Gregory induced the Venetians to attack Apulia, but the Hohenstaufen gained the victory. He made the Pope a prisoner and ordered crosses cut on his breast and on his brow. The tonsures of the Papal priests were similarly adorned with crosses. The Pope, now threatened in his own city, which Fred- eric hoped to declare the metropolitan See of his Sicilian State, also made no headway in his efforts to find a German anti-king. Then he summoned a General Council to Rome. The Emperor himself had previously suggested this as a way out, but now he ordered Enzio to seize a hundred prelates who came on Genoese ships, drag them to Naples, and subject them to the torture of imprisonment. When Frederic himself stood before Rome with his army, the Pope died, in 1241.

Celestinc IV, a sick man, succeeded Gregory and reigned only fif- teen days. With the aid of the Roman Senator Mattheus Rubeus, Frederic succeeded in keeping two cardinals imprisoned and so de- layed the election for twenty months. Fieschi, Count Lovagna, a Genoese, was then chosen as Pope Innocent IV (1243-1254). This

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new Pontiff was a brave and able man. As a cardinal he had been the Emperor's friend, as a Pope he was to become the Emperor's enemy. Negotiations were begun and a treaty of peace was drawn up, but when the time came to put this into force everything went wrong. The Pope was willing to release the Emperor from the ban if the Papal States were restored to him. The Emperor was willing to evacuate, but only after he had been freed from the ban. The Lombard question also remained unsettled. Frederic suggested a personal meeting, but when the Pope came to this he found that Frederic had gathered three hundred knights to lend emphasis to what he said. Innocent fled to Genoa and thence to Lyons. There he spent the next six years, and in 1245 summoned a great Council to the city. Frederic's supreme justice, Thaddeus of Suessa, defended his master. The Emperor was ordered to appear personally or to send a plenipotentiary within a given it was far too brief length of time. At the third session the curse of the ban was renewed in the cathedral and Frederic's removal from the throne was decreed. The Council declared that he had broken his oath, that he was guilty of heresy and of having scoffed at ecclesiastical punishments, that he had robbed property devoted to the service of God, that he had ex- ercised cruelty in the treatment of cardinals, that he had tortured priests inhumanly, and that he had broken his oath of loyalty to his Liege Lord. Therefore he was deprived of all honours and dignities, and his subjects were freed from the oath. The clergy threw their candles on the floor and extinguished them as a sign that the Emperor, too, was extinguished.

Frederic took up the gauntlet. A manifesto publicly revealed his determination to separate the Church from the State, to secularize Church property, and to make easier for the Church the way that led to the apostolic condition of poverty. He realized that he was the champion of the independence of every form of secular power, and warned the kings and princes that he was merely at the head of a list on which their names would eventually figure. Therein the Pope was at one mind with him. Once the dragon has been bound or destroyed, he said, then the lesser reptiles must be trodden under foot as well. In spite of the French King's attempt to bring about a re- conciliation, Innocent sent the Mendicant Orders to preach a cm-

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sade against Frederic and established a rival German kingdom. But then he realized that the Hohenstaufen monarch would oppose him to the end. Many a misfortune darkened the last years of Frederic and fanned his desire for revenge, but nothing could alter his will to obtain power. Even that, however, aided him no longer. His star declined. A struggle with the Guelphs in Parma ended in his de- feat. He lived to witness the treason of his Chancellor and council- lor, Peter of Venea, who despite all that he had done to glorify the new superman, paid for his disaffection by having his eyes put out. The blind prisoner dashed his skull against the walls of a dungeon. When Enzio, his most loyal aid against the Popes and the Guelphs, was made a prisoner in Bologna, Frederic stood quite alone. He was mastering a new army when he died in the arms of his illegitimate son, Manfred, in Apulia during 1250. The friendly Archbishop of Pa- lermo gave him absolution.

Innocent returned to Italy. Frederics son and heir, Conrad IV, carried on the policy of his father with Manfred's assistance. After a few years he died and Manfred became regent for the infant boy Conradin. The Pope's attempt to gain control of his Sicilian fief ended in a severe defeat. No blessing had ever rested on a Papal war. The message of that disaster broke Innocent's heart.

The idea of force, which had borne the Papacy a long way and boded no good ending, had meanwhile also gained the upper hand in the realm of morals. Saints of the fourth century had voiced their horror at the execution of Spanish pantheists; and though Augustine had appealed to the secular arm for help against the heretics, he had insisted that these must not be put to death. Bernard of Clairvaux had still believed that the utmost which could lawfully be done against intractable heretics was to shun them absolutely. The canonists and Popes who followed these saints agreed with the temporal rulers that heresy was a crime against the Church and culture which must be rooted out of the world by force. Every form of heresy is based upon the right o man to form his religious life and thought according to the dictates of his own conscience; and this right was considered by the medieval world to mean apostasy from the order established on earth. Those desiring that all things human be arranged in a cosmos specifically their own, noted with horror the stir of chaos in the spirit-

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ual roots from which that cosmos arose. Principtis obsta! Not evil deeds merely but false, erroneous ideas also, must be punished. It was not merely the public heretic who must be punished: the con- cealed unorthodox must be ferreted out and turned over to the courts; and those who persisted in their errors must be handed over to the secular arm to be exterminated.

Lucius III, Innocent III, and Gregory IX, the friend of that Saint who bought lambs to save them from slaughter and who reverenced every drop of water as being an image of the divine purity, step by step became the instigators of the Inquisition. Innocent IV broad- ened ks scope and perfected it with the fateful introduction of the torture. More brutal by far than any persecution of Christians under the Roman Empire, the Inquisition became the scandal of the Papacy and of its spiritual and temporal aids. It is true that few great men were among the victims; and it is also correct to see in the spiritual self-defense of society a great good, and in the test of martyrdom a proof of permanently significant ideas. Yet what evil does not con- tain a good when it is viewed from a distance? Measured by the mission of the Church and the laws of its Founder, the irreligiousness of the Inquisition lies in human failure to rely confidently in the spirit which He, the Proclaimer of the Eight Beatitudes, had be- queathed to His foundation when He promised that He would be with it all days. There is not an iota of His law which affords an excuse for the barbarities of five long centuries, however true it may be that principles and acts of violence sponsored by the Reformers, such as the burning of Servetus by order of Calvin, were equally deplorable.

