POLITICAL POWER OF THE PAPACY. 193 In A.D. 1076, this political power of the Papacy stood out with startling effect. Gregory VII., after summoning a council, deposed the Emperor of Germany in the following terms :"In the name of Almighty God, and by your authority"—addressing the council"I prohibit Henry from governing the Teutonic kingdoms and Italy. I release all Christians from their oath of allegiance to him, and I strictly forbid all persons to serve or attend him as king." The helpless monarch passed the Alps, and on the 10th of February, A.D. 1077, arrived at the fortress of Canusium, the then residence of the pontiff. Notwithstanding the severity of the weather, the unfortunate monarch was compelled to stand three days in the open air-his feet bare, his head uncovered, and with no other covering than a piece of woollen cloth wrapped round his body. On the fourth day he was admitted into the presence of Gregory, and obtained a reversal of the sentence, upon condition that he should appear at Augsburg, and there submit to the decision of the pontiff. During the pontificate of Pope Innocent III., kings were created and dethroned at his pleasure. Though he had formerly conferred the imperial dignity upon Otho IV., he now deposed that prince, and raised Frederic II., king of the Two Sicilies, to the throne. His subjugation of the pusillanimous John, king of England, and his making a present of that sovereign's throne to Philip of France, are well known. During the reign of Henry III., the Pope exacted the revenues of all vacant benefices in this country; the twentieth of all ecclesiastical returns ; claimed the goods of all intestate clergyman, and all the money obtained by usury. Besides all this, he occasionally levied contributions on the people-a difficult task this, had the English possessed the BIBLE, as they now do; for that is the true GREAT CHARTER of freedom. In 1253, Pope Innocent, desirous of providing for an Italian youth, his nephew-as too many of our bishops have done for theirs -ordered Greathead, bishop of Lincoln, to give him the first vacant canonry in his cathedral; and, on the bishop refusing compliance, he declared that any other disposal of the canonry should be null and void, and that he would excommunicate any one who should dare to disobey his injunction. Greathead was actually excommunicated, and Albert, one of his nuncios, nominated to the bishopric of Lincoln. The old bishop, however, continued in quiet possession of his dignity; but he did not long survive the event. Innocent ordered a letter to be written to King Henry, requiring him to take up the bishop's body, to cast it out of the church, and burn it! This is the counterpart of the plan lately pursued in the case of a Protestant lady at Madeira, whose body was denied burial and flung into the sea-she also was a heretic. It is a fact of terrible significance, that the revenues of the benefices held by Italians in England during the time of Innocent, amounted to sixty thousand marks a year; a sum exceeding the annual income of the crown itself. Again shortly after the election of Gregory X., that pontiff wrote an imperious letter to the German princes, commanding them to proceed immediately to the election of an emperor, threatening, that if they did not instantly comply, he would elect one for them. Imagine this in the case of any successor of our gracious Queen Victoria, whom may God long preserve! During the various contests among the German princes for the imperial dignity, Innocent III. received several valuable additions of territory, as the price of his interference in favour of one party or other. The successors of Innocent were equally political Nicholas IV. refused to crown the Emperor Rodolph, until he had by a solemn treaty confirmed all the pretensions of the Romish see; and immediately after the agreement, he seized upon Romania, Bologna, and several other cities which had formerly belonged to the imperial crown. In 1296, Boniface VIII. laid claim to supreme and irresistible authority over all the kingdoms of the earth, and summoned princes and sovereign states before his tribunal for the decision of their disputes. In 1303, Boniface issued a bull prohibiting the clergy from granting supplies to princes without his consent. Philip the Fair, king of France, retorted by forbidding the French clergy to send money out of the kingdom without the royal permission. Boniface, on this, issued a bull, declaring that "Jesus Christ had subjected the whole human race to the authority of the Roman pontiff, and that whoever dared to disbelieve it was to be deemed heretic, and stood excluded from all possibility of salva tion." Philip spiritedly ordered the bull to be burnt, whereupon the king and all his adherents were excommunicated. Philip, far from being intimidated, sent William de Nogaret into Italy, with orders to seize the Pope. Nogaret succeeded in surprising the pontiff at Anagni; he was, however, rescued by the citizens, only to die soon after of a fever brought on by rage and vexation. In A.D. 1328, we perceive the pertinacious continuance of the same thoroughly selfish and worldly policy. John XXII., at that time pope, having quarrelled with the emperor of Germany, declared the imperial throne vacant. This time, however, the secular was too strong for the spiritual; and the emperor, marching into Italy, POLITICAL ACTION OF THE PAPACY. 195 declared the Pope convicted of heresy, and delivered him over to the secular power. The same haughty conduct was continued at various times, till the memorable quarrel of Clement VII. with our bluff Harry, who was summoned by the Pope to appear at Rome, to answer for his crimes. All ecclesiastics were ordered to forsake England; the king was declared to be deprived of his crown; his subjects were absolved from their allegiance; the nobility were ordered to take up arms against him; his kingdom was given away to any invader; it was declared lawful for any one to seize the inhabitants of this island, make slaves of their persons, and seize their effects; while he prohibited all commerce between England and other nations. What a fortunate thing for this country that free-trade did not then exist! On the accession of Mary, she despatched a solemn embassy to Rome, to beg that the kingdom might be readmitted into the bosom of the Church. Paul IV., who then filled the papal chair, seized this opportunity to display his supremacy. The embassy was compelled to wait a full month, and when at length admitted to the pontiff's presence, they were obliged to fall down at his feet, and in that posture acknowledge the guilt of their national schism. Only