dominions of Spain. The numerous countries that owned her sway sent each whatever was most precious and most prized among its products, to stock her markets and enrich her exchequer. To Spain flowed the gums of Arabia, the drugs of Molucca, the diamonds of Borneo, the wheat of Lombardy, the wine of Naples, the rich fabrics worked on the looms of Bruges and Ghent, the arms and cutlery forged in the factories and wrought up in the workshops of Liège and Namur.

This great empire was served by numerous armies and powerful fleets. Her soldiers, drawn from every nation, and excellently disciplined, were brave, hardy, familiar with danger, and inured to every climate from the tropics to the arctic regions. They were led by commanders of consummate ability, and the flag under which they marched had conquered on a hundred battle-fields. When the master of all these provinces, armies and fleets, added the imperial diadem, as Charles V. did, to all his other dignities, his glory was perfected. We may adapt to the Spanish monarch the bold image under which the prophet presented the greatness of the Assyrian power. "The" Spaniard “was a cedar in" Europe "with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of an high stature; and his top was among the thick boughs. The waters made him great, the deep set him up on high with her rivers running round about his plants, and sent out her little rivers unto all the trees of the field. Therefore his height was exalted above all the trees of

the field, and his boughs were multiplied, and his branches became long because of the multitude of waters, when he shot forth."1

The monarch of Spain, though master of so much, was laying schemes for extending the limits of his already overgrown dominions, and making himself absolute and universal lord. Since the noon of the Roman power, the liberties of the world had at no time been in so great peril as now. The shadow of a universal despotism was persistently projecting itself farther and yet farther upon the kingdoms and peoples of Western Europe. There was no principle known to the men of that age that seemed capable of doing battle with this colossus, and staying its advance. This despotism, into whose hands as it seemed the nations of Christendom had been delivered, claimed a Divine right, and, as such, was upheld by the spiritual forces of priestcraft, and the material aids of fleets and legions. Liberty was retreating before it. Literature and art had become its allies, and were weaving chains for the men whom they had promised to emancipate. As Liberty looked around, she could see no arm on which to lean, no champion to do battle for her. Unless Protestantism had arrived at that crisis, a universal despotism would have covered Europe. and Liberty banished from the earth must have returned to her native skies. "Dr. Martin Luther, a monk from the county of Mansfeld by his heroism alone, imparted to the half of Europe a new soul; created an opposition which became the safeguard of freedom.":

We now ascend to the summit of the European edifice as constituted at the beginning of the sixteenth century. There was a higher monarch in the world than the emperor, and a more powerful king lom in Christendom than the Empire. That monarch was the Pope that Empire, the Papacy.

Any view of Christendom that fails to take note of the relations of the Papacy to its several kingdoms, overlooks the prominent characteristic of Europe as it existed when the great struggle for

religion and liberty was begun. The relation of the Papacy to the other kingdoms of Christendom was,

1 Ezek. xxxi. 3—5.

2 Müller, Univ. Hist., vol. iii., sec. 1, p. 2; Lond., 1818. "If the tide of events had followed in the sixteenth century, and in those which succeeded, the course in which it had hitherto flowed, nothing could have saved Europe from approaching servitude, and the yoke of an universal monarchy." (Villers, Essay on the Spirit and Influence of the Reformation of Luther, sec. 4, p. 125; Lond., 1805.)

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in a word, that of dominancy. It was their chief, their ruler. It taught them to see in the Seven Hills, and the power seated thereon, the bond of their union, the fountain of their legislation, and the throne of their government. It thus knit all the kingdoms of Europe into one great confederacy or monarchy. They lived and breathed in the Papacy. Their fleets and armies, their constitutions and laws, existed more for it than for themselves. They were employed to advance the policy and uphold the power of the sovereigns who sat in the Papal chair.

In the one Pontifical government there were rolled up in reality two governments, one within the other. The smaller of these covered the area of the Papal States; while the larger, spurning these narrow limits, embraced the whole of Christendom, making of its thrones and nations but one monarchy, one theocratic kingdom, over which was stretched the sceptre of an absolute jurisdiction.

In order to see how this came to pass, we must briefly enumerate the various expedients by which the Papacy contrived to exercise jurisdiction outside its own special territory, and by which it became the temporal not less than the spiritual head of Christendom-the real ruler of the kingdoms of medieval Europe. How a monarchy, professedly spiritual, should exercise temporal dominion, and especially how it should make its temporal dominion co-extensive with Christendom, is not apparent at first sight. Nevertheless, history attests the fact that it did so make it.