The Papacy and the Empire alike were striving for the fullness of power, and each was the boundary beyond which the other could not go. The war in which they destroyed each other proved the matrix of new situations in Western Europe. The two powers verified the ancient truth of Greek thought, that one who strives toward great ends must also suffer greatly. The Hohenstaufens approached the close of their reign; and the forces which the Papacy set in motion against them were in turn to prove baneful to the Popes,

During the great German interregnum (1245-1273) every count

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and prince, every captain and robber baron, could become a king in his own right; and the splendour of the German throne dwindled also in the south. Alexander IV proved a weak Pope, and Manfred ignored the claims of Conradin by proclaiming himself King of Sicily in 1258. But Urban IV (1261-1264), a French Pope, made use of his power as Liege Lord to induce Charles of Anjou, the brother of his saintly king, to accept the crown which Innocent IV had already offered him. The Pope who then conferred Milan upon Charles and crowned him king, was Clement IV, also a Frenchman, who had formerly been Louis DCs minister, and had taken orders after the death of his wife. Though his reign was short, he lived to see the death of the last scion of the house of the Hohenstaufens. Manfred was slain in the battle of Benevent, 1266. Summoned by the Ghibel- lines of Italy, Conradin, who was still hardly more than a boy, hurried from his Bavarian realm to drive off him who had stolen his heritage. When he drew near Rome, the Pope, who himself dared not come near his city, stood on the walls of Viterbo and predicted the defeat of Conradin. The Romans received the Suabian ruler with enthusiasm. He lost a battle against Charles, was captured as he fled, and was beheaded in the market place of Naples in 1268. His executioner, heir to the Hohenstaufen power in Italy, now revealed his true coun- tenance to the Popes, The See of Peter became the booty of the French, and the Pope was their vassal. Italy was hardly more than the spoils over which alien princes quarrelled, and for centuries after- ward it remained in a state of upheaval brought about by inner divi- sions and the ceaseless depredations of other countries. Clement IV substituted a Gallic yoke for the burden the Germans had laid upon the Papacy.

Soon the Anjou monarch was taking a hand in the affairs of the Church in his realm, and gaining for himself a strong following in the College of Cardinals, The camps in this College were so deeply opposed that after Clement's death three years passed before Greg- ory X (12711276) could be elected. This Pope was a scion of the Visconri family, with whose blessings and recommendations Marco Polo had journeyed to Eastern Asia. Soon he had tired of his French protector; and in 1273, when the Germans met to elect an Emperor, he insisted on the choice of Rudolph of Habsburg, despite the fact that

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Charles had openly voiced the wish that his nephew be given the Imperial crown. Yet it was France, the ancient magnet o the Pa- pacy, which welcomed the great Council which Gregory summoned to Lyons in 1274. This assembly discussed among other things how peace and reunion might be affected with the Church of the East, where the Imperial power was once more in the hands of the Greeks, who desired Western allies in the face of Charles' threatened attack. Many burning questions were answered in a spirit of harmony and the Greek legates even recognized the Primacy of the Roman See. But though from a political point of view all this was excellent, those who participated in the Council did not devote their whole energies to the task. Solemn decisions were unable to enkindle a love for Rome in the people and the clergy of the East. The peace was there- fore soon broken.

In order to prevent the scandal of long interregna in the future, the Council introduced the Conclave for Papal elections. The Cardinals were to live in a common dwelling, to be shut off from all personal contact with the outer world, and to be fed on a progressively more meagre diet as the sessions went on so that they might reach a decision more rapidly. This rule had a good effect after the death of Gregory, but it soon met with violent opposition from the College.

After the short pontificates of the years 1276 and 1277, the elections once more seemed never to reach an end. But against the will of Charles of Anjou and his faction, an energetic Roman of the house of Orsini was chosen as Nicholas III (12771280). His hope was to balance the power of the Habsburgs against that of the Anjou rulers. He succeeded in inducing Charles to surrender the dignity of Roman Senator and Imperial administrator of Tuscany. Rudolph, who was easy to handle, concluded a lasting peace with the Pope and conferred on him all Imperial rights inside the boundaries of the Papal States. In addition, Nicholas succeeded in conciliating many factions, and called back the exiled Ghibellincs. But if one reads the nineteenth canto of Dante's Inferno one finds that this peace-loving Pope, uttering self-accusations and restlessly paying the penalty of his sins, finds no peace. Dante says that this "true son of the Bear" was greedy ID improve the fortunes of the "little Bears" (Orsini), and therefore gave his family the money for which he was atoning in hell. Villani,

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the Florentine historian, is also ruthless in his description of the Pope. According to him, Nicholas, full of zeal for his own kindred, carried out many exploits to secure affluence for them. He adds that Nicho- las was the first Pope at whose court simony was openly practiced in behalf of relatives who were showered with land, gold and castles.

Another French Pope, Martin IV (1281-1285), followed the Roman. So scrupulously did he avoid the vice of his predecessor that when his brother came from France to visit him he hastily sent him back home with a small present of money. The Pope declared that whatever he possessed belonged not to him but to the Church; yet he was the creature of Charles and remained an instrument in his hands. He could not muster up courage to listen as a free sovereign to the complaints of the Sicilians, or to take up their cause as a just Pope. There followed the terrible judgment of the year 1282. The Sicilian Vespers, which broke out in Palermo on Easter Monday, ended the Island's woes. Peter of Aragon, Manfred's son-in-law, whom Con- radin had named in his testament Master of Apulia and Sicily, ac- cepted a call for help which had long since come from the Sicilian Ghibellines, and received the crown in Palermo. Charles could no longer be saved by anything that Roman friends could do for him. In spite of French and Papal intrigues against Aragon, he and his followers had to content themselves with the Papal fief of Naples. Henceforth Sicily belonged to the Spanish King until the wars of the Spanish Succession.