imagine this to be again the case, in consequence of the religious successes of our Cardinals and Oratorians! Paul commanded that all the possessions wrested from the Church should be restored to the utmost farthing. He also insisted on the payment of Peter's-pence, declaring that the Apostle would never open the gates of heaven to them, so long as they deprived him of his patrimony upon earth. In the reign of Mary's successor, Elizabeth, Pope Pius V. published a bull, in which he pronounced that queen a usurper, a heretic, and an encourager of heretics; absolved her subjects from their allegiance; and exhorted all princes to take up arms against her. This bull was affixed to the gates of the bishop of London's palace by John Fulton, who, scorning to fly or deny the fact, was seized, condemned, and executed as a traitor. Pope Sextus V. issued a new bull against Elizabeth, and patronized the Grand Armada-with what success is well known to Englishmen. We soon after find Clement VIII. (in virtue of application made to him for assistance against Elizabeth, by O'Neile, earl of Tyrone,) publishing a bull, granting to O'Neile and his confederates the same indulgences which were conferred on those who fought for the Holy Land. Again, in the time of Louis XIV. of France, all weakened as the papacy was, it presented an insuperable barrier to the designs of that ambitious monarch on the side of the Netherlands, from its political action upon the prelate elector of Cologne, whose dominions lay quite round the Netherlands. Such is but a tithe of a tithe of the wide-reaching, grasping political action of a centralizing power throughout long ages of darkness, corruption, and bloodshed. Who can have the hardihood to deny the thoroughly selfish aims of this monstrous political corporation, headed by its subtle and persevering chiefs? But are not these high claims-is not this political action renounced ?—Not a jot! In an allocution to the cardinals of the Church of Rome (September 1851), Pio Nono adopts this principle-that the Catholic religion, with all its rights, ought to be exclusively dominant, in such sort that every other worship shall be banished and interdicted. He claims also ecclesiastical liberty, or the free exercise of their proper episcopal jurisdiction by the bishops, whose jurisdiction reaches to civil officers, whether created by imperial or royal authority, or even emperor or king;-nay, the right of proceeding against all persons whatsoever, by pecuniary fines, distress upon the goods, arrest, or by smiting by the sword of ANATHEMA. Is not this sufficiently medieval for the taste of Anglo-Romanists? If not, they had better petition for another Boniface. Let us hear the observations of a master spirit, relative to this political action of the papacy and its results, more especially at the era of the Reformation. "There was," says he, "an aspect of the question level to the observation of the laity, and it was under that view that the Church was judged :—it was become altogether earthly. She had attempted to use earth in defence of heaven: she now employed heaven itself to defend earthly possessions. Theocratic forms became, in her hands, only instruments of worldly schemes. The offerings which the people laid at the feet of the sovereign pontiff of Christendom were used to support the luxury of his court and the charge of his armies. His spiritual power supplied the steps by which he placed his feet above the kings and nations of the earth. The charm was dispelled, and the power of the Church was gone, from the time that men could say, 'She is become as one of us.' “The great were the first to scrutinize the title of this supposed power. The very questioning of it might possibly have sufficed to overturn Rome. But it was a favourable circumstance on her side, that the education of the princes was everywhere in the hands of her adepts. These persons inculcated in their noble pupils a veneration for the Roman pontiffs. The chiefs of nations grew up : POLITICAL ACTION OF THE PAPACY. 197 in the sanctuary of the Church. Princes of ordinary minds scarce ever got beyond it: many even desired nothing better than to be found within it at the close of life. They chose to die wearing a monk's cowl rather than a crown."l Doubtless the true solution of the recent Papal Concordat with Austria, and its political successes in that country, must be looked for in the influence brought to bear on the young and credulously trained emperor of Austria. His Jesuitical father-confessor has done more for the cause of the spiritual despotism of Rome, in Austria, than the bayonet and sword could have effected. But has not the action ceased now? Quite the reverse! The Holy See has struck another blow at the independence of the Roman Catholic parish priests of Ireland, by again ignoring their old right of electing a successor to a see when it becomes vacant by death or otherwise. This last instance of Papal domination occurred in the case of the bishopric of Galway. Three names were as usual forwarded to Rome, all of which have been passed over, and the mitre conferred upon the Rev. Mr. M'Evilly, an especial favourite of Archbishop M'Hale, and president of St. Jarlath's College. Letters from Galway state that the decision of his holiness has given general dissatisfaction to the clergy and laity.2 Here is independence allowed to the Christian congregation and its leaders! It is absolute and unmitigated despotism. It is to this foreign power, of earthly aims and aspirations, that all the abnormal state of Papal Europe is to be attributed. "Direct temporal authority, such as that possessed by the lords-lieutenant, judges, sheriffs, magistrates, &c., the Pope cannot use over the laity; their property, persons, and liverties are, or seem to be, protected by the known laws of England; but over the priesthood the pope does exercise a direct temporal authority, greater than all the temporal power of Britain over any British subject. No man can be apprehended, no man can be degraded from his office, no man can be deprived of his benefice or any place which he holds for life, by the laws of England, unless, in open court or by open charge of misdemeanour, he be convicted of some offence. But, without trial-without a single open accusation before any human tribunal-any Romish ecclesiastic in Ireland can be at once degraded from his orders and his offices-his benefice taken from him-himself be turned adrift, abandoned, disgraced, excommunicated, over the wide world; and he must go to the feet of the tyrant that degrades and deprives him-he must go to him as a penitent and 'D'Aubigné's Hist. of the Reformation. |