One main expedient by which the Papacy wielded temporal power and compassed political ends in other kingdoms was the office of "legatea-latere." The term signifies an ambassador from the Pope's side. The legate-a-latere was, in fact, the alter ego of the Pope, whose person he represented, and with whose power he was clothed. He was sent into all countries, not to mediate but to govern; his functions being analogous to those of the deputies or rulers which the pagan masters of the world were wont to send from Rome to govern the subject provinces of the Empire.

In the prosecution of his mission the legate-alatere made it his first business in the particular country into which he entered to set up his court, and to try causes and pronounce judgment in the Pope's name. Neither the authority of the sovereign nor the law of the land was acknowledged in the court of the legate; all causes were determined by the canon law of Rome. A vast multitude of cases, and these by no means spiritual,

did the legate contrive to bring under his jurisdiction. He claimed to decide all questions of divorce. These decisions involved, of course, civil issues, such as the succession to landed estates, the ownership of other forms of wealth, and in some instances the right to the throne. All questions touching the lands and estates of the convents, monasteries, and abbeys were determined by the legate. This gave him the direct control of onehalf the landed property of most of the kingdoms of Europe. He could impose taxes, and did levy a penny upon every house in France and England. He had power, moreover, to impose extraordinary levies for special objects of the Church upon both clergy and laity. He made himself the arbiter of peace and war.' He meddled in all the affairs of princes, conducted perpetual intrigues, fomented endless quarrels, and sustained himself umpire in all controversies. If any one felt himself aggrieved by the judgment of the legate, he could have no redress from the courts of the country, nor even from the sovereign. He must go in person to Rome. Thus did the Pope, through his legate-alatere, manage to make himself the grand justiciary of the kingdom.

The vast jurisdiction of the legate-a-latere was supported and enforced by the "interdict." The interdict was to the legate instead of an army. The blow it dealt was more rapid, and the subjugation it effected on those on whom it fell was more complete, than any that could have been achieved by any number of armed men. When a monarch proved obdurate, the legate unsheathed this sword against him. The clergy throughout the length and breadth of his kingdom instantly desisted from the celebration of the ordinances of religion. All the subjects were made partners with the sovereign in this ghostly but dreadful infliction. In an age when there was no salvation but through

1 Sir James Melville informs us that the bloody war which broke out between France and Spain in the reign of Henry II. was preceded by the Papal legate absolving the King of France from all the oaths and treaties by which he had ratified the peace between the two kingdoms but a little before. "As legate," said Caraffa, "from God's Vicar [Paul IV.] he would give him full absolution, he having power to bind and loose." (Memoirs of Sir James Melvil, p. 38; Edin., 1735.)

2 Details regarding the functions of the legate-alatere, and the acts in which his powers were shown, will be found in Dupin, Biblioth., tom. viii., p. 56; also tom. ix., pp. 220, 223; and tom. x., p. 126. Fleury, Eccl. Hist., tom. xviii., p. 225. Maimbourg, Hist. du Pontific. de S. Gregory le Grand; also in Words of Peace and Justice, &c., on the subject of " Diplomatic Relations with the Holy See," by the Right Rev. Nicholas Wiseman, D.D., Bishop of Melipotamus, Pro. V.A.L.D.; Lond., Charles Dolman, 1848.

never failed to gain its end, for the people, punished for the fault, real or supposed, of their sovereign, broke out into murmurs, sometimes into rebellion, and the unhappy prince found in the long run that he must either face insurrection or make his peace with the Church. It was thus the shadow of power only which was left the king; the substance of sovereignty filched from him was carried to Rome and vested in the chair of the Pope.1

1 The interdict began to be employed in the ninth century; the practice of missioning legates-a-latere dates from the tenth; both expedients were invented and brought into use a little before the breaking out of that great war between the Papacy and the Empire, which was to decide the question which was the stronger. The

had deigned to enter into compact. The Concordat bound the government with which it was made to enact no law, profess no religion, open no school, and permit no branch of knowledge to be taught within its dominions, until the Pope had first given his consent. Moreover, it bound it to keep open the gates of the realm for the admission of such legates, bishops, and nuncios as the Pope might be pleased to send thither for the purpose of administering his spiritual authority, and to receive such bulls and briefs as he might be pleased to pro

interdict and the legate materially contributed to the success which attended the Church in that conflict, and which made the mitre triumphant over the Empire.