In Rome the Colonna and Orsini began to fight for possession of the Holy See. A third power, that of the House of Anjou, also sought to acquire it. Nicholas IV was a partisan of the Colonna. When he died, the College of Cardinals went on wrangling for more than two years. Charles II of Naples recommended a man who was looked upon also by the strict Franciscans and by all friends of a religious, non-political Papacy as the long awaited Pa fa Angelica. He was not a lawyer, nor a diplomat, nor a warrior, nor a builder and Maecenas. He was a poor hermit from the Abruzzi. Peter of Maroni was persuaded to wear the tiara. Even the kings of Naples and Hungary themselves visited his wilderness resort and begged him on their knees to become Pope and thus bring peace to the Christian world. He followed them amidst tears, and allowed himself to be

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crowned as Celestinc V. But he lived in Naples, and there Charles proved his master. The Saint was not able to shoulder the responsi- bilities of the Papacy. Hounded by his enemies and soon also by his friends, driven most by his own conscience, he abdicated after a few months and went back to the lonely spot from which he had come. But the Pope who followed him had reason to fear a schism. He therefore sent emissaries in pursuit of the fleeing monk, but Celesrine had already traversed the woods of Apulia and come to the Sea. There he tried to reach Dalmatia in a skiff, but a storm threw him back upon the shore and he was imprisoned in a tower by the new Pope. The quarrel about whether this unparalleled abdication was lawful or unlawful continued to excite people long after the poor Papa Angelica was dead. Dante pictures him suffering in Purgatory, be- cause he had not possessed the energy and the determination which even the holiest of men must have if he is to rule as Pope.

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From the beginning of the thirteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century, political, social and spiritual dangers inundated the Papacy, which was still more imperilled when the Barque of Peter was given many a bad pilot, and compelled to witness many a scene of fighting for possession of the helm. All too seldom were the quarrellers dominated by the cry which Peter had directed to his sleeping Lord, "Help us Master, lest we perish."

The ancient order of things, which we who stand at a distance superficially term the Middle Ages, was caught in an eddy of forces. The European "nations" shook the Empire to its foundations. France demanded hegemony, brought the exiled Papacy under its control, and spread a new conception of the state among the peoples. Philosophy followed a course that led to pure secularism, and another course that led to the absolute self-sufficiency of the individual soul. Both estranged it from the Church. Apocalyptic feelings preyed on men's emotions, carrying them now to epidemics of despair concerning the world and its rulers, and now to the burning hope that an Emperor- Messiah, or a Pope like unto an angel, was to come. Monastic move- ments of uncompromising renouncement of the world joined with prophets of the absolute state in a struggle against the temporal power and rule of the Roman See. The government of the Church itself crumbled under the effort to serve both God and men.

Celestine, the hermit, had retreated from daemonic forces. Soon sorrow caused his death, thus releasing him from bondage in Castle Fumone in the Campagna. But in life and death he clung like an evil shadow to the heels of the Pope who supplanted him.

Cardinal Benedetto Gaetani, formerly a canon of Lyons cathedral, called himself Pope Boniface VIII. He received the tiara at the age of sixty; and as a sign of his claim to the fullness of all power, he gave it the new form of the dual crown. Occasionally, the chroniclers say, he exchanged his Papal vestments for the mantle of the Caesars. He was a man of giant stature and unbounded energy, and retained his full forces until death. So strong a character was naturally feated

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rather than liked. He was a ruler from sole to crown; but when negotiations were in progress he remained silent and allowed his ministers to speak. No princes or ambassadors were admitted to his presence until they had announced the object and the reason of their visit. His superstitions seem to have been more developed than his faith. Like other emancipated minds of his time for instance Frederic II, who at the end had faith only in his astrologer he ques- tioned the stars, wore a ring in which he believed that his helpful spirit was present, relied on the magic influence of his amulet, and clung to the strange knife which he carried as a protection against poison. Nevertheless he threatened those who practiced magic with eternal damnation. The reputation of this Pope is based in part also on rumours of the sacrilegious and heretical manner in which he made fun of the teachings and customs of the Church, of sodomy, and of the assassination of Celestine. None of this has ever been proved; but there is at least such a wealth of references to his vicious tongue that this is indissociable from his name. Beyond all doubt is the rude, sarcastic coldness with which he expressed his contempt for mankind. All things considered, a saying which cropped up during a meeting between him and the great Franciscan poet to whom he proved fatal is most pertinent. The Pope said to him: "I saw in a dream a great bell without a hammer what does it mean?" Jacopone replied: "It means you, a man without a heart." And many shared that view, cursing the Pope's famous physician for having extended his life.

But his enemies were no better than he. Throughout the whole great drama of Boniface the destroyer and self-destroyer, he remains the towering figure, and he alone is tinged by the tragedy of a strong man following his evil star to the end. How could historians have doubted that tragedy? The past folded in like a storm about his throne; and he on the throne was a storm unto himself. The faith he placed in the Papacy was not that of the great Popes before him. His tablets were not brought from Sinai, fresh from God's own Hand. He was not Moses but Aaron. The law in his despotic hands was not the law of his own heart. His zeal for the greatness of the Papacy was merely a personal passion. He was eager to become a powerful figure, with the help of the power of the Papacy. This he did but merely made the power subservient to himself. Therewith the throne

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was made a sacrifice to the ruler; but the ruler was in the end sacrificed to his throne!

The objective o this Pope was to bring to fulfilment the policy of Gregory and Innocent III. The whole earth was to be subject to the Roman Church; all princes were to hold their land in fief to the Roman See. A Christendom unified and living in peace under the dominion of the Papacy was to conquer Islam. But literally every- thing failed: the peoples had grown different, and the human mind had changed. It was in vain that Boniface backed the Valois King in Naples against the power of Aragon in Sicily. The Island King- dom remained Spanish. He tried to end the war between France and England for possession of the rich province of Flanders, since this war constantly consumed the taxes collected from Church property. Then in 1296 he issued an edict which was to bring home anew to European governments the validity of canon law. Unless the Pope gave his assent, priests were forbidden to pay taxes to laymen or make gifts to them under penalty of the ban; and under the same penalty princes and officials were forbidden either to collect or to receive such moneys. The bull began "CUricis laicos" and averred chat all history proved that the layman is the mortal enemy of the priest. The truth of this doctrine of the irreconcilable opposition between Church and State, as well as the truth of the curse that lies on a State-Church which seeks to escape that necessary fruitful struggle, the Pope was to ex- perience personally. England and especially France resisted him.

