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overwhelmed all rival conceptions of Christendom and blotted out the past history of the Church. So great
was this ignorance that Innocent I could claim, without much fear of contradiction, that no man has founded
any church in Italy, Sicily, Gaul, Spain, or Africa, excepting those whom Peter and his successors have
ordained as priests. In the Italian peninsula there were three churches Ravenna, Milan, Aquileia which
obstinately refused to consider themselves mere offshoots from the See of Peter. But the legend struck root
and throve, as successive Popes associated themselves with missions to the unconverted tribes and with
reforms in the barbarian churches.
Among the earlier events which contributed to make the Roman belief the standard for all Western
Christendom we need only mention the conquests of the orthodox Frankish monarchy; the official
conversions from Arianism of the Burgundians (516) and the Visigoths in Spain (586); the extirpation of the
Vandals and Ostrogoths by Justinian's generals; the missions of Augustine to England, of Wilfrid, Willibrord,
and Boniface to the Germans; the submission of the Frankish Church under the influence of Boniface and
Pepin the Short (748). Naturally the moral influence of Rome in the northern lands was augmented by the
revival of the Western Empire, which meant the co-operation of Pope and Emperor in the extension of the
Christian Republic. Cyril and Methodius, the Apostles of the Slavs, found it necessary to renounce the
allegiance of the Greek Church, and to place their converts under the protection of Rome (866). It was from
Rome that St. Adalbert went forth on his ill-starred but glorious mission to the Prussians (997); and it was a
Pope, Sylvester II, who earned the glory of uniting the Hungarian people to Western Christendom (1000).
Finally, Canute the Great, of Denmark and of England, came in the manner of a pilgrim (1027) to lay the
homage of his Scandinavian subjects on the altar of St. Peter. The Popes reaped where they had not sown; but
the harvest was rich and splendid.
V. THE PAPACY BEFORE GREGORY VII 32
Medieval Europe
No less important was the political character which the papal office assumed with the revival of the Empire.
Already under Gregory the Great we can trace the beginnings of a temporal power. Naturally and necessarily
the Pope, already like other bishops a functionary charged with important secular duties, took upon himself
the protection and government of Rome and the surrounding duchy, when the rulers of Byzantium shook off
these unprofitable responsibilities. Naturally and excusably he claimed, over his vast Italian estates, the
powers of jurisdiction which every landowner was assuming as a measure of self-defence against oppression
or unbridled anarchy. In the time of Pepin the Short a further step was taken. The Frank, unwilling to involve
himself in Italy yet anxious to secure the Holy See against the Lombards, recognized Pope Stephen II as the
lawful heir of the derelict imperial possessions. And Charles the Great, both as King and as Emperor,
confirmed the donation of his father. To make the Pope an independent sovereign was indeed a policy which
he refused to entertain. His ideal was that of the Eastern Emperors: himself as the head of State and Church,
the Pope as the Patriarch of all the churches in the Empire, elected with the Emperor's approval, ruling the
clergy with the Emperor's counsel, enjoying over the lands of his see the largest privileges bestowed on any
bishop, but still in all secular affairs a subject of the Empire. But on the other hand arose at Rome a different
conception of the Pope's prerogative. Long ago Pope Gelasius had formulated the principle, more useful to
his remote successors than himself, of the Two Powers, Church and State, both derived from God and both
entitled to absolute power in their respective spheres. On this principle the State should not interfere with
episcopal elections, or with matters of faith and discipline; it should not exercise jurisdiction over the
priesthood who are servants of the Church, or over Church estates since they are held in trust for God and the
poor. This view was proclaimed to the world by Leo III, who caused to be set up in the Lateran a mosaic
representing in an allegory his relations to the Empire. St. Peter sits enthroned above; Charles and Leo kneel
to right and left, in the act of receiving from the Apostle the pallium and the gonfalon, the symbols of their
respective offices.
No powerful Emperor ever accepted the Gelasian principle entire. To refute it was, however, difficult, so well
did it harmonise with the current conception of the State. Under the later Carolingians it became the
programme both of reformers and of mere ecclesiastical politicians. The new monasteries, founded or
reorganised under the influence of Cluny, placed themselves beneath the special protection of the Pope, thus
escaping from secular burdens. The national hierarchies hailed the forgeries of the Pseudo-Isidore as the
charter of ecclesiastical liberty. Pope Nicholas I took his stand at the head of the new movement, and gave it
a remarkable development when he asserted his jurisdiction over the adulterous Lothaire II (863). Nicholas
died before he couldgive further illustrations of his claim to be supreme, even over kings, in matters of
morality and faith. From his time to that of Hildebrand there was no Pope vigorous enough to make a similar
example. Dragged down by their temporal possessions to the level of municipal seigneurs and party
instruments, the Popes from 867 to 962 were, at the best, no more than vigorous Italian princes. To that level
they returned after the period of the Saxon Ottos (962-1002). In those forty years there were glimpses of a
better future; the German Pope, Gregory V, allied himself to Cluny (996-999); as Sylvester II (999-1003)
the versatile Gerbert of Aurillac at once mathematician, rhetorician, philosopher, and statesman entered
into the romantic dreams of his friend and pupil, Otto III, and formed others on his own behalf which centred
round the Papacy rather than the Empire. Sylvester saw in imagination the Holy See at the head of a
federation of Christian monarchies. But fate was no kinder to him than to Otto; he outlived his boy patron
only by a year.
VI. THE HILDEBRANDINE CHURCH
Modern life has travelled so far beyond medieval Christianity that it is only with an effort we retrace our
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