to another chapter of his amazing history. We cross the Alps; we watch him as he enters Rome; we seem to see him kneeling before the altar, in the old basilica of St. Peter, on Christmas day, A. D. 800. On a sudden, what happens? Leo III., the patriarch, the pontiff, the nondescript whom Pepin had made a temporal satrap by giving his predecessors the exarchate of Ravenna, -lo! he comes forward and places an imperial crown upon the head of the Frank sovereign, and salutes him as Emperor. "Long live the Cæsar!" "Long live Augustus!" "Long live the Emperor of the Romans!" Such were the shouts that rent the air; such was the stupendous drama of that eventful day. O what a contrast with that first Christmas, that brought peace on earth and good will

to men!

21. WHAT IT MEANT.

Well! what had been done? "He had revived the Empire of the West," is the common reply. Nothing of the kind was in his thought. He had mentally deposed Irene, and succeeded to her place, remanding the woman to her distaff. He had hopes of reversing the work of Constantine, and reducing Constantinople down again to Byzantium. It was no more to be "New Rome," nor any kind of Rome; Old Rome was restored to herself, and Charles was the successor of all the Cæsars in their ancient Capitol. Such seems to have been his vast, far-reaching, and almost superhuman thought. It looks hard to doubt his

assertion that Leo surprised him. But all appears preconcerted, and I imagine the "surprise" was as to Leo's manner, not as to the act. The shouts of the multitude, echoing through the cathedral, were no doubt unexpected.

22. WIDELY DIFFERENT EFFECTS.

Recall the fact that Southern Italy was at this time theoretically under Irene, and Leo III. was her subject. It was the first instance of the sceptre of the Empire passing into the hands of a woman, and much talk there had been of her own scheme of marrying the King of the Franks, so cementing by new bonds the East and West. Happily, this did not take place, for such statecraft would doubtless have defeated its purpose and made everything worse. The coup d'état by which this all-powerful Frank wrenched the West from Irene proved a success then only in part. It failed in so far as the Cæsars of the East were able to continue the Byzantine line for more than seven centuries in New Rome. But things were altogether ripe for a fresh start in the West with Old Rome for the capital, and, if by a mere fiction. Charles and his successors considered themselves Cæsars of the West, he was in fact the founder of a new imperial throne, without parallel or paragon. The act of Leo in giving him his crown, though it was possibly a mere coup de théatre, of which he was himself the author, committed the patriarchate to the new œcumene, and Leo became "œcumenical bishop" in a new sense, because in this new em

pire he was sole and single. There was no other patriarch, no other "Apostolic See," for the Westerns. The Bishop of Rome became at once identified with the new Cæsar. Thenceforth, the twain were one body and one spirit, though not always of one mind, but quite the reverse. The "Holy Roman Empire," as it was called, by virtue of this religious union, was an ellipse, the one focus being at Rome and the other at Aachen or at Frankfort. Thus the Alps were a wall between rival powers, each asserting supremacy in the same empire. The inevitable consequence was the conflict of the two sceptres, and the history of the Middle Ages in the West is the history of fierce collisions between Emperor and Pope; sometimes farcical poetry, "all see-saw between this and that"; but generally one long perpetual tragedy, a monstrous degradation alike of religion and government, which trampled humanity under foot, and made Europe to resound with its groans and

outcries.

23. THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.

And so the patriarchate of Rome became more and more a worldly power, and surrounded itself with a worldly court, and moved on to fulfil its mysterious destiny. The states of Europe were virtually provinces of the Empire, and made up one vast system, under a mixed suzerainty, Imperial and Papal, ever swinging backward or forward between the two foci. They maintained a fruitless struggle for independence one of the

other, and all for independence of the twin potentates, whose coalition perpetuated their despotism. The student of Dante comprehends what "the Empire" meant in the Middle Ages. For just one thousand years, apart from England, such was Europe; and, as I have said, the Arc de l'Étoile in Paris stands where it does, a monument of the recent ignominious fall of this "Holy Roman Empire." Since the defeat of Austria by Napoleon, nothing remains of it save its elements. The new Empire of Germany and the Kingdom of Italy are but expressions of a new order of things; and though popes and princes may still coquet one with another to enslave the minds and bodies of men, the time is past, thank God, when Guelphs and Ghibellines can compose their strifes with the certainty by so doing of overawing and beating down all antagonism.1

24. INSULATION OF ENGLAND.

Except England," I said, in a parenthesis, but emphatically. For England, blessed with insularity, never permitted herself to be absorbed into this system of the Empire. France too asserted her rightful independence, and her crown was always surmounted by an arch, or bow, to signify its imperial character. But over and over again was she made to feel her serfdom and feudal subjection. Not so with the imperial crown of England; poor King John might surrender it for the moment, but it was only to provoke the revolt of an indignant

1 See Note U'.

people and the thunders of their ability to defend themselves. They were heard in Magna Charta, and in the noble watchword of their sons, "Nolumus leges Angliæ mutari."

25. DISTINCTIONS.

Of

The court papacy of Phocas became a paparchy; but, note, there was no such thing as "the Roman Catholic Church." That is the product of Luther's revolution, and of Loyola's reactionary society, which avenged itself on Northern Europe as Rehoboam did upon the old men who advised reform in Israel, — turning whips of thongs into a scourge of scorpions. This is all-important to be understood: there never was a "Roman Catholic Church" till it was created by the Council of Trent. The Papacy and the Paparchy are old, but not the modern Church so called. this by and by. What, then, was the condition. of Western Christendom while this "Holy Roman Empire" was its master under the two powers that made it? Simply this: the ancient Latin churches were still national churches, with the old Nicene traditions underneath them, smothered but not killed. As the different nations had their own kings and laws, though the Emperor was suzerain, so the Gallican Church, the Spanish Church, the Church of the Milanese, and others, asserted their old autonomies as well as they could, while they were all dominated by the successful ambition of a usurper at Rome. Favoured by her insularity, her independence of the Empire, and by her old