France, for decades the greatest power in Europe, had not grown strong without the help of the Papacy and its moneys. Now it began to look upon itself as the natural daughter of the Imperium Romanum. The German Charlemagne lived on in imagination as a romantic hero, the protector of a kingdom animated by an imperialistic urge which had been obvious since the Crusades of St. Louis had established a definite French Mediterranean policy, and since Charles of Anjou had triumphed over the Hohenstaufens in the South. When feudal resistance at home grew weaker, and a middle class participating in the life of the state grew stronger, the universalistic ambitions of Philippe le Beau also came into conflict with the Papacy, which claimed to be heir to the Empire. Two ambitions for world dominion thus clashed. There was no lack of legal justification, in the philosophk

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sense, on the side of the worldly power. At the universities the legalists, teachers of Roman law, functioned as theorists of govern- ment and masters of a public opinion favourable to an absolute and universal kingship. They set forth the political goals of the French crown in these slogans: universal world peace, a European League of Nations under French leadership as a substitute for the Imperial, uni- versal monarchy, an international court of arbitration, a grant of the patrimonium Petri to France in the form of a loan, and secularization of Church property in exchange for an annual income.

Philippe, who was in need of money as a result of the war with England, insisted that he had the right to tax the churches and monasteries of his country. He answered the Papal bull by for- bidding the export of gold and silver without the permission of the King, and by restraining the Papal collectors. Then Boniface issued new, friendly decrees which weakened his proud bull, and kept up a semblance of peace by canonizing Louis IX, Philippe's ancestor.

Meanwhile there was a ferment in the circles closest to the Pope. Two cardinals of the mighty family of Colonna were wroth with him because he had taken sides in a family quarrel over property. When they committed high treason by establishing relations with Frederic of Aragon, Boniface demanded that they surrender their castles. This they refused to do and aroused fresh antipathies in the ranks of the Pope's other enemies. The King of France and the University of Paris were invited to review the abdication of Celestine and the election of Boniface. Religious of the strict dispensation in the Franciscan Order, among them poor Jacopone, who was pious and satirical alike, were induced to take up the fight in written and oral discourse. A third Colonna stole money belonging to the Curia, which a highly favoured Papal relative had brought to Rome. Boniface got the treas- ure back, demanded that the robber be turned over to justice, and insisted furthermore that the Colonna must evacuate two of their castles as well as Palestrina, their city. The answer was a manifesto that was nailed to the Church doors of Rome. This said that Celestine had abdicated illegally, that Gaetani was not rightfully a Pope, and that the matter should be settled by a general Council meeting with the future true Pope. Boniface punished the cardinals, who had elected him and had celebrated the occasion with a banquet, with demotion

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and excommunication. He declared that the accursed race of Co- lonna, together with all their possessions, were at the mercy of anyone who wished to take them, summoned all to join in a war (for which women on their deathbeds bequeathed money), and levelled Palestrina and the Castles to the ground. Twelve of the fourteen Cardinals of the College sundered relations with the Colonna. The two guilty noblemen fled to France, where they plotted vengeance.

The Pope declared the year 1300 a year of grace for the universal Church. Vast crowds of pilgrims, among them sick riding in car- riages and old people borne on the shoulders of their children, tramped to this first "jubilee" at the graves of the Apostles. Dante saw them come. The money they donated was literally raked together in St. Peter's; and yet this popular movement, produced by piety as well as other things, took place in the light of a setting sun. During the same year Philippe's Privy-Councillor William Nogaret, the descend- ant of an Albigensian heretic who had fallen a victim to the Pope, dwelt in Rome; and together with the ambassador of the German King Albrecht, he played a trump card against the Curia a new alliance between the French and German monarchs. The object was to prevent the Pope from establishing his family as rulers of Tuscany and from securing still other advantages for his own country. If one were to credit Nogaret's private report, one should have to conclude that Boniface was deaf to all suggestions from the ambassadors, and sought only to poison the friendship of the two kings while besmirch- ing their honour. The Frenchman, whom a compatriot termed a body without a soul, returned home with pestiferous gossip concerning Boniface. But he and the Pope were to cross swords once more.

In 1301 Rome sent a legate to Paris with a request for a Crusade and a bevy of admonitions. But this legate was an imperious bishop and himself a Frenchman. He irritated the King and was taken into custody by the State Council as a traitor. Boniface demanded that he be set free, summoned the French prelates to Rome, reissued the bull Clericis laicos and finally promulgated a new bull, Ausculta fili, by which the King himself was removed from the throne. The language was sharp but not mordant enough to serve the French designs. It was burned immediately and replaced with a counterfeit bull still more gruff in diction. The King solemnly threatened his sons with

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the curse and disinheritance if they should ever recognize any other overlords in France save him and God alone. A national assembly in Notre-Dame then burned the counterfeit bull after it had been read, endorsed the actions taken by the King to establish the freedom of his domain, and forbade the prelates to participate in the next Roman Council. Nevertheless half of the higher clergy went to the Eternal City; and Philippe stripped these disobedient ones of their worldly possessions and sent an embassy to forbid the "suspect" Pope to inter- fere in the affairs of France.

The Council decided to issue that classical definition of the Papal system which is known as the bull Unam Sanctam, of November 18, 1302. It was drawn up on the basis of a tract concerning ecclesiastical politics written by ^Egidius Romanus (Colonna), a disciple of St. Thomas from whose teachings he differed widely in many respects. The meaning of the bull is contained in these sentences: the spiritual power has authority to establish the worldly power, and to judge it when it is not good; and it is necessary to salvation to believe that all human creatures are subjects of the Pope. There was no new stone in this all too daring structure, the inner law of which was pure logic and the outer development of which was steel-like deduction. Au- thority, in so far as it is based at all upon eternal verities and not upon the whims of rulers or the accidents of power, presupposes the unity and inviolability of an order valid beyond the limits of time. If the Church was already the form of Christianity, and was recognized by Christianity as such, Boniface was right. This Church must either have a single head or remain a two-headed monster, reposing upon two fundaments like the Manichean world of the Albigensians.