mulgate, which were to have the force of law in the country whose rights and privileges these missives very possibly invaded, or altogether set aside. The advantages secured by the contracting parties on the other side were usually of the most meagre kind, and were respected only so long as it was not for the interests of the Church of Rome to violate them. In short, the Concordat gave the Pope the first place in the government of the kingdom, leaving to the sovereign and the Estates of the Realm only the second. It bound down the prince in vassalage, and the people in serfdom political and religious.1

Another formidable instrumentality for compassing the same ends was the hierarchy. The struggle commenced by Hildebrand, regarding investitures, ended in giving to the Pope the power of appointing bishops throughout all the Empire. This placed in the hands of the Pontiff the better half of the secular government of its kingdoms. The hierarchy formed a body powerful by their union, their intelligence, and the reverence which waited on their sacred office. Each member of that body had taken a feudal oath of obedience to the Pope. The bishop was no mere priest, he was a ruler as well, being possessed of jurisdiction-that is, the power of law-the law he administered being

Let us, by way of illustration, look at the Concordat framed so recently as 1855 with Southern Germany, then under the House of Austria. Besides the privileges specified above, that Concordat gave the bishops the sole government of the priests; they could punish them according to canon law, and the priest had no appeal from the penal jurisdiction of the Church. If any one dared to appeal to the civil tribunals, he was instantly smitten with excommunication. Equally in the power of the bishops were all schools and teachers, nor could one give religious instruction in even the university without the episcopal sanction. The bishops moreover had the independent administration of all the lands and property of the Church and of the religious houses. They were guaranteed in free communication with Rome, in the independent exercise of their own discipline irrespective of the civil law, which amounted to the enforcement of canon law on all the subjects of the realm, in all cases in which the bishops saw fit to apply it. And they were, in fine, reinstated in their ancient penal jurisdiction. On the principle Ex uno disce omnes, we are forced to the conclusion that the bondage of mediæval Christendom was complete, and that that bondage was to a far greater degree spiritual than temporal. It had its origin in the Roman Church; it was on the conscience and intellect that it pressed, and it gave its sanction to the temporal fetters in which the men of those ages were held.

2 We quote one or two of the clauses of the oath :-“I will be faithful and obedient to our lord the Pope and to his successors. . . In preserving and defending the Roman Papacy and the regalia of St. Peter, I will be their assistant against all men. Heretics, schis

matics, and rebels to our same lord, I will [pro posse persequar et impugnabo] persecute and attack to the utmost of my power." (Decretum Greg. IX., lib. ii., tit. 24.)

the canon law of Rome. The "chapter" was but another term for the court by which the bishop exercised that jurisdiction, and as it was a recognised doctrine that the jurisdiction of the bishop was temporal as well as spiritual, the hierarchy formed in fact a magistracy, and a magistracy planted in the country by a foreign power, under an oath of obedience to the power that had appointed it a magistracy independent of the sove reign, and wielding a combined temporal and spiritual jurisdiction over every person in the realm, and governing him alike in his religious acts, in his political duties, and in his temporal possessions.

Let us take the little kingdom of Sardinia as an illustration. On the 8th of January, 1855, a bill was introduced into the Parliament of Turin for the suppression of convents and the more equal distribution of Church lands. The habitable portion of Sardinia is mostly comprised in the rich valley of the Po, and its population amounts only to about four and a half millions. Yet it appeared from the bill that in this small territory there were seven archbishops, thirty-four bishops, forty-one chapters, with eight hundred and sixty canons attached to the bishoprics; seventy-three simple chapters, with four hundred and seventy canons;' eleven hundred livings for the canons; and lastly, four thousand two hundred and forty-seven parishes, with some thousands of parish priests. The domains of the Church represented a capital of four hundred millions of francs, yielding a yearly revenue of seventeen millions and upwards. Nor was even this the whole of the ecclesiastical burden borne by the little State. To the secular clergy we have to add eight thousand five hundred and sixty-three persons who wore cowls and veils. These were distributed into six hundred and four religious houses, whose annual cost was two millions and a half of francs.

There were thus from twelve to twenty thousand persons in Piedmont, all under oath, or under vows equivalent to an oath, to obey only the orders that came from Rome. These held one-fourth of the lands of the kingdom; they were exempt from the jurisdiction of the laws. They claimed the right of dictating to all the subjects of the realm how to act in every matter in which duty was involved— that is, in every matter absolutely-and they had the power of compelling obedience by penalties of a peculiarly forcible kind. It is obvious at a glance that the actual government of the kingdom was in the hands of these men-that is, of their master at Rome.

Let us glance briefly at the other principalities