The Age of Reason by D. J. Medley (best manga ereader .txt) 📕

bishop was armed with the power of granting pardon in God's name for breaches of the law which had already been committed. The Pope, however, claimed not only this power concurrently with all other bishops, but he even developed a right of granting dispensations beforehand, so that the tendency was to ignore the bishop of the diocese and to apply directly to the Pope or his representatives, who thus were willing to permit infractions of the law. Thomas Aquinas declares that any bishop can grant dispensation in the case of a promise about which there is any doubt; but that to the Pope alone, as having the care of the Church Universal, belongs the higher power of giving unconditional relaxation from an oath of perfectly clear meaning in the interests of the general good.

But even papal writers sometimes complain of the irresponsibility of the papal acts, and Popes themselves had to allow that there were spheres outside their legislative interference. Thus Urban II acknowledges that in matters on which our Lord, His Apostles, and the Fathers have given definite decisions, the duty of the Pope is to confirm the law. Thomas Aquinas, while holding that the Pope can alter the decisions of the Fathers and even of the Apostles in so far as they come under the head of positive law, yet excepts from the possibility of papal interference all that concerns the law of nature, the Articles of Faith (which, he says elsewhere, have been determined by Councils), or the sacraments of the new law.

[Sidenote: The Pope as supreme judge.]

The third wide sphere of action within the Church in which the Pope established his supremacy was that of justice. The Dictatus Papae asserts not only that the Pope should be judged by no one, but that the "greater causes" of every Church should be referred to him, that none should dare to condemn any one who appealed to Rome, and that no one except the Pope himself can interfere with a papal sentence. Litigants of all kinds were only too ready to appeal against the local tribunal, and the Pope gave them every encouragement. St. Bernard indignantly pointed out to Innocent II that every evil-doer and cantankerous person, whether lay or cleric or even from the monasteries, when he is worsted runs to Home and boasts on his return of the protection which he has obtained. It is true, Gregory VIII (1187) tried to check the practice of appeals; but his short reign gave no time for any real result. Bishops and archdeacons tried sometimes to stop appeals by excommunication, which prevented the victim from appearing in an ecclesiastical court; but the third Lateran Council (1179) forbade this method of defence. Alexander III definitely laid it down that appeals could be made to the Pope in the smallest no less than in the greatest matters, and at every possible stage, before and after trial, at the pronouncement of the sentence and after it has been awarded; and this, he points out, is not the case in civil law, where an appeal is only admitted after judgment. Indeed, the most serious matter with regard to papal appeals was the reservation by the Pope to his own decision of cases which were regarded as too serious for the local courts. The bishops had themselves largely to thank for the development of this direct papal jurisdiction; for they began the custom of referring to Rome the cases of great criminals and of serious crimes. But these "greater causes," claimed for the Pope as early as the time of Gregory VII, included not only grave moral crimes such as murder, sacrilege, and gross immorality, but also cases of dispensation beforehand, of absolution after excommunication for certain offences. Under the same head would come the right of canonisation exercised by archbishops until Alexander III claimed it exclusively for the Pope, and the right of translating a bishop from one see to another, which involved a dissolution of the metaphorical marriage between the bishop and his see and therefore needed a special dispensation.

[Sidenote: The papal Curia.]

These extensive powers could only be put in practice by an elaborate machinery for their enforcement. In the first place the Pope was surrounded by a numerous body of officials to whom is applied from the middle of the eleventh century the title Curia. Gerhoh of Reichersberg, an ardent papal supporter writing about a century later, objects to the substitution for the word "Ecclesia" of this term "Curia," which would not be found in any old letters of the Roman pontiffs. The rapacity of the officials became a byword throughout Christendom. John of Salisbury told Hadrian IV, with whom he was on terms of intimacy, that many people said that the Roman Church, which is the mother of all the churches, shows herself to the others not so much a mother as a stepmother. "The Scribes and Pharisees sit in it, laying intolerable burdens on the shoulders of men, which they do not touch with a finger…. They render justice not so much for truth's sake as for a price…. The Roman pontiff himself becomes burdensome to all, and almost intolerable." Honorius III in 1226 acknowledged to the English bishops that this greed was a long-standing scandal and disgrace, but he ascribed it to the poverty of Rome, and proposed that in order to remove the difficulty two stalls should be given to him for nomination in every cathedral and collegiate chapter. The magnates considered the remedy, if possible, worse than the disease. The popular songs of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries contain many references to the fact that nothing was to be had at Rome except for money, and that success in a cause went to the richest suitor. And yet Rome had many sources of wealth. She drew regular revenues from estates which had been given to the papal see; from monasteries which were subject to visitation of papal officers alone; from kingdoms, such as England, whose kings had made themselves feudal vassals of the Pope. Several nations, moreover, paid special taxes, such as Peter's Pence, a kind of hearth tax, which went from England. The Papacy also exacted a number of dues on various pretexts which increased with the growth of papal power. Such were the Annates or Firstfruits and analogous payments, which amounted to the value of the first year's income, and were claimed from newly appointed bishops and abbots as an acknowledgment of the papal right of confirmation. Nor did Metropolitans get their pall, which was necessary for the exercise of their special authority, without the payment of considerable sums. Over and above these regular and occasional sources, the Popes exacted on especial occasions, such as the Crusades, a tax amounting to a tenth on all ecclesiastical property, and even allowed kings to take it with their leave. But these formed a small portion of the money which found its way to Rome. When the papal legate found fault with Ivo of Chartres because simony was still prevalent in his diocese, the bishop retorted that those who practised it excused their action from the example of Rome, where not even a pen and paper were to be had free. Dante addresses the shade of Pope Nicholas III in the Inferno (xix.):—

  "Your gods ye make of silver and of gold;
  And wherein differ from idolaters,
  Save that their God is one—yours manifold?"