King Philippe won over to his side the French cardinal who had delivered the Papal demands, gathered his Councillors of State in the Louvre, and directed against Boniface all the weapons which his jurists and the active Colonna at his court had long since gathered and sharpened. Nogaret made the address in which the attack was de- livered and it was a diabolic masterpiece. Taking for his text II Peter 2, 1-3, he stressed like a pulpit orator the convincing reasons for "throwing this scandalous Pope into prison." Philippe listened and declared himself in agreement. He gave the appearance of acting only according to the urgent demands of his Councillors, a practice to which

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he had always clung. Moreover he wore the aura of a saviour of the Church, which Nogaret had skillfully placed about him. The Peers assembled in the summer of 1303, and heard read a dreadful catalogue of the Pope's crimes. Yet the valid principle that the Apostolic See could be judged by no one demanded that further steps be taken to lend an air of justification to the French plan. It was necessary to declare that Boniface was not the lawful Pope. Philippe could be sure that his people were animated by a strong feeling of national unity, and that there would be a favourable response in other countries.

It was in vain that Boniface cleansed himself with an oath. No- garet went to Italy, borrowed money from his King's bank, made a treaty with the Anjous of Naples who had enjoyed for two hundred years the fruits of their friendship with the Popes, and gained followers as well as troops. Meanwhile the Pope had been compelled by quar- relling factions to retire to Anagni. Here in his native city, where his powerful relatives had important possessions, he thought himself safe and prepared to impose the ban on Philippe. But his opponents were more numerous than he had realized. Cardinals, too, deserted him, among them Napoleon of the House of Orsini, the most violent antagonist of the Colonna. Perhaps this friend of the French was the real instigator of the fate which overtook Boniface. The new bull was to be proclaimed on September 8th. Once again it insisted upon the whole fullness of power given to the followers of Peter. They could rule the peoples with an iron rod, and break their kings like vessels made of clay. The anathema was hurled at Philippe; and his subjects were released from their oaths of loyalty.

But that bull was not read. At dawn on the 8th of September, Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna entered the gates of Anagni with hun- dreds of horsemen and footmen. The gates were open because the podesta was one of the conspirators. The troops joined forces with the city militia and stormed the Palace of the Gaetani, which was connected with the Cathedral. Those who could not flee were cut down or made prisoners. Nogaret and Sciarra marched across the bodies of those who had fallen and entered the Pope's room. He sat in his pontifical attire on the throne, bowed over a cross and the keys which he held in his hand. They shouted at him and demanded his surrender. Sciarra struck him in the face with his mailed fist, but

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Boniface remained every inch a man. They could take his life now that he had been betrayed, but not his dignity. He was seized and placed under strict arrest. He refused food and drink for fear of being poisoned. Meanwhile citizens and mercenaries plundered the treasury, the cathedral, and the houses of his favourites. On the loth of September, a Gaetani approached from the Campagna in order to help free the Pope with the aid of other burghers of the city. Nogaret was wounded but he and Sciarra escaped. Boniface stood on the steps of the Palace, addressed the people, and forgave his enemies. A week later he proceeded to Rome under an armed guard. The Orsini with four hundred horsemen rode out to meet him, thus as- suring the safety of his person. The journey lasted three days. The people received him reverently; but once he had entered the Vatican, which residence he had substituted for the Lateran, he was soon made to understand that he was the prisoner of the Orsini. He lived still another month and had time to repent especially his ardent love for money. Then he died ex tremore cordu imagining that every- one who approached sought to make him a prisoner. The date was October n, 1303. He had ordered a magnificent funeral for himself, but this was ruined by a fearful storm which visited Rome.

One of his loyal cardinals then reigned for a little less than a year as Benedict XL He went to Perugia, city of the Guelphs, and there hurled anathemas at those who had carried out the attack upon the Pope. But the danger of a schism was so great that he was compelled to treat with consideration Philippe and the Roman enemies of the Gaetani.

There followed a long, difficult Conclave, the outcome of which was a victory for the French party in the College. A Gascon, the Arch- bishop of Bordeaux, was elected but did not go to Italy. He permitted himself to be crowned as Clement V at Lyons in die presence of his King. After frequently changing his See, he took up residence at Avignon in 1309. The city was a fief of the King of Naples. There- with began the Babylonian exile of the Papacy. This sad chapter of its history lasted seventy years. After the Papacy had failed in its effort to reconstruct the Church in Europe as a hierocratic universal state, it now carried out in close alliance with France an attack upon

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the Imperial idea. The Curia set its centralism and fiscalism in their stiffest versions against the objective of the states, which was to in- corporate the Church and the clergy politically, economically and morally in their organisms. These two evils clung together, under- mining the Papacy and the Church alike, and gradually turning out to be the causes that led to the Reformation of the sixteenth century. Dante described the transition of the Curia into a dependency of France in allegorical terms. Beatrice, who here images -the spiritual power of the Church, steps from the chariot of the ecclesia triumphant and reminds the poet of the great events which have taken place in post- apostolic times. The eagle of the Holy Roman Empire fills the vehicle with its feathers (which are the donations made to the Roman See) , but at the same time there cling to all sides of the chariot the monstrous beasts of the seven capital sins. The place which Beatrice has aban- doned is taken by an unworthy Pope at whose side there stands the giant France, who by turns caresses and strikes him and finally drives the chariot off into the woods the exile of Avignon. The "ditty work" began with a "a shepherd without a law."

This was Clement V (13051314), a valiant promoter of learning,, but a Pontiff of feeble policy. He himself was sickly and no match for the ruthless King, He had left the Papal treasure behind at Assisi and sometimes thought of going back to Rome. But his fear of the tumults in that city, as well as the will of Philippe, bound him to his more peaceful habitat above the blue Rhone. There he suc- cumbed to the "Clementine Fair" haggling over ecclesiastical posi- tions and dignities. He wasted on relatives and flatterers the money which his Christendom had given for a Crusade. He made friends among the princes instead of striving to rehabilitate the Papal finances, which had been utterly undermined by the events of Anagni. All banks refused to extend credit. At Avignon he also assented to all the moral demands of the Colonna, lifted or softened the bulls which his predecessor had directed at France, and through his cowardly "yes" and "amen" kept alive the fight which the vengeful King was making on Boniface, who now that he was dead was also to be damned as a heretic. Through this the King finally brought about the destruction of the Knights Templar, found guilty or every vice and sacrilege by a committee of the Inquisition, and so gained for himself a neat fortune.

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Hundreds of Knights had already lost their lives through torture, prison and death by fire, when the General Council of Vienne, the last to be held for a hundred years, ended the tragedy of the Order in 1312. Philippe was to have his will not through a decision given by judges but thanks to a measure taken by the apostolic administration so that, as Clement said in his sermon, "Our beloved son the King of France may not be given scandal." This was not the only favour which Philippe, who personally attended the Council with an elaborate retinue, was there shown by the Pope. Though the Council restored to Boniface VIII his honour, Clement also declared the King, a man of "well-meaning zeal," free of all blame in connection with the attack at Anagni, He also forgave William Nogaret, who protested his innocence. He himself, the viceroy of Christ, had washed his hands like Pilate, and given that peace which the world alone can give. Meanwhile he remained deaf to the still modest, but gravely concerned voices which pleaded for the reform of the Church and the conversion of the Papacy. An English chronicler of the time prayed thus: "Oh, Lord Jesus, either remove the Pope or weaken the power with which he acts against his people. For whoever misuses the power entrusted to him merits that it be taken away from him."

Meanwhile Henry VIII of Luxembourg had followed the murdered Albrecht of Habsburg as King of Germany. Clement himself had been favourably disposed toward Henry from the beginning and had sponsored his candidacy in order to stave off the threatened election of Charles of Valois, brother of Philippe le Beau. It was with his con- sent that this knighdy ruler, himself half a Frenchman, came to Rome in 1312 to be jubilantly welcomed by Ghibelline Italy as its saviour from self-destruction, and to receive the Imperial crown from the hands of three cardinals. But the peace did not last long. Henry, en- couraged by his successes in upper Italy, made an alliance against the Anjou monarch, Robert of Naples, with Frederic of Sicily, an old enemy of the Curia. Then he publicly proclaimed Robert the foe of the Empire; and once again Pope and Emperor were at swords points. But death prevented a war. Henry died at Sienna in 1313 and was buried in the Campo Santo at Pisa. The next year Clement also said farewell to earth, which had been kind to him. The French King followed soon thereafter.

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The idea of world empire had not died. Lamentations over the dissolution of the Imperial state were heard anew. But in gazing backward and indulging the hope that a Hohenstaufen monarch would return, men also conjured up a dream-image of a ruler who would bring peace to all the world. Dante was the creator of that image, or at least its most fiery prophet. In composing an elegy for the dead Henry he did not join one side or the other in the conflict over the decadent Imperial throne. He was neither Guelph nor Ghibelline. The object of his desire was the humanization of mankind. Trust- ing in the divine gift of reason, he summoned all mankind to under- take the building up of a hwm&na civilitas in which what is potentially best in human nature or can proceed from it, would be realized. The popular republics might rule themselves; but above them there must stand one who was love for justice incarnate, and who represented the world monarchy which the national states join after having banded themselves together. This "one" was to be the Emperor, Dante's Emperor. He was not Caesar, not a despot, not a lord holding others in fief. He would not ask for power; what he would seek was justice the divinely constituted order (divina voluntas if sum jus} . He would have the power to bind and to loose in an earthly sense; but as the administrator of justice, of the divine will, the Emperor's task would also be as essential and as lofty in character as that of the Pope. They are given equal authority, which each of them exercises in his sphere with unimpeachable righteousness. They are mutually subject to each other, in so far as the realm of the temporal and of the spiritual interweave; and they must work in unison to create the humanity eternally intended by God. For this reason there must be established a clearly defined dual order based on the divine will. For while the Christian Cross is the sign of salvation, the eagle which ^Eneas once brought to Rome has also its own part in the continuous work of redemption. Mankind, which is a pilgrim along the road to salvation, needs the two-fold leadership of Church and Empire. Our common goal and our common moral imperative are manifested in the one; and the other has been ordained to remove the obstacles which lie in the way. The power of the eagle is not given the state merely as a state according to the natural order that rises out of natural law, but rather to the state as an entity transformed by Christianity. This state is

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 Rh woman always appears as a mean thing whom even St. Peter could not get out of hell, for she never did a good act. Songs connected with trees, animals, and other parts of nature are the most characteristic part of the collection. The Legend of Sweet Basil is familiar elsewhere; not so the Legend of the Cuckoo, who is a sister grieving for her stricken brother. The Confession of the Mother of God explains why the poplar has no shade, the ivy has sour fruit, and the fir has no fruit or blossom. Other pieces allude to marriage customs, to the adventures or the outrages of robbers, to historical personages (such as the Emperor Constantine), and above all to love and death. We are glad to say that a great deal of the poetical imagery is striking and of fine character; but here again we remember those fearless flights of imagination. This is a book which any one having a poetic taste will read with pleasure; we wish we could say that it might be also useful to students.

.

Volkskundliche Zeitschriftenschau für 1903, herausgegebefi ini Auftrage der hessischen Vereinigung für Volkskunde. Von Adolf Strack. Leipzig, 1905. 8vo. Pp. 281.

Hessische Blatter fur Volkskmide. Von Adolf Strack. Bd. IV., Heft I., Leipzig, 1905. 8vo. Pp. 96.

Mitteilungen des Verbandes deutscher Vereine filr Volkskunde, I and 2, Januar und Juli, 1905.

Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde, IX. 3. Zurich, 1905.

Mitteilungen der Anthropologische7i Gesellschaft in Wien, XXXIV., 6; XXXV., i.

Sagenschatz der Stadt Weimar. Von Ellen und Paul Mitzschke. Weimar, 1904, 8vo. Pp. xviii., 152. Price 2 M. 40 pf

Hessische Vereinigung should be a proud body, for it has performed three remarkable feats. It has reached a membership of over 1100; it has directed the energies of some of its members


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conscious of its dependency upon the Cross; and only in relationship to that cross are its significance and value perfected. Nevertheless the divinely ordained relationship between the two powers permits no confusion of the spheres and no encroachment on the one by the other. In natural law and earthly history the state has priority; but in the history of salvation, and inside the order of grace which is the sub- stratum of redemption, the Church has the primacy. May the sword remain the sword and the pastoral staff the pastoral staff. Peter hint- self arises and passes judgment on a worldly Papacy, enmeshed in politics. His blood and the blood of many of his followers did not flow for the sake of a rich church. His keys are no battle flags, no seals placed on letters conferring freedom at a price. Christianity must not be sundered into clergy and laity; the Bible must not be forgotten while one reads the decretals until the margins are worn, Dante's sketch was born out of the dire need of the Christian element in history, and yet history gave him as little attention as it has paid to every political philosopher who has argued for a peaceful division of the authority bestowed upon the two powers.

Joachim of Fiore, his followers, and a spiritualistic Franciscanism had found a voice in Dante's Monarchia and Commedia. A short three years after the poet's death the Defensor Pacis, written (1324) by Marcilius of Padua and John of Jandun, doctors of the University of Paris, drew a picture of a secular prince who is God's viceroy and sits as sovereign ruler over Pope and Church. This revolutionary book was directed against the Papacy as a disturber of the peace. It de- clared that the teaching concerning the fullness of power had proved the ruin of the Church, which as a community of the faithful is of godlike character. Her sovereign is Christ alone; she should be with- out possessions, serving the spirit only. The bearer of ecclesiastical authority is not the Pope but the Christian community, and the high- est instance of the Church is the general Council summoned only to decide matters of faith. In the Council intelligent laymen who know the Bible are also to have a seat and a voice. Thus in the Church also all legislation finally rests with the people. Priests open the way to God by preaching and administering the Sacraments. All have the same power, and none of them, the Pope included, is authorized to interfere in secular matters. His primacy rests only upon legal

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grounds not above suspicion, since the sojourn of Peter in Rome can- not be proved from the Bible, which also does not establish his priority over the other Apostles excepting perhaps in age. The Bishop of Rome is not entitled to call himself Peter's successor or to consider himself superior to any other bishop. Only the Bible merits uncon- ditional belief; and no other writings, least of all decrees of the Pope, are to be similarly trusted. The right to use force does not belong to the Holy See, but to the prince who as the highest lawgiver also summons die Council. And yet this prince in turn merely acts in behalf of the citizenry. He is responsible to the people, which is the sovereign bearer of all civil rights. Laicistic, naturalistic and revolu- tionary to the core, these writers who before Machiavelli's time were subder than Machiavelli, regarded the "sect" of Christianity as the most estimable of religious factions, and assigned it to the place they adjudged befitting inside the political order they conjured up out of purely secularist thinking. The first and ultimate objective of this vi& moderna was therefore necessarily a maiming blow at the Papacy. The contemporary philosophy of the Averroists, the scepticism of other schools, and the opposition of those who sponsored an ideal of poverty (a vigorous movement fed from deep religious springs) to the Curia, threatened the Papacy from within the world of Christ and that of anti-Christ alike.

John XXII (1316-1334) received the tiara as an old man of seventy- two years, after a long drawn-out battle between the French and the Italian cardinals. Like all Popes of the period of exile he was a Frenchman. Born the son of a cobbler, he grew up to be an educator and the chancellor of Robert of Naples. Later he became Archbishop of Avignon and Cardinal; and his always imperious will had grown hard as steel. He was astonishingly energetic, learned, of modest personal habits, open-minded toward the intellectual problems and social needs of the time, and adroit in the defense of die rights and powers of his office. Later times would both admire and denounce him as a great financial genius. Dante said maliciously that he honoured not Peter and Paul, but the image of John the Baptist on the guilders of Florence. A shrewd calculator, he made use of a system of taxation which included a great number of questionable sources of money from episcopal consecrations, newly established prelacies and

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abbeys, and Papal claims on a number of appointments, dispensations and dutiable pleas which could be artificially dragged out, and so raised receipts of the Curia to an annual average of nearly 230,000 guilders in gold. The Camera Apostolica took in money as it never had before, and in a short time was equipped to bear the enormous burdens in- cident to the wars which broke out under this and subsequent pontifi- cates.

The princes and states whose friendship John needed in order to restore complete dominion of the Papacy in Italy also received their goodly share of this store of red gold. This restoration was the major goal of his policy. It was for its sake that he persevered in his fiscal policy and his struggle with the Empire. Ludwig the Bavarian and Frederic of Austria battled for the throne, and the House of Wittels- bach gained a victory: it was, so insisted Avignon, to recognize the Papal right to administration of the Empire in Italy, custodian of which at the rime was Robert of Naples. The Bavarian prince, who had already sent his German Imperial vicar to Italy, took no heed of the Pope's declaration that a king must first have Papal endorsement; and spurning a sharp demand that he lay down his Imperial office, he himself marched southward and supported the struggle which Lom- bard Ghibellines were carrying on against the sundering of Italy from the Empire. When he had drawn down upon himself the ban, Ludwig resorted to another weapon against John: the Pope himself was declared a heretic, because during a dispute with the Franciscans he had repudiated the solemn contention of the Order that Christ and his Apostles had owned no property. The political struggle was confused with theological and religious warfare; and for a decade it seemed as if the Empire and the Church were facing serious disaster. John XXII defended his omnipotence more doggedly than ever a Pope before him; and round the banned and wavering Emperor, there gathered disciples of the Saint of Assist and of Marcilius of Padua. Yes, worlds otherwise irreconcilable found themselves in unison in men like the English Ockham, the philosopher and theologian who wore the habit of Francis, and yet taught a most uncompromising brand of Gesaro-Papism. Doubtless Ockham could form an idea of a Church without a Papacy. John spared none. During the years 13271328, when he also repudiated some sentences of Master Eck-

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hardt, he condemned the Defensor Pads and excommunicated Ock- ham. But the ideas harboured by these daring souls were soon to stir in all the nations. They indicated the rise of a new trend in human thought, and retained their vigour long after those who had first con- ceived them were dead.