And he ascribes the evil which he is condemning to the so-called
Donation of Constantine.

[Sidenote: Papal Legates.]

The most manifest agents and organs of papal authority throughout Christendom were the legates. The Pope had appointed permanent representatives called Apocrisiaries at Constantinople, and had sent emissaries to General Councils and for other special matters. But from the time of Leo IX legates began to be appointed with a general commission to visit the churches; and Gregory VII developed this method of interference with the local authorities into a regular system. In some cases local hostility was disarmed by the appointment of the Metropolitan as ordinary legate, and the position was accepted with the object of retaining the chief authority upon the spot. Such the Archbishop of Canterbury became after 1135. But the existence of this official did not prevent the despatch from time to time of legates à latere, as they were called. The ordinary legate exercised the concurrent jurisdiction claimed by the Pope, that is, the right of interference in every diocese; these legates coming from the side of the Pope were armed with the power of exercising most of the rights specially reserved for the personal authority of the Pope. The Dictatus Papae asserts that the Pope's legates take precedence of all bishops in a council even though they may be of inferior rank, and Gregory VII applies to their authority the text "He that heareth you heareth me." In 1125 John of Crema, a legate sent to England, presided at a Council at Westminster, where were present ecclesiastics from the archbishops downwards and a number of nobility; and "on Easterday he celebrated the office of the day in the mother church in place of the supreme pontiff, and although he was not a bishop, but merely a Cardinal Priest, he used pontifical insignia." A Metropolitan in his oath of loyalty to the Pope was made to swear that he would treat with all honour the Roman legates in their coming and going, and would help them in their needs; and the procuration or maintenance from all countries which they not only visited, but merely passed through, was arbitrarily assessed. Innocent III enforces it by directing against ecclesiastics who were contumacious a sentence of distraint of goods without any right of appeal. The burden was no light one. Wichmann, Archbishop of Magdeburg, writing on behalf of Frederick I, tells the Pope that the whole Church of the Empire is subject to such heavy exactions at the hands of the papal officials, that both churches and monasteries, which have not enough to supply their own daily wants, are yet compelled "beyond their utmost possibility" to find money for the use of these legates, sustenance for their train of attendants, and accommodation for their horses. In more picturesque language John of Salisbury describes the legates of the Apostolic See as "sometimes raging in the provinces as if Satan had gone forth from the presence of the Lord in order to scourge the Church." It is true that Alexander IV commanded an enquiry into the amount which his legates had demanded under pretext of procuration, and which he heard they had enforced by the sacrilegious use of the powers of excommunication, suspension, and interdict. But the parallel which Clement IV drew between the ordinary legates and the proconsuls and provincial presidents of the early Empire showed how little likelihood there was of redress being got from the Papacy itself.

[Sidenote: Increase of papal ceremony.]

The effect of this absorption of power by the Papacy is to be traced in many directions. Here we may take notice of two of the most remarkable. In the first place, he who had grown from the Vicar of St. Peter to be directly the Vicar of God naturally surrounded himself with an increasing amount of ceremony. The Dictatus Papae claims that the Pope alone can use imperial insignia, and that it is his feet alone that all princes should kiss. We have noticed the disputes which arose when the Pope demanded from Lothair and from Frederick I that the Emperor should perform the office of groom to the Pope—hold his stirrup as he mounted and walk by the side of the mule. St. Bernard rightly points out that in thus appearing in public adorned in jewels and silks, covered with gold, riding a white horse, and surrounded with guards, the Pope was the successor not of Peter, but of Constantine. And if he required so much state outside the Church, much more did he insist upon a special ceremony in the services. Thus at the Mass the Pope received the elements not kneeling at the altar, but seated and on his throne; while the Host was carried before him in procession whenever the Pope went outside his palace.

[Sidenote: Papal infallibility.]

A far more important result of the supreme position accorded to the Papacy was the gradual emergence of the doctrine of papal infallibility. "The Church of Rome," says Gregory VII, "through St. Peter, as it were by some privilege, is from the very beginnings of the faith reckoned by the Holy Fathers the Mother of all the Churches and will so be considered to the very end; for in her no heretic is discerned to have had the rule, and we believe that none such will ever be set over her according to the Lord's special promise. For the Lord Jesus says, 'I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not.'" And in accordance with this principle the Dictatus Papae lays it down that "the Roman Church has never erred, nor, as Scripture testifies,