Ludwig himself was frightened by the teachings of Marcilius, but during 1328 he did not hesitate to receive the Imperial crown from the hand of the city's ruler, Sciarra Colonna, in Rome and "in the name of the Roman people." Marcilius, appointed spiritual vicar of the city, could hardly boast that the people and their ruler already bore his ideal world in their hearts. The things that happened in Rome in no way mirrored the spirit of the Defensor Pacts. Faith in the Church was still deep and strong enough even to feed with its sap the young humanism which had begun to appear. Nor had the end of the Papacy come when the Emperor was induced to proclaim to a popular assembly gathered in St. Peter's Square that the "priest Jacob of Cahors, who calls himself John XXII" had been deposed. Soon thereafter a miserable creature made himself anti-Pope. The rejoicing was of short duration. Ludwig was quite destitute; and without having firmly established his sovereignty in Italy, he left Rome which with farcical pranks dishonoured him and his Pope and all Roman Germans, even the dead. In Pisa, too, the joke was on him when he ordered that the figure of Pope John should be burned in effigy before the eyes of the indignant people; for it was in this city that the anti- Pope was seized in 1330 and dragged off to Avignon. Dressed in his habit (he was a Friar Minor) with a rope tied around his neck, Lud- wig then threw himself at John's feet and wept. The Pope helped him to rise, removed the rope, cast his arms about him as a sign of forgive- ness, and kept him under very mild arrest until the end of his days. John could not, however, make a peace with Ludwig, who was bidden to abdicate because France desired the breakup of Germany, and Avignon wanted a Papal Italy. Princes and people still clung to their Emperor and he had a Franciscan following which strengthened his resistance to his opponents on the Rhone. Ockham and his disciples lived to witness with pleasure that the Pope defended in a sermon the dogmatically objectionable teaching that the just dead enjoy the fullness of beatific vision only after the last judgment. When John

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lay dying at the age of ninety and was no longer able to speak, the cardinals induced him to sign a written disavowal of that sermon.

During the next forty years of the exile, the French Papacy con- tinued to cling to its traditional policy. It had few friends either in the Church or among the rulers of states. In Germany, where the dreadful weight of the interdict lay like lead on all the living, the pious substituted a mystical religion of the soul for the empty houses of worship. France and the Pope were identified. The tension be- tween Rome and Avignon grew deeper and gave rise to a political and cultural antagonism between Italy and France. In England the old trend towards a state Church waxed stronger particularly after the last of the Capets died (1328), and the hundred years of war with the Valois monarchs embittered people towards the country that was serv- ing as Papal host. In addition the Curia carried out an uncompromis- ing administrational measure by which the indigenous Church was potted with an alien clergy. France itself was losing the grip on power and compelled the Pope to share its fate.

Benedict XII (13341342), a jovial, hard-drinking Cistercian of plebeian ancestry, was vastly more than "the helmsman of the bark o Peter, put asleep by wine,*' whom Petrarch described in his satirical letters. The Romans invited him to return, but he was kept in France because the King feared the loss of Papal influence. Then he began to build the great palace in Avignon which, with its spare and forbid- ding walls, even today frowns on the loveliness of the surrounding landscape. He honestly strove to reach a settlement with Ludwig of Bavaria, but Philippe VI threatened that if the reconciliation were effected he would resort to a second Anagni. The German Imperial princes gave the title of German Emperor a new resonance when they formed an association of electors at Rense, and at the same time mani- fested increased hostility to Avignon. The King and Emperor (they said) was he who had been chosen by the Prince-Electors, even though the Pope might not confirm their choice. To the Papacy there was reserved only the right to crown the Emperor. All negotiations ulti- mately proved bootless when Ludwig, who knew no bounds in his attempts to strengthen his dynasty and who could appeal for support to Ockham and his conception of the state, proceeded on his own -

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thority to annul the marriage of Duchess Margareta Maultasch and marry her to his son. The chaotic situation lasted until the German Prince-Electors, dissatisfied with their Emperor, themselves granted the urgent request of the new Pope Clement VI and brought about a sudden change. They sundered themselves from Ludwig, who was now an ally of England, and once again the object of the ban to which terrible curses were appended; and they hoped to realize Ger- many's profound desire for peace by electing Charles of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, who had been recommended by his friend the Pope. Him they elected German King, and soon thereafter Ludwig died. During the long reign of the shrewd, carefully calculating Rex Cleri- corttm (13461378), the Avignon Popes played their part to the end. Clement VI (1342-1352) cannot be regarded by an objective his- torian as any better than Petrarch's description implies, though Petrarch was a satirist of his times. The poet had come to Avignon from Florence as a boy with his family, had seen a good deal of the world as a student and a traveller, and had built for himself in quiet Vaucluse, close to the Papal palace, a refuge from a world which he hated and loved, idealized and despised with equal ardour. Crowned with the poet's wreath in Rome, he returned to the city of his Laura in 1342, Petrarch lived from 1304 to 1374, so that he was almost exactly con- temporaneous with the Avignon exile. As he observed the conduct of the Popes, he conceived the idea for his acrid and venomous Letters without a Name. Clement VI, whom he himself served in a politi- cal capacity, is the villain of the piece. This cynical man of the world, who has chosen the epicurean art of living rather than the Church for his bride, is seen rejoicing in the fact that he need not live in the "vulgar hut" of the Roman Lateran. Stretched out com- fortably in his gorgeous apartment, he looks about at his herd. He rides to the hunt, followed by a proud retinue, beside his beloved niece, Cecilia Semitamis who dominates the whole palace with her charms. A future Pope, if he should let the mask fall (says Petrarch) would ship the whole Curia to Bagdad: not seven Gregorys could make good the damage done to the Church by two Clements, the V and the VL The laments of other contemporaries establish the validity of Petrarch's satire. St. Brigitta, the mystic and reformatricc of Sweden, who took up residence in Rome as the widowed mother